Hi Robert – I’ve been using my focuserpro2 for some time now and I have to say that it is the best controller I have ever used. Once again, thank you for your outstanding work. I have a couple of feature suggestions for you to consider. The first has to do with temperature compensation. TC is an absolute necessity with my Tak FSQ106, since focus moves quickly with temperature changes. In fact, it can move out of the CFZ with a degree C change in temperature. I edited the .ino code to move the focuser with every 0.25 degree C change instead of a full degree (and I just divide my coefficient by 4) and it works great. So you may want to give some thought to whether this is worth including in your code.
The other suggestion is to incorporate a user-added zero-intercept and use that intercept to allow the option to send the focuser to the correct position for the starting temperature on startup. This would eliminate the need to manually move the focuser back out when starting a session at a warmer temperature than when the previous session ended.
Anyway, just some thoughts and thanks again for doing this.
Hi Tim
I understand from my limited reading that the TAK's are a little sensitive to temperature changes and that it was reported that some even have negative temperature compensation. Having not owned a TAK I can only take what I have read at face value.
Its a question of how much granularity is needed, and for me it was an arbitary decision to go for 1 degree. I agree it could be bonus if that could be selectable. The code is as you have pointed out reasonably easy to modify.
User-added-zero-intercept. I am still getting my head around this. I guess if we had a coefficient of 10 and the ideal position at 0 degrees was 1000, then if the detected temp was 4 degrees then there should be the option to set the focuser to 1040? The downside is that only holds true if the same imaging setup is being used all the time unchanged, and having to track a couple more things in data plus code overhead. It also means a user has to specify the focuser position at temp 0 (I guess that part could be auto-captured if the refresh timer was running). And the final downside is code space as for some driver options we are starting to near the limit of what is too much.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Cheers
Robert
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Hi Robert – I’ve been using my focuserpro2 for some time now and I have to say that it is the best controller I have ever used. Once again, thank you for your outstanding work. I have a couple of feature suggestions for you to consider. The first has to do with temperature compensation. TC is an absolute necessity with my Tak FSQ106, since focus moves quickly with temperature changes. In fact, it can move out of the CFZ with a degree C change in temperature. I edited the .ino code to move the focuser with every 0.25 degree C change instead of a full degree (and I just divide my coefficient by 4) and it works great. So you may want to give some thought to whether this is worth including in your code.
The other suggestion is to incorporate a user-added zero-intercept and use that intercept to allow the option to send the focuser to the correct position for the starting temperature on startup. This would eliminate the need to manually move the focuser back out when starting a session at a warmer temperature than when the previous session ended.
Anyway, just some thoughts and thanks again for doing this.
Tim
Hi Tim
I understand from my limited reading that the TAK's are a little sensitive to temperature changes and that it was reported that some even have negative temperature compensation. Having not owned a TAK I can only take what I have read at face value.
Its a question of how much granularity is needed, and for me it was an arbitary decision to go for 1 degree. I agree it could be bonus if that could be selectable. The code is as you have pointed out reasonably easy to modify.
User-added-zero-intercept. I am still getting my head around this. I guess if we had a coefficient of 10 and the ideal position at 0 degrees was 1000, then if the detected temp was 4 degrees then there should be the option to set the focuser to 1040? The downside is that only holds true if the same imaging setup is being used all the time unchanged, and having to track a couple more things in data plus code overhead. It also means a user has to specify the focuser position at temp 0 (I guess that part could be auto-captured if the refresh timer was running). And the final downside is code space as for some driver options we are starting to near the limit of what is too much.
Am I understanding this correctly?
Cheers
Robert