Telescope command failures

Thursday, July 3, 2025 5:33 AM

Problem(s) Encountered:

I tried pointing at the same part of the sky as last night; I figured

point ha=-2:30:00 dec=04:30:00 nodome

would do it, but it hung up.  I tried various things, such as turning on the tracking and pointing normally (dome and mirror closed, of course!) but it wouldn't do it. The dome did move off
the contacts to track, though.  I tried exiting and restarting the TCS gui, and hitting  initialize , and it claims to be OK, but when I try to home the dome it gives an error message:  Could not send command.  Socket is not connected. Is the TCS server running?  

I don't remember (if I ever knew) how to check this and restart the TCS server if needed; it also sounds like a socket is bound somewhere.  So I'm stumped.  Everything is normal, except the dome is not at home.  It's looking as if tonight will be a washout anyway. 

Solution:

Found a couple issues.  Firstly the dec motor controller (located in the base of the polar axis) had tripped and needed to be power-cycled.  Secondly, opened a terminal and typed telescope status.  Found that rtel was not running.  Typed telescope stop to shut down all three servers.  Then typed telescope start, which got all three back to running.  After this, was able to home the dome and move the telescope without issue.  I will test everything together before leaving today.
This issue likely stemmed from power outages and transients from the storms yesterday and last night.