A few weeks back the MiniWASP dome rotator decided to give up on me. My electronics was not up to the job of sorting the problem out, so I brought in the software and hardware experts who originally put the system together, Peter Dossett and Tom How.
These guys gave up their Saturday morning to come over to the New Forest Observatory and sort out the problem for me. It didn’t take them very long at all to zero in on the high current 12V power supply (basically a computer PSU) as being the problem. Very strange because the original computer PSU I used lasted 12 years without a glitch. The original PSU died on me so I replaced it with another one which seemed to drive the steppers for a while and then the steppers stopped working although the PSU seemed o.k. As it turned out the PSU was not o.k. and for some reason, after working perfectly well for a while, it decided it did not like to see an inductive load. Fortunately I had a spare 12V 20A PSU for the 3D printer (used specifically for inductive loads) and this replaced the computer PSU. Everything then worked again as it should!!
Tom & Pete suggested I shut the whole system down and start up again from scratch (very good idea) just to check it was working properly, and not tricking us – and fortunately it did fire up, with no issues.
So, the MiniWASP array is once again fully functional thanks to Tom & Pete’s efforts, and I am ready to tackle this season’s objects – weather permitting. But the very first job is to get the collimation back on the 200mm lenses, which for some unknown reason has changed over the last 6 months. It’s a never-ending job running an observatory!
