Telescope Reviews: Maxdome II

As Rodney has pointed out the Lesvesdome system is also ASCOM compatible. While I have nothing against the Maxdome II system again as Rodney mentioned there would be a substantial saving with the Lesvesdome system if it worked with your setup. Now having said that I don’t know a lot about the Lesvesdome in practice, only what I have read and others seem to have had success with it.

The other thing is the dome tracking. It is not a simple matter and all dome tracking software is not created equally. When I first installed my system I used the older Autodome rotation hardware that I mentioned earlier. The software that was used to drive it and couple it to the telescope was a product called Automadome by the Software Bisque. While the software basically worked and has tons of adjustments that are suppose to allow the user to model the relationship between the scope and the dome geometry I was never able to get to work was the scope and dome in all positions.

The older Autodome rotation board was built by the same people (Cyanogen the makers of MaxiM DL) that make the Autodome II system. They provided me with an unreleased version of what would eventually become the Maxdome I control software. It worked (for me anyway) better than the Automadome software I purchased from Software Bisque. It was easier for me to idefine the geometry of my dome and telescope and it did a fairly good job of tracking the scope over the full range of movement of the scope. Not perfect but better than the Automadome software did.

When I upgraded to the Maxdome II system I received the version of the dome control software compatible with the Maxdome II hardware. Again it seemed to work ok. Not perfect, but pretty good. The whole reason I graded to the Maxdome II is I wanted to be able to run Bob Deny’s ACP observatory control software for enhanced automation and remote control.

What I found was ACP had it own dome/scope geometry parameters within the software. I suspect they are the same routines used in the ASCOM software as Bob Deny is the driving force behind ASCOM. When I used ACP for dome control I noticed the alignment between the scope and dome were even better than it was using the software supplied with Maxdome II. So now the ACP software is always used to slave control of the dome to the scope. Again it is not perfect but it is darn near close to it. (One of the problems in my case is the total aperture of my scopes are a bit big for my dome’s slit width.)

With any system you use to slave the dome to the scope there are 2 key issues:
1.) You must be able to accurately model the scope and dome’s geometry in order for a software based control system to achieve precision dome scope alignment. While there are some systems that use infrared beams to position the dome’s slit in front of the scope’s aperture I am not a fan of them.
2.) The control hardware must be able to accurately count either the number of motor revolutions it takes to move the dome one complete rotation; or it must be able to accurately track the exact position of the dome at any given

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-Marcus

The problem with free speech is even the stupid have a voice.

http://www.jatobservatory.org

Currently a SV102A, WO 66mm & 10" LX200GPS OTA on a Paramount ME
(these OTAs subject to change without notice)