Enjoyed your nifty site Jim!

Just wondering, how many encoder boards did you have to replace due to ruined sensors before you got it right, as I did, By Trial And Error?...LOL! I went through three of them!

....Very Stressful!

There is absolutely no warning, and the sensors are wiped right off of the board by the pressure of the magnetic strip digging into them, as soon as you start to rotate the base! You can't see it or measure it, and it happens faster than a 1000Amp. short!

The first clue is that you no longer have any changing Az readings on you COL, and the COL function no longer works. This is very tricky business Jim, and I don't recommend it unless some sort of protection is provided to the magnetic sensors, such as a raised barrier as I mention in this post.

I wrote a suggestion to Orion Tech, services suggesting that a small hard plastic raised barrier be placed either side of each sensor to make this destruction impossible. It would only have to be a fraction higher than the sensors themselves. The worst that would happen was that you dug into the magnetic strip, when it slammed into the protective raised barrier, which wouldn't do the strip any harm, just gouge it which wouldn't effect its operation unless you really peeled it off!

Cheers!
Bob