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Moonlite focuser and ASCOM
I bought a second hand scope with a Moonlite focuser but no controller. After some searching I bought a FocusDream Pro controller and software. The Moonlite has a DB9 connector and after much fiddling I got it to work with the supplied software control panel. However, the supplied ASCOM driver which I'm trying to use with NINA has proved very challenging. NINA initially showed a focuser value of 10000. I found even decreasing the value to 0 had no noticeable effect on the image. When I increased it to 30000 the star went well out of focus so it seemed I didn't have enough movement in one of the two directions. I de-clutched the motor and ran it up to a value of 100000 thinking that I would now have plenty of travel in both directions then re-clutched the motor. Went into NINA and moved it to 80000 - no effect on the image. Then I went back to the control panel, it was reading 80000 and moved it to 80350 and it was out of focus then back to 80000 and back in focus. Then back into NINA moved it to 80350 - no effect. Manually the focuser can be moved in or out so there is no hard stop. I don't know whether the Moonlite motor/gearing arrangement has an encoder to indicate the amount of movement. I've seen values for the number of steps for these focusers listed as 43000 or 94000 but have no idea how that relates to the values I'm seeing in NINA.
Mark
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