malc-c

A decade ago I needed to upgrade my mount , and an SGL member listed an HEQ5, ST80, QHY5 and all the cables to make it work. Only drawback was he was in Sunderland and I live in Stevenage... but given the money involved I arranged to meet up with them. We arranged a time, date and location to meet, which was a roadside café akin to a little chief, so bright and early I set off on the 480 mile round trip. Given the car I drive (still have it) I planned for a sedately pace and drove to preserve petrol, and arrived at the café half an hour before the meeting so had some lunch. The guy arrived, had a chat over a coffee and then we went to his car where he set up the mount to demonstrate that all was working. Cash was exchanged and the goodies loaded in to the back of the V70. On the way back all thoughts of economising on petrol went out of the window as I wanted to get back in time for tea. I was quite surprised that I still had 3 or 4 gallon left in the tank after around 450 miles. Now in retrospect the it may have been cheaper to courier the kit, but as neither of us had met before, sending £600 or more via bank transfer to total strangers just wasn't going to happen. Nor would they be comfortable sending the kit to me before payment, so doing the deal in the middle of a carpark was the only way forward. Just a shame the deal was too good to miss and it was so far away.

The USB ports on modern mounts permits direct access to update firmware via a downloadable application from their main website. The fact that it also provides an option to control the mount from a PC via a 3rd party application is a bonus for those wishing to go down that route, but its not something Synta actively promote. The only difference is the wi-fi dongle, which has an android app, and the start adventure, which has PC and phone applications to control the mount. It's probably down to the cost of setting up the infrastructure to provide technical support. You only need to look through forums and user groups and see the posts related to PC connection, guiding, etc which if Skywatcher had a support line would be directed towards them. But I agree with you, it does make sense to provide an application along the lines of EQMOD or GSS, even if it was stripped down and had less options.

A "smart" socket was also thrown up in the search - with two USB ports - and in black ! details here

something like this which offers charging and network ports Amazon search listed a 4 port USB3 plate - but not sure if its a hub or just sockets here and best read the reviews though. Failing that, contact any local AV media installation company as this is the sort of thing that would do on a daily basis and could point you in the right direction

The clue is in the title - EQmod is expecting the mount to be an equatorial mount. An EQ mount set into ALT/AZ mode wont perform correctly when using EQMOD as a mount controller. If you have to set up the mount each time you wish to use it then you need to clear all the previous saved sync points as they will be incorrect as the mount has since been moved. Also check if you have the DEC axis set correctly - if the dovetail is 180 degrees out then that could be another factor as to why the issue is with the DEC axis and not the RA which returns to the correct home position.

On a serious note.. part of the problem is that of the 12 useable channels, nearly everything defaults to channel 1, so there could be several devices all chatting on the same channel. Turning off the router leaves just the wi-fi dongle as an access point so the app on the phone should connect without the need for a tin foil hat.... unless of course there is a flying saucer hovering over the house

I set my finder / guider up so that the same subject is central in the viewpoint. The main scope was centred on a bright star, then using sharpcap the same star was centred in the finder/guiders view. The 9x50 scope provides enough field of view for PHD to pick a star and guide without any real issues. Having the two scopes pointing at the same section of sky makes more logical sense to me.

Best advice would be to look at the requirements stated by the software manufactures. These days with even entry level computers have multiple cores and threads, with16GB being the standard RAM, and both laptops and desktop system supporting Nvme drives so should be more than capable. What tends to happen is that most software still uses older core code that isn't written to take advantage of the processing power. In fact these days its the GPU's Cuda cores that dictates the power of a system, more so in the gaming side of things, as more and more applications can be more easily modified to use the GPUs processor than to make it a multi core or threaded application to use the CPUs clout. I have a first gen Ryzen 5 based machine, with 16GB DDR4 vengance RAM, 1Tb and 250Gb Samsun Nvme drives, 2TB SSD and a 3Tb mechanical drive for archival storage. Yet when I need to convert a small STL file into a solid in FreeCAD it still sits there for several minutes whilst it does the math as it can't make use of the 4 cores and 8 threads all turbo'd to 3.7 Ghz !! Mind you, having said that Deep Sky Stacker does make use of multi core / treads and it's quite impressive watching it stack a shed load of subs on a modern day machine in a couple of minutes. Prior to building this machine I had an old AMD FX processor based machine and it was often a case of setting the stacking off and then going off to mow the lawns or run the vacuum around the house and then still have to wait a few more minutes before it finished !!

If you want something simple that offers a wifi based controller that supports the Skywatcher protocol making a direct alternative to the synscan board have a look at the Open Synscan project which will allow you to use any application compliant with Synscan protocol to manage the telescope mount over WIFI network connection

Why re-invent the wheel - Can't vouch for it, but here is a typical example of an open source Arduino based, standalone (use an app on your phone) goto system And another system, but this links to a PC Wait, there's more Details here Just google "arduino telsecope control"

Its dem dere ay-lee-uns..... their cosmic rays can't get through tin foil hats (sorry couldn't resist - but thanks for sharing)

It would not be possible to take the control board and steppers from an EQ5 and use them in the EQ6. Aside from the physical differences, the firmware (the code inside the microcontrolers) has all the gear ratios etc for the mount they control, and as the two mounts use different worm and gear ratios it would never slew to the correct place if you did manage to replace the steppers with the correct ones (the microstepping of the motors used is also different, so you would need the correct spec motors as well). And before you download the firmware updater application and try uploading the EQ6 firmware to the EQ5 board, it won't work, and the application will report the file is not correct for the board being updated. You would need to reprogram the controllers directly with an edited version of the code. One major factor is that the EQ5 synscan boards of that age use a single controller, where as the EQ6 uses two (one for each axis), with each one requiring a copy of the code burnt into them. There are open source alternatives to the synscan units, based around Arduinos... that may be an alternative. But using the existing controller won't work. Oh and good luck sourcing the steppers. The boards used in HEQ5 and EQ6 boost the 12v to around 30v to run the steppers due to the increased payloads. Lets say for argument sake the motors physically fitted, the internal coils would not handle the increased current draw the larger mount would need, so they would run hot or possibly burn out. Unfortunately being skint and having an interest in telescopes is not a great combination. A replacement EQ6 control board is circa £160. You could ask FLO (sponsors of the forum) if replacement steppers are available, and how much they would cost, but I doubt you would get much change out of £100 for the set. The only good news is that the synscan handset you use with the EQ5 will work with the EQ6 as the the controllers in the handset interrogate the mount to ID which mount its being used on. I did have a few EQ6 boards that I repaired a few months ago. but these went quite quickly. I normally offer a repair on an exchange basis, but a lot of kind SGL members who had already gone out and bought new boards kindly sent their old damaged boards to me for repair, so I had a few surplus. If I get any more faulty ones that can be repaired I'll let you know, but don't hold your breath :-)

Googling LX90 PC control provides a lot of information. It seems that you can use a serial cable between the handset and a PC, with the handset connected to the mount so it relays the commands. As most modern PCs won't have a true serial port you will need a USB to true RS232 serial adapter. On some of the links to other forums there was suggestion of a 505 cable, which might be a propriety cable with the adapter built in. As the cable is using standard serial it can be long enough to have the scope outside and control it from the comfort of your lounge. However the problem you will run into is with other equipment such as cameras, which will all be USB and anything over 3m ideally requires an active cable to boost the signals. Personally I would not advise using anything over 5m.. Most remotely operated setups tend to keep everything local to the mount, including a computer of some kind. Then you simply use wi-fi or a long cat5/6 cable between the two PCs and remote desktop into the PC at the scope.

Nothing is mentioned in the features on FLO's website.. But I did find a reverence to servo motors and encoders on one website, but it just mentioned GTi mount ?

Some mounts are fitted with encoders, which mean drive clutches can be released and the scope manually moved without the handset loosing positioning. However these will need calibrating from a known starting point first time used