Helicon Soft Forum

Hello,
using Helicon Remote 2.3.3w with external steppermotor Trinamic PANDrive caused a irreparable damage of the attached high precison recirculating ballscrew, which moves the camera ! Why? That version of Helicon Remote did not remember both (near & far) locked focus-positions (Version 2.0.16w does). I had to switch of the power supply of the stepper motor to stop his continuous running.

That´s very bad, not "beta". I think you have to inform your customers before, if such massive errors are possible.
Werner

We are sorry about this. We already fixed this error and the next version will work fine with steppers. We will also try to add setting to limit max torque of the motor.

Hello Stas,
in the last betaversion 2.3.5w the problems seem to be solved!
Quick & dirty test with stepper moving camera with bellows and lens: stack of 20 pictures of a (microscopic) slide with smallest scale intervall of 0,01mm. This slide was rotated about 5 degrees against the sensor plane of the camera. Estimated movement between photos about 0,1mm. Worked fine...
Additionally there seems to be the possibility now, to control the amount of torque of the stepper. Is that correct? The motor operates much "smoother" now. I found, that lowering this parameter <30% may result in unprecise movements especially at nearest and farthest focus points. That may lead to the wrong impression, that these points are stored incorrectly by HeliconRemote.
Werner

Thanks for the tests. Yes, you can control acceleration and torque now. You are right, you should be cautious with low torque because some steps may be missed by the motor.