FIT PC Serial Ports

[DavidTrap]

Hi,

Looking at a FIT PC for a remote observatory installation - they come highly recommended by many for this purpose.

Can anyone comment on their experiences with the native serial ports on the IPC2 i5? One is a fully fledged RS-232, but the other two are "two wire" ports. Do they communicate successfully with astronomy equipment, eg. planewave focuser, dew heater controller?

I'd like to avoid serial to USB converters if possible - just another point of failure.

Thanks in advance,
David T

[ericwbenson]

Hi David,

I can confirm the FIT-PC2i comm port works with the AAG CloudWatcher hardware. Last year I upgraded from a FIT-PC2 to IPC2 in my dome, the performance improvement was massive for things like plate solving. I did try to communicate with my Garmin 18x LVC gps receiver (from the IPC2), no luck trying to get the PPS signal working. Maybe it was the adapter dongle.

Anything that doesn't need flow control or CD/DTR/etc pins should be fine with the Tx/Rx only ports.

Unfortunately I can't try anything for you right now (the obs is 700km away).

Best,
EB

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Eric,

Have you had any reliability concerns with the FIT PCs at Arakoola? That's about as harsh an environment as I can imagine in Oz??

Ta
DT

[ericwbenson]

Hi David,
They are under the floor of the dome where the temp swings are lower, but IIRC over the year it still ranges from below 10C to ~40C. We upgraded to all SSDs (three units) a while back, which made a big difference to the case temperature, and now they are no moving parts whatsoever (well, except for the external USB HDs used for automatic-backup, not mission critical, eventually I imagine they will become SSDs).

We had some issues with the auto-on feature on some of the earlier units (FIT-PC2 and PC2i). I think one was fixed by RMA, the other was borderline and we just lived with it (the big battery bank meant the power never went out anyways). But this appears to have been a design/implementation flaw, not an environmental thing. No known issues with later models. Extremely low power with very decent specs, hard to not recommend.
Best,
EB

[DavidTrap]

Thanks Eric, I've sent you a PM

DT