John replied to the topic 'New Focus Algorithm in Ekos' in the forum. 2 years ago

Hi Doug and Bernd,

I started looking at the CFZ. Some observations:
1. Whilst I easily found the steps / revolution of my focuser, I can’t find the thread pitch of my SW draw tube. I think it has a 1:11 gearing but that may be incorrect so I’ll have to measure movement per focuser step as Bernd suggests. Since I don’t have anything other than a ruler to measure this the result won’t be very accurate, but I’ll give it a go.
2. Bernd suggests 3 parameters to capture which is of course possible.
3. In addition some decisions would need to be made on:
a) Seeing. Would need to capture a value from the user for astronomical seeing or total seeing. Could calculate the diffraction component for the telescope based on filter (wavelength of light being used) but this may be overkill.
b) Tolerance %. The article quotes many different values from a few % to a few 10%. Based on the formula this has a sqrt(tolerance) impact on NCFZ.

I have to say that this looks like it will require quite a bit of knowledge from the user to fill in the correct data to get a reasonable answer for NCFZ and then step size. For those that know this info the GoldFocus website provides a calculator to do this so I’m not convinced putting it in EKOS would provide much benefit.

Just my initial thoughts.

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