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If you push the outer sleeve of the cable back through the grommet and then use a small cable tie pulled tight to prevent the sleeve and cable from pulling back. If the tie is pulled tight enough it won't came off or work lose

😂 🤔

In that case then I can see the logic in wanting to automate the parking of the scope prior to closing the roof. Googling "observatory automation" threw up this site They also list a lot of PDFs that might help you plan the wiring etc. They also seem to use Arduinos and offer ASCOM software that might help integrate with NINA or other software ?

Can we get this thread back on track. The OP asked for opinions on two scopes which they wanted to use for viewing both planetary and deep sky objects. They have since opted for the SW Explorer 150P, which I'm sure will suit their needs until such a time where they may want to invest more time, energy or money and upgrade to something else. At that time they may have the inclination to try the DIY route and build their own scope (bearing in mind that DIY is not just about grinding a mirror). We are spoilt for choice these days, with several manufactures offering a multitude of telescopes at various price points to cater for both the casual beginner, through to serious amateur. Often this can make choosing a suitable model difficult as there is so much to choose from. Regardless of the model chosen, modern manufacturing techniques mean that the optics are finished to a degree that enables the scope to perform within its expectations. I think that most of us lack the ability to visually detect if a mirror is finished to 1/10th wave or 1/4th wave, and will be happy with a commercial scope so long as the scope produces a decent crisp image.

I'm struggling a little to understand the need for this feature unless the roof is motorised and you want to have a system that monitors the sky and if it rains or becomes overcast can park the scope into the custom park position and then close the roof If the roof isn't powered and has to be manually closed then it means you will be in the observatory anyway to close the roof, so it's a simple click of the mouse to have EQMOD (or NINA or GreenSwamp Server) to park the scope to its custom position and then manually close the roof is all that is required. It's just a case of being careful and getting into the habit of opening the observatory before unparking the scope

When I designed my observatory I made sure there was enough headroom to place the scope in the normal home position with the roof closed, but need to park it in a custom position to allow the roof to be moved. EQMod does allow you to set custom parking positions, but how you would be able to tie the two functions and logic of "if roof switch is closed then disable EQmod from running" I have no idea. Whilst you may be able to use a switch to turn off mount power until the roof has been opened, there may be nothing to prevent the roof being closed whilst the scope is in the way.

Maybe a bit late to the party, but selling something second hand is tricky. It depends on a lot of factors, such as how rare the item is, how sought after the item is, and then its age and condition. For me when buying anything that is mainstream I tend to be prepared to pay around 70% of the average retail price provided it's in A1 condition and (if applicable) comes in original packaging. I then start deducting percentages for age, damaged or missing boxes, the condition of the item (ie are all the parts it's meant to have included) and if it works. But as mentioned, it depends how sought after an item is, and its not unheard of items being sold second hand for more than originally purchased (worst cases are known as scalping - just ask any dedicated PC gamer who wanted the latest graphics card !). It also depends on how much you as a seller is prepared to let things go for. When I pulled out of tropical marine hobby I sold corals that you would expect to pay hundreds of pounds for in the shops for £20 or £30 each... naturally it generated a lot of interest and achieved the goal of clearing the tank so I could shut it down. I still made a few hundred pounds in the end, so was happy enough.

Yes you can use barlow lenses to give effectively double or triple the focal length. I've stacked two 2x barlows with my 200P and taken an image of Jupiter. The result was OKish, but the resulting 200mm F20 combination the image was quite dark and needed stretching a lot in post processing. Part of the problem is that every time the light from the target passes through glass it degredates the image a little. So in order to compensate that you really need high quality barlow lenses which are not cheap because they use better quality optically graded glass that gives less chromatic aberration.

There are lots of similar posts on the forum so its worth browsing or searching and reading up on suggestions etc they cover. The problem is that you will never find a scope that covers all the bases. To resolve more detail in the planets you need aperture and focal length, this is why a lot of the images that grace the covers of magazines that have been taken by armatures have used 12" or 14" F20 Cassagrain or Mac's. When it comes to faint deep sky objects the opposite is true. A large aperture but fast scope with a short focal ratio of F5 or less. Out of the two you list I would opt for the Explorer 150. If you are considering connecting a camera at a later stage then the PDS version would be a better bet. Place this on an EQ3 or better still an EQ5 and you'll have a rig that will cover for any future ventures into astrophotography should you later wish to go down the road. The EQ5 will have a greater load carrying capacity, and provide a slightly more stable platform for the scope. EQ mounts are not that daunting. They are basically an Alt/Az mount tilted to match the latitude from where you are observing. Granted the eyepiece can get into some funny positions when using a Newtonian reflector, but there are ways to overcome that without upsetting the balance of the scope. Anyway, that's my 2p worth....

That does seem to be the next most common problem.... It is sad that Synta forces people in to a position where they have to pay out a lot of money for a complete new handset for the sake of an LCD module that probably cost just a few $$. It would be nice if they offered spare parts at reasonable prices for the most common problems. But I guess they wouldn't make money then. I mean look at how may motor boards have been fixed by SGL members on this forum for a fraction of the cost of a replacement board or more as a lot of the Dobsonian owners would have needed a complete new base as the new boards are different. And that is just one forum, there are similar threads running on forums in Europe and the US. The problem with the display is that it is proprietary. It may well have a common driver/controller, but the physical shape and size means that it can't be replaced easily with an off the shelf 16x2 LCD display. If I ever do get a reply from Synta for the cost and process to obtain them then I will post details here

Just to update this thread with another success. @younghome contacted me via PM for some assistance and over the past few weeks has obtained, programmed and replaced the faulty PICs on the two MC004 boards. There were a couple of issues that had both me and @ozarchie scratching our heads, but after the second attempt the handset finally communicated with the two boards and the mount is now working fine mc004.mp4

That's interesting, and something must had changed in either the camera firmware or Sharpcap for them both to work together. As I mentioned, this was in the days when both options had just emerged onto the market.

Interesting thread... When Polemaster came out I was lucky enough to be loaned one for my HEQ5 from Modern Astronomy to review for our society newsletter. My mount is fixed in an observatory so once set PA shouldn't need adjusting. I like the logic that having a camera in the RA axis should give the best accuracy of PA. For ages after the review kit was returned I got various guiding results, and a lot of people suggested my PA was out. I would always disagree as I had used what was then claimed to be the most accurate method of PA. Prior to this I had polar aligned using EQMOD which would rotate the mount to the correct polar hour, but then required some manual input which given the tolerance of the polar scope could be hit an miss, but my guiding errors were normally better than after I used Polemaster. When Sharpcap released the version with their PA tool I tried that. But this time I used my finder guider. My work flow was to centre a bright star in the main scope, and then centre the same star in the finder. I then ran through the alignment routine until I received an "excellent" result. However when I first ran the steps to calculate the initial alignment after the mount had been aligned with Polemaster it was way out (as Adreneline encountered). My guiding graphs after PA'ing with Sharpcap were better, but I felt could be improved upon. I began questioning myself over using the guidescope as it's probably around 5-8" off the same axis of the main scope. But then any cone angle formed using this would have been calculated as the software (as far as I recall) had me rotate the scope through 180 degrees E to W. My thoughts were that in reality the angle over the millions of miles to the targets we are imaging would be so insignificant it's hardly worth worrying about. Having close PA is better than having hardly any at all, and certainly miles better than using the polar scope and procedure in the SW manual ! I guess the best option would be to use a Polemaster camera fitted to the mount, but use the Sharpcap software.... something that apparently isn't possible as the camera is locked into to the software thus preventing it being used with any other applications.

My guess is that it was a combination of both. Having the correct driver and a clean slate to install it on 🙂 Glad to hear you're back up and running

Mounts that use the Prolific chipset via a USB port need the comport set to 115200 baud speed. You may also find that the chipset is different to the one used in the EQDIR cable. I'm also guessing that the com port gets registered and shown in device manager without any yellow exclamation marks? Similar issues have been resolved by clearing all the stored serial ports in Device Manager. Under the VIEW option in device manager select "show hidden devices" All stored ports will be listed with a lighter grey icon. You could select and right click on each one and select "remove device" to give you a clean slate, or you could just remove all Prolific entries. Then install the driver for the Prolific driver and connect the mount. This would then be the only prolific comport on the computer. Right click and set the speed to 115200 baud and run EQASCOM toolbox and see if you can connect to the mount.

The OP replaced his faulty board and is now back up and running.....

bit more info could help. How are you connecting the scope to the computer? What OS are you running (windows/ linux)? Have you installed the required driver (most SW mounts that have USB need the Prolific chipset driver installed under windows)? If running windows and have installed the driver is it being registered in Device manager and if so have you tried setting the baud rate to 115200? Have you installed the ASCOM platform for windows, or INDI etc for Linux? Are you using EQMOD under windows or GSS? Is this issue just with this item of software, or is it the same with any planetarium application such as Cartes du Ciel. Can you elaborate on "I have put in all settings into the laptop and when I turned it off the laptop and turn back on all the settings disappeared"

I must admit the instructions are a work of art with very clear and animated drawings. The actual drive is geared, its not direct from the motor. Personally I like the design. By the time all the profile sections are screwed together the structure seems sturdy enough. Seeing this is an open source project I'm sure the design would have changed to include extra bracing or plating as suggest in post above it it was deemed necessary. There are quite a few commercial mounts costing £2500 upwards that look less sturdy. But adding some nice CF plate to enclose the frames making it less open frame would look nice, and could add more stiffness if required

Whats interesting is that the two corrupted segments of the LCD are displaying the same pattern of pixels., however I doubt that corrupted segments of a LCD would be the cause of the problem. The fact you also updated the firmware and that went OK would suggest the processor(s) is (are) running OK , but without knowing how exactly the firmware runs when the fault happens it's impossible to tell if the issue is a result of a hardware issue with the motor drive chips. Does the mount track, or does the mount advanced at the default speed when the directional buttons are pressed ? How old is the scope / mount / handset ?

Ascom can be downloaded from the link Chris has provided. How are you connecting the EQ6 to the computer. If it's using a USB cable then the driver you require for the com port is a Prolific drive which you can find here. If you are using an FTDI based EQDIR cable then windows should have installed the driver (or left it unchanged) as part of the update.

Gentlemen, please. Normally it's only the ladies that quibble over the extra inch !! From memory (seeing my nephew is now 18) it was more than likely the 76mm version as the tube had all the writing on it. Can't recall if it was the SW or Celestron variant. We struggled to get any detail on the disk of Jupiter, but you could see the larger moons that were on view at the time.

When my nephew was around 10 or 11 his dad asked me for some suggestions as his son was interested in astronomy, partly because he has seen my 200P in the observatory, but also as they were doing Astronomy projects at school, and was considering a telescope as a Christmas present. He was looking around the £100 mark and didn't want something that was really a glorified toy and would be a waste of money. He ended up with a Heritage model, with a 3" mirror, liking the idea if can sit on a table and be easy to use. Shortly after Christmas we arranged a small star party so he could try the scope out. It was a moonless night, but Jupiter was bright in the SW, so that was the first target. It showed up nicely as a small disk with a couple of pin pricks of light either side. My nephew was disappointed, expecting to see a similar image that I get with the 200P and a couple of stacked barlows. We tried a few other targets, but he found it hard to look at a chart and star hop, becoming more and more frustrated as the night went on. So I let him use my old Tasco 8 x 40 binoculars. He got all excited the moment he first used them, commenting on just how many stars he could see through them. He managed to hold them well, and being able to locate a bright star or constellation naked eye and then just raise the binos and see what it contained kept him amused for the rest of the night. Granted he probably saw less detail of the Orion Nebula through them than he did with the small scope, but that didn't seem to matter to him. Needless to say the scope didn't see much use after that, but he did get a pair of binoculars for his birthday that came around a few months later. Now I can't say that this experience will be the same for everyone. We are all individuals and it may be that the OP's child is more patient and has less expectations.

Many thanks for the kind words and I was gutted that we couldn't get the board to respond, despite trying all the normal things that worked with in the past with other boards. At least one positive thing has come about from this experience, in that it's given you confidence in dismantling and refitting things. Pleased to hear the new replacement motorboard is working as it should.

Not sure if it will do anything, but I know Chris often suggests using the Toolbox to backup and then delete the configuration files (general and alignment data) and then see if that clears the error - Maybe worth a try

Firmware and windows based application to perform the update can be found on Skywatchers website here. The typical method of updating is as follows: The mount needs to be connected to a windows PC, either by an USB cable, and EQDIR cable (that replaces the handset) or a serial cable to the handset which needs to be in PC-DIRECT mode. Whichever method is used the computer will see the connection as a serial port (If this mount is set up in an observatory chances are you will already have the connection and be using a PC for mount control ?). With the mount powered up launch the loader software and have it find the com port or manually select it. The software will communicate with the mount and return the current firmware version. You then navigate to the firmware you juts downloaded and click the update button. I don't have your mount, so can't comment if the version of firmware on the website resolves any issues you have