The Paramount ME is in the House!
Jan 26, 2005
Today I received shipping of the “Software Bisque Paramount ME Robotic Telescope Mount.” Yes, it’s a long title, but so many words aren’t wasted on equipment like this. Thanks to my association with the Three Rivers Foundation for the Arts and Sciences (3RF), I’m fortunate to have the opportunity to use this mount for the foreseeable future.
First Impressions…
Three boxes came to my door step at high noon today, two of which hurt my back when carrying them into the house. The largest box, that includes the mount head and software, weighed 80 lbs. The next 65 lbs. box holds nothing but the three 20 lbs. counter weights. The final box contained all the hardware for the mount, including the counterweight bar and Versaplate, or the top mounting plate for the mount.
Of course, the first thing that strikes you when you open the large box, which was well packaged by the way, is the sheer beauty of the mount itself. I’ve seen these mounts in person many times, but opening this box is akin to opening the door to a new Ferrari and enjoying the best of ALL possible new car smells! Though the mount failed to emit any detectable odor, which is perhaps a good thing, it is a treat for the senses. Visually, the mount is stunning, made of CNC red-anodized aluminum plating, highlighted with black knobs and silver bolt heads. And then, there is the sheer size! I’m very accustomed to nice, large mounts, having toted around the excellent Takahashi NJP for most of 2004. I’ve always stated that the NJP is a great portable mount, and after lifting the 75 lbs. Paramount head from the box, that NJP has never seemed more portable! This German equatorial mount was built to stay in one place. That is very obvious!
Setting it Up (temporarily, that is) …
While I placed the mount head onto the portable Particle Wave Tech Monolith pier - a matching, work of art in its own right - it became very clear that this Paramount will see only a few trips a year away from home-base. Now, I’m a large, strong, all-American kind of guy who has little problem throwing around the NJP mount head, which weighs around 50 lbs. by comparison. But the Paramount seems twice as heavy and twice as bulky. I lifted the mount somewhat easily onto the Monolith pier, assisted in large part by the vast amounts of adrenaline that was surely coursing through my body. But unless I begin a regular dosage of steroids treatments sometime soon - which is not going to happen - I think my back will continue to pay the price with each lift. I used the four base-plate hand knobs, found in the accessories box, to affix the mount head to the pier.
Then, after leveling the pier somewhat - not really important since I’m just testing everything indoors first - I screwed in the slick, silver counterweight shaft, which only reinforced the beauty of the silver bolts in the mount casing. Then, I installed the Versaplate atop the mount head, being certain to thread the wires coming from the top of the mount itself. Why the wires? The Paramount has two control panels. The main “Telescope Control System” is located on the back of the mount head, but two large cables tunnel through the RA and DEC axes and come out the top of the mount. The cables pass through channel grooves in the underside of the Versaplate and attach to a secondary electronic panel, or interface, shown at lower-right. This allows for CCD cameras, focusers, guiders, and other electronics that normally clutter up the visual back of the scope tube to connect very neatly near the tube itself. The result is the luxury of slewing the mount without the worry that it will choke itself on cables. Of course, considering that this is a robotic mount with fully unattended, remote control capabilities, this is simply one of the ways that the Software Bisque guys are trying to make your life easier. They even provide space to run additional cabling yourself, should you decide that you have other accessories that might otherwise hang loosely off the back of the scope.
The Versaplate itself is amazing. It can be placed in either a straight orientation, along the scope’s axis to accommodate larger scope tubes, or in an oblong orientation to accommodate smaller side-by-side systems. Whichever method you choose, I assure you that there are enough holes in the this plate to give you an unlimited number of mounting options, regardless of the hardware you have. It even has a Losmandy dovetail channel ready to receive your Losmandy mounting accessories. Because this particular mount will soon hold a 12.5” RCOS Ritchey-Chretien Cassegrain scope that is due to arrive, hopefully, in one more week, I opted for the traditional, straight placement of the Versaplate.
After putting on a single counterweight to balance my Tak FSQ-106 atop of it - I needed something to put on it, afterall - I plugged in the power cable, USB cable, and joystick controller. Of course, the 20 lbs. counterweight is really too large to balance the smallish Tak 106, but this is the only time the mount will tote ONLY this little scope. Still, it’s always better to have more weight on the counterweight bar, if only to keep from accidentally loosening the clutches and watching a top-heavy OTA hit the floor!
Actually, “clutches” is somewhat of a misnomer here. This is a clutch-less system, intended for pure electronic control. The mount head is locked in place by engaging the gears with the worm drives. When engaged, the system is locked and loaded for slewing. When dis-engaged, it moves freely, without friction. To balance the OTA, you dis-engage the gears. When balanced, you re-engage them. Therefore, care must be taken to prevent imbalance when the gears are dis-engaged. Keeping a hand on the OTA while loading the counterweights is important, and frankly, with the upcoming 50 lbs. RCOS scope, I’m sure that two people will be required to perform simple balancing of the OTA. That said, some type of lock on the axies would be perhaps the only thing I might find the Bisque guys wishing they’d have added; however, perhaps it will prove to be an insignificant concern.
Firing it Up!
Although I was inside the house, I wanted to see how well the mount worked with the included THESKY 6 Professional control software. Of course, I already owned this software myself, but the Paramount is designed to make better use of this software than my previous mounts and I wanted to test those capabilities. I also wanted to make sure there were no bugs in the software or any difficulties with setting up the USB driver for the mount, not to mention the driver for the control system. After inserting the supplied Paramount ME system disk in the CD-ROM drive of my laptop computer, I installed the most recent THESKY 6 update (.27 at this release) and the aforementioned drivers without even the slightest hiccup. Then, I plugged the supplied 15 ft. USB cable into the laptop and powered up the mount. The colored LEDs on the back of the control panel came to life with a pattern of flashes that I have yet to completely understand, but after a few seconds, they gave me a solid-blue color, indicating that the mount is ready to be “homed” with the software.
After setting my THESKY 6 software for the Paramount ME and the appropriate COM port, I linked to the mount…success! The software immediately asked me if I wanted to “home” my mount. I gave it my permission to do so. “Homing” the mount is something that must be done so the mount knows where it is located. Once homed to its starting position, polar-aligned, and programmed with the exact time and date (done transparently through THESKY 6), the mount immediately knows where it is. To test this, I chose Vega in the software and selected “slew.” The mount moved to where Vega would be if I could see it during the day…and when I say it “moved,” I mean, it scooted! This mount runs on 48 volts DC, which is another reason it’s not the first choice for a portable, field setup, unless you just love carrying 4 huge 12v batteries around all the time. But this power is put into good use with Paramount. The top slewing speed in the software suggests a 512x sidereal rate. Whether that is what I was seeing is anybody’s guess, but I do know that it made the move to Vega faster than my old Meade LX200, and was at least three times as fast as the Tak NJP.
Once the scope found Vega, I synced to this star, not really moving the controller around since, afterall, the transparency was quite poor inside my livingroom. Then, I pretended I was outside and chose objects in the software for the scope to slew towards. I played with the mounts software settings in THESKY 6: I played with the slew rates, looked at the PEC graphs and T-point interface, tracked on a satellite, I set a “park” position for the mount…play, play, play!
Of course, this was the limit to my play at this time. What else can you do indoors? Once I get the RCOS scope and get it outside, I’ll put the mount to the test, including it’s tracking and guiding ability. Hopefully, the next new moon will signal that the REAL play time is about to begin. I’ll report on additional discoveries at that time.