malc-c

Excellent news, well done. Now the conspiracy theorists would say that the manufactures of the board knows that a $2 MOSFET is its built in weakness in order to generate sales of replacements costing hundreds of pounds / dollars as a result of Q3 failing / blowing.

care to divulge what resolved the issue..... just in case others have the same issue...

Just googled "PHD2 and ASI Studio" to throw up similar threads - on Cloudy Nights one member with the same issue as reported here was advised to go to the camera's manufactures forum, which he did and got the following reply Prior to this there was suggestions to ensure the latest drivers and Ascom platform was installed. people reported that their cameras also worked fine in Nina, but that was down to Nina and asi studio using the native driver where as Phd2 uses the ascom driver for cameras. Hopefully the admin won't mind if I link to the post on a competitors forum 😉 Read in full here

Save me trawling through the three pages, how are you connecting the camera? - In the screen grabs it shows "on camera" selected, are you using an ST4 cable between the camera and the mount ? - Most of us tend to plug the guide camera directly into the PC via USB and select it from the list of camera options found in PHD2's connect equipment screen. To me it seems having the ASi software running takes back control after the first time PHD manages to establish communications. Testing in bright light is probably the cause of the over exposed camera image in PHD. The exposure must be shorter and you can adjust the slider to reduce the gamma (brightness) of the screen.

I also recommend leaving a gap between the observatory and the two fences to aid maintenance. Plus you may find the mini digger is not able to get close enough to be able to dig a straight trench for the foundations (assuming this is going to be a slab or dwarf wall base).

As most tend to follow the same paths this would suggest they are aircraft. Especially given how close you are to a major airport

Now I can see why the wrong cable got shoved in the wrong hole 🙂

Made a slight difference

My 200P is now effectively a PDS as I replaced the original secondary with a 1/10th wave length Orion Optics secondary the same size as the secondary in a PDS. Other mods include flocking the inside of the tube and I use a Baadder coma corrector. Camera is a modified D400 canon dSLR. Full details of mount etc in my signature

No expert, I was just lucky that replacing the two electrolytic caps worked for me. Other issues have been where the boards power up but there are no communications between handset and mainboard, which are cured by reprogramming two new PICs and swapping them for the originals. You could try removing D1 and then see if the short goes away. The other possibility is the main regulator 2171WU (marked U4). This is responsible for providing the 30+v DC to the stepper drivers. The 7805 mentioned above does indeed provide the 5v TTL voltage. The rest of the 5v line is made up of a couple of filters, and the aforementioned 470uf caps. The Schottky diode D1 is between these two filter circuits. If you get 5vdc on the output of the 7805 (pin 3) then the Diode is good. Detecting shorts often needs a thermal camera, or flux resin, or finger test to see what's getting hot. Sometimes it can be as simple as a small surface mount cap that is shorting to ground.

Not advising you to try this, but I used to get a tingle in my fingers, mainly in the quicks of the nails, especially if I had bitten them (bad habit I know) anytime I had to do maintenance in my old salt water aquarium. I was told to use a multi-meter, set to AC and place one probe in the tank and the other to an earthing point. On doing so it registered around 60v AC ! - It was then a case of powering everything off, then back on one item at a time until the voltage was detected. Turned out to be a cheap pump on the skimmer which was supposedly double insulated and thus no earth. Getting back on topic, I can't speak for EQ8 / EQ6 mounts, but on my HEQ5 the two holes that are used to secure the board to the mount have a plastic insert with a lip that isolates the board from the mount, but then the actual power input is housed separately in a plastic housing, unlike the EQ6 which seems to have it all mounted to a metal plate. With regards to the 13.8v mentioned above, my HEQ5 ran fine on a regulated bench PSU that provided 13.8v DC so I would presume that both the EQ6 and EQ8 will also be OK when run at this voltage. I also agree with comments about Meanwell power units... if you buy genuine PSUs direct from Meanwell, or through authorised outlets such as RS / Digikey etc then they last and are of a high standard. I used a constant voltage (48v 350w) supply to run my DIY aquarium LED lights. These were on 10 hours a day, 365 days a year, for over a decade and the PSU is still as sound as it was the day I got it.

Sorry have to correct you there... You can still have the 33v supply to the motors and the board will still give you the same "no axis" message. The message basically means (as described above) that the handset hasn't received an acknowledgment back from its request to the control board in the mount. The communication protocol is serial, or more correctly TTL serial where the signals levels are 5v. On older synscan mounts that lack a USB-B port, the Tx and Rx lines went directly into the PIC microcontrollers, and as can be seen in the repair thread linked above, placing the incorrect lead into the handset port blows the serial port on the PICs as they can't take 12v. The same can happen on the newer ARM based boards as the handset communications also communicate straight to the serial port on the chip. Power issues will cause the same response as the microcontrollers, be that PIC or ARM devices need to be powered and running, and if the 3.3v or 5v rail on the board isn't there due to a blown component (Q3 seems to be failing on newer boards) in the power supply section of the sysnscan board that provides the 5v and / or 3.3v rails then the board will not be running and the error message will be presented. A lot of people use 13.8v bench PSUs in observatory setups. If your car battery is putting out around 13v under load then that could rule out the battery being the problem, if it's below 12v, even by a few tenths, it could prevent the board form running. I agree that checking the power supply as suggested would be the first thing to do to rule it out. But if you get the same issue after testing with a decent 12v 60w supply that can provide the current as per the specs then contact the retailer and request a warranty replacement.

It's hard to advise as we probably have very different consumer laws here in the UK, which basically means the normal 12 month warranty is not something a retailer can hide behind if something goes faulty in month 13. It basically means that you would expect an item to last for a reasonable amount of time based on the value, which for an EQ6 is certainly more than a year. What happens when the mount is powered up is the handset sends out a request to interrogate the mount it is connected to, by asking for the mount firmware version. With the older PIC microcontroller based boards there was one controller for each axis, so if one failed to respond you would get "No response DEC axis" for example. On newer boards that use the ARM processors the message is typically both axis as the processor failed to respond. Now with the newer boards (that have built in USB ports) a FET (Q3) appears to be a weak spot, which appears to be related to the power distribution on the board, so if the processor isn't running you would get the same response. As the mount is just over a year old I would contact the retailer and ask what the procedure is to return the mount (or just the board and handset if that keeps shipping cost down) for repair or replacement. One other area is to look at the power setup. Possibly disconnect the charger whilst the mount is running. A battery charger is different form a mains power supply adapter, and it could have had some part in this.

Hard to comment as "springyness" is such a technical term that's hard to quantify. If you mean if you lock both clutches there is play in one or both axis then that sounds more like too much backlash in the worm, which you can adjust out. On the other hand you are referring to movement or flexure in the tripod the there is little you can do other then replace the tripod, which I don't recall being an option on that mount. If you can upload a video to youtube and then link to it demonstrating the issue as requested above that would be great

Need to know the sequence of events, had you powered the mount up and then plugged in the handset. Has anything else ever been placed in the handset port such as an EQDir cable, or wifi / bluetooth dongle. Also does the mount have a USB port built in ? - If so then it's fitted with one of the newer ARM microcontrollers and recent posts suggest that a FET blows which then renders the board useless. Post up some further information including answering Gus's question on the mounts condition. and then we can advise further. Naturally if the mount is within its warranty then contact the retailer with a view of having a replacement motorboard sent to you if you are competent enough to replace them, or for the mount to be collected and repaired / replaced at the retailers expense.

I've not read through the book (at 125 pages it's a book IMO !) but there are lots of really nice images of DSO's featured in the book. It does go to show that if you are prepared to target objects when they are less susceptible to field rotation, or with carful cropping of the stacked image field rotation, which is the biggest drawback with Alt/AZ mounts and scopes, can be overcome. I can see plenty of future posts along the lines of "can I use my Dob for astrophotography" being linked to this document.... Nice work

Yup... that's exactly my point, even when a camera is attached to the scope. The only difference was when I showed some friends why I used a camera rather then looking through the eyepiece. Having been asked the question I pointed the scope at the Orion nebula with a wide field eyepiece. They were a little disappointed at the greenish smudge around a few bright stars grouped together... I removed the eyepiece set up the D400 and took a 60 second exposure... the resulting image on the screen was more in keeping with their expectation as it looked the same as images in a book. But then the Nebular is possibly the brightest DSO, so i pointed the scope at Bodes Galaxy, started guiding and took a 5 minute exposure - which being a single sub looked nothing like the images in the book, and under the relatively decent night sky for a town location, could hardly see anything when viewed visually !

That's so true. But I also think there is a lot of expectation with people getting into the hobby when they see images on the web, in these forums and in books and magazines. I remember my first attempt taking images of one of the bright galaxies with my 200P / EQ5 and D400..... I was really disappointed with the results. It looked nothing like the images others had posted... then you realise that they were using dedicated astro cameras which go far beyond the ability of my humble DSLR. As mentioned elsewhere, having posted the question on here I upgraded to an HEQ5 mount, and I shoved it in an observatory. I still kept the Dslr as most of the decent cooled entry level cameras at the time were more than what I had spend on the entire mount/scope combo. Some time ago I asked a friend of mine if given the opportunity to image to his current standards (he has had several images on the cover of Astronomy Now) if he would have gone the same route where he kept upgrading, or dived straight in. He couldn't give me a direct answer, because for each occasion he discovered the limitations of each item, be that the mount, scope or camera, and it was educational. It was good grounding to learn the imaging processes and put him in a great position for the equipment he now has ( 10" Ritchey-Chretien on an EQ8 with a QSI 683 ). Equally we have a member in our society who has had his Jupiter and Saturn images published in mainstream media and TV, and they put some of the 1970's images taken by Voyager to shame !... but again, he's got a 14" CAT on an very expensive and precise mount. People seem to think that they will get the same using the latest camera in their iPhone when held up to the eyepiece of a £200 scope.

Well if the OP is able to follow Gary Honis instruction to convert an MS webcam for use with a telescope they can have a partially stripped MS HD Lifecam I have on my desk for the cost of the postage. If he / she would care to drop me a PM we can go from there The above was taken using stacked Barlows and my 200P, with the result video processed using free software. The camera is fully functional, just needs the final stage to convert it to fit the focuser

Well if it works for you that's all that matters

I see your logic, but I was under the impression that the OPTO isolator inputs would be isolated from the board LV supply used to energise the relays. So all you do is drive the LED in the OPTO device to activate the relay coil, which could be supplied by its own 9v or 12v depending on the voltage rating of the relays. In my projects I've used logic high to drive the OPTO isolators using GND and GPIO at 5v, with the OPTO isolators output switching a separate DC supply for the relay coil, (or more directly the base of a transistor / FET which then passes current through the relay coil when energised. )

Any reason why the GND of the relay board inputs is not connected with the GND on the Arduino, especially as it looks like the board has opto isolation to keep the control side of things isolated from the switching side

As can be seen from the posts above getting hold of anyone connected with the company had proved difficult, and to prevent more people being conned out of their deposits the website was shut down by the hosting company, presumably to prevent more people being conned out of their deposits. I would guess that the construction is very modular, with frames screwed or bolted together, so it shouldn't be too difficult to dismantle and move.

This will be the issue. IMO the OP's EQ3 mount is not up to the job for anything other than using a webcam to record images of the moon which can then be processed in software. Hanging even a Canon D400 off the side of the scope on that mount will require some precise balancing and still weather conditions. The £125 for a battery powered motor drive, which, on reading the spec, is to aid visual observing with no mention of its suitability for imaging. My advice would be to look at getting a MS Lifecam webcam which can easily be modified / adapted to replace a standard eyepiece. These can be picked up for around £30 - £50. Google will throw up details of the camera and some sites give in depth info and examples. Whilst this site the author used an C8 (so the OP shouldn't expect to get quite the same results) it still gives details of the camera specification and how to modify it. If the OP really wants to dip their toe deeper into imaging then they should look at upgrading the mount, to something like a Skywatcher EQ3 or better still the EQ5 with the synscan goto system. They can then use a second hand canon Dslr with their scope and have the mount computer controlled. But that will require quite a substantial investment.

Ok... how the hell did you sneak onboard the Orion capsule with your camera to get those amazing shots !! The second and last images impressed me the most.... I wonder what the resolution is in that image, in terms of the diameter of the smallest crater