Vcl Dome Newbie(ish) Help Needed

[Rik]

Its Dil switch 1 (8 way) thats missing (which seems to be the address settings) dil switch 2 (4 way) is in place (protocol setting)

The dome you have is a very old orbiter (Not Orbiter Gold, Lite, or Platinum) which only works on coaxial telemetry.

Coax telemetry Orbiter Microspheres do not require an address setting, and therefore DILSW1 is not fitted on the board.

Dil switch 1 has a shorting link on pin 8 that appears to go to ground, could this be setting it to coaxial telemetry?

No, not a setting for coaxial telemetry, Switch 8 of the 8 way DIL switch is used to toggle the cameras zoom setting between

digital and optical zoom, or optical zoom only.

[CompostCORNER]

As Rik has said twice, no address settings mean it's an early 'VCL Orbiter' that only works with a Maxcom and it's keyboard. The address is simply set to 0 (zero). The plug-in chips on the orbiter are 'plug-in' because the circuit board is a unified standard one that was used on all orbiters at the time of manufacture. Some models, with the address switch fitted, allowed for the protocol chip being swapped. Hence the chips being in sockets. Later, VCL added the ability to select protocols via the 4 switch DIL.

The camera itself requires just power, and coax as the telemetry runs up the coax. The swan neck junction box will have more terminals but like the camera circuit board, the swan neck junction box has all terminals available so as to be compatible with all orbiters. I'm not entirely sure wither these old orbiters are NVT capable for CAT5 video cable connection.

It is possible however, to control a Maxcom via RS232 from some DVRs. Providing the DVR has 'Maxcom' telemetry control. But this seems a little pointless as if you have a Maxcom already, you will probably have the Maxcom keyboard also. I've done this in the past with Honeywell 'Transpac' units and have been able to control 'up the coax only' VCL domes remotely.

But either way, you need a Maxcom to give this camera telemetry.

[Jess--]

Many thanks for all of the help on here with this dome, I have now stripped the sony camera module out of it and am using that seperatley as it far out performs my older cameras,

if anyone needs any spare parts for an orbiter (anything except the camera block) let me know otherwise the remains will end up in the bin after a while.

also if anyone has any of the camera blocks for these domes (sony fcb-ex47lp) that they do not want I would be interested if the price was right.

to be clear what I have as spares is the dome head, ceiling mount and upper half of the housing, everything goes through its initialisation and appears in working order but as I do not have vcl equipment I cannot test further.