My NexDome rotation motor has stopped working without me knowing why. Have you ever encountered this problem even with the start button on the engine block nothing is working and in the control software I have a flashing red exclamation mark next to the com port the engine is on? plugged in and the strangest thing when I press Goto in the software it tells me that the engine is running and yet it is not. Do you know what the problem is, thanks.
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Can you check the 12V ?
According to Tim Long and what I described, the Arduino board is the problem.
If the Arduino respond but the motor is not moving, it could be the 12V as the Arduino would still be powered by the usb port but there would not be any power to the motor. So it might be the Arduino, but before starting taking everything apart you might want to make sure there is 12V going in.
What I find weird is that everything has been fine for 3 days and I could control my dome remotely with Team Viewer and everything was fine, I am wondering was the engine failure caused after that I tried to synchronize my mount with the dome because that's when the engine stopped running. Why there are times of trouble with the rotator and the shutter motor, it's sad because it's a very nice dome that I love.
Hardware failure usually happen without any warning. Syncing the dome with the mount doesn't actually do anything to the dome controller.. The software instruct the dome to go to a specific position and nothing more.
If the motor stopped working there are a few things that could have gone wrong :
1 - Arduino failed
2 - Firmware on the Arduino is corrupted.. try re-installing the firmware
3- Motor controller failed (the device in the dome controller that controls the motor).
4 - Corrupted parameter in the controller -> also could be fixed by re-installing the firmware.
5 - something else..
As you get a connection error .. there is a good change it's either 1 or 2.
What happen if you try re-installing the firmware ?
If all fails (aka you can't reinstall the firmware) you should email Nexdome or open a ticket for them to replace the controller : https://www.nexdome.com/support-form
Rodolphe
One more thing, if you use Windows, make sure to disable USB Selective Suspending on all USB port in the Windows settings.
Ok, I haven't looked at this and what's the point of selective suspending USB ports.
Selective suspend is a power saving option.. some people with laptop use this to save power.. this has been a problem for astronomers using Windows for a while and it tends to get re-enabled after each Windows update..
Ok but I use a mini PC.
It's a windows feature.. no matter what type of machine you have, laptop, mini-pc, desktop, server ... So if you don't want to see the port being put to sleep in the middle of a imaging session, disable selective suspend.. so that the port NEVER get suspended .. which disconnect the device that is on it.
Disable selective suspend on ALL usb port.
Ok.