*
Thursday 18th and the dinky little, matchbox sized, HitecAstro DC Focus V2 Focuser controller arrived. It was still in Copenhagen according to the PostNord tracking but let's not complain. It had taken a week to arrive from ordering online in the UK. Minus the weekend when nothing moves. It just seemed like a very long time to the instant gratification child within.Full of confidence I downloaded the drivers and software from HitecAstro's Support webpage onto the laptop. Including the ASCOM driver.
I changed all the cables, double-checked the voltage at 12.8VDC, center pin positive, on the third 12V PS I had found in my modest [charity shop sourced] collection.The motor turned effortlessly in both directions on pushing the tiny manual buttons on the end of the box. No surprise there. Because they are probably just make and break, contact switches. Though of better quality, so far, than the Skywatcher clone variety.
But, I didn't pay this much for two contact buttons because I was being
denied all the control promised by the software. At least it was a start
and proved there was enough voltage and that the motor and cables were
minimally functional. I tried SharpCap but saw the same [negative] notice when I tried to allow the HiTec focuser in the ASCOM menus.
Better do a search online to see if anybody else had suffered similar problems but had eventually found a solution.The only hits were on astro forums going back 8 years. Removal of the software, re-installation and restarting seemed to offer promise on a W7 machine. So I tried that with my W10 but saw NO change whatsoever.
Seeing the same sign was getting rather tedious. The HitecAstro box was present in devices but there was a message about "not migrating" under Events, [Whatever that meant in Nerdspeak.] Followed by a slightly more positive "Device started." Only it didn't. So W10 was lying through its MS teeth as usual.Hours passed without further progress, but eventually, it was time to take the whole kit and caboodle indoors to try it on the [also W10] PC. Anything in the hope of discovering something new. Download the software, install and try again. Nope. NO change!
I scanned the HitecAstro website again for further information without luck. I had been sent a V2 model which was [very confusingly] described as a "second unit to run in parallel with the [real?] first one." To slightly misquote the "Heads you lose. Tails you lose" garbled message to unhappy purchasers, like myself. So there it sits on my computer desk. An apparently innocent but non-functioning, £80 blob. Like much of the detritus which passes through my hands. Am I really a martyr to the ghosts of mismatched Com ports? How could I possibly know? I'm an amateur astronomer. Not a bløødy software writer!
After countless more hours working on the problem until midnight last night and then again all day today until mid-afternoon I took a chance and uninstalled software 1.3 and installed the earlier 1.2.It Connected immediately! As did the laptop as soon as I repeated the same basic steps. Reverting to 1.3 blocked connection on both machines again.
Back to 1.2 and I can now use the basic Hitec focuser control panel on both machines. However, ASCOM/SharpCap cannot find the controller and reports it is faulty on both machines. So I have no access to the far more sophisticated controls [only promised] there.
So I'm still waiting for a response from HitecAstro support. An earlier request for end views of the DC controller by email, on the 11th,
Perhaps they are on a fortnight's foreign holiday and have no access to emails? These astro vendors must see us as easy prey for their worthless, tech fodder. Worse, they twist their cruel blade by making us work, unpaid, for untold hours, just trying to get their crap to behave itself! Where's the nearest Trading Standards Office to HitecAstro? A refund is not enough. I've invested my own precious time in your abject failure!
Click on any image for an enlargement.
*
No comments:
Post a Comment