malc-c

Just googling that brand and they retail between £484 and £620, and I'm guessing they are mass produced on a CNC.... If you focused on the fact yours are hand crafted and offer selected woods then I'm sure the calibre of person who is looking at spending £500 on a tripod, may well pay that little bit more for a one off hand crafted one.

I'm running my observatory on an old dual core Pentium, 8GB of old DDR3 RAM, a 500GB mechanical drive and windows 10 (but ran windows 7 for years). Given its age it is way off the requirements for win11 - But it does the job I need it to do. Data is stored to a NAS drive and I process on my main machine - a 1st gen Ryzen 5 based machine, 16GB DDR4, fast NVMe SSD, and windows 10. Being 1st gen Ryzen it to doesn't pass the upgrade requirements, at lease not without messing about with the installer which is well documented on the net. Being my daily driver I read emails, post on forums, edit the odd 4K video but mostly browse the net, hardly anything requiring the "advantages" of upgrading to win11. My point is that just because the latest firmware, operating system, or drivers are released, it doesn't mean that there is a need to update the installation if your existing installation or hardware is otherwise running OK. At least it's not Apple Owners mentality... Apple add a 5th camera to the iphone, everyone replaces their recently purchased iphone 12, 13 or whatever with the latest one just so they can say they have the latest model, even though the previous model did everything then needed up to that point.......and they will probably never use that new 5th camera (my eldest daughter being a prime example !)

Case of RTFM.... 😄 OVL website

A friend of mine recently replaced his old Dell laptop with a barebones NUC pc AsRock 4x4 BOX-RV1000V with a 2.4GHz AMD Ryzen CPU and 16Gb of memory. It will take an M.2 PCIe card as a system disc and has both USB2 and USB3 ports. It was purchased as a means to remote control his EQ8 and other equipment in his observatory, but also be powerful enough to run a live zoom meeting from the observatory... He added hard drives etc and he's been pleased as punch with its performance

I can see a small side line business here.... Very professionally made - well done

Excellent feedback - makes things clear I use EQMOD and Cartes du Ciel with PHD2 and it all works for me - I'm not sure about the relationship between Stelarium Stelarimumscope and EQMOD, so can't really advise on how that works, but having two ASCOM interfaces between the scope and the other software may be adding to the issues

Not sure why you are using stellariumscope - doesn't the latest version of Stellarium now have scope control built in ? Remove the ST4 cable and connect the camera via USB. You've already mentioned that the planetarium software can see and connect to the scope, so the presumption is that you are either using an EQDIR cable to connect the mount direct to the PC, or using a serial cable via the handset in PC-Direct mode. If that is the case then there is no need to use ST4, and use the USB connection for the camera. I don't use SterlariumScope, so can't advise on how to set up pulse guiding within it, but in EQMOD there are two sliders than need to be adjusted to x0.9 for the pulse rate in order to make these mounts move enough for PHD2 to detect the star movement. You also need to ensure the ASCOM platform is installed and up to date.

If that didn't work, take a look at the 1N4148 diodes on the TX lines of the PICs - If replacing those (see previous posts in this thread where I replaced some using through hole parts) you still get the "no response" message on the handset, or a time out using EQMOD and a EQDIR cable then yes I would agree, the UARTs on one or both 16F886's will have been blown, and replacing them with a reprogrammed PIC would be my recommendation. Hopefully you'll have more luck than I have at sourcing replacements at non inflated prices due to the global shortage. I had to resort to contacting Microchip in order to get the last pair of controllers, which took 6 weeks to get to me from the UK. The RJ11 port is a normal standard serial (RS232) port. The TX/RX pins are given as Note that you will need a standard RS232 to USB adapter if your computer lacks an old style serial port - If you use a 5v TTL serial to USB adapter it may not work as the handset is expecting +/- 12v rather than 0-5 signals A little googling found the pinouts for the Skywatcher serial cable that normally gets shipped with the mount More info

Just read your unedited post - No deleting the EQMOD INI file should not affect your camera in NENA. Not sure what's going on with your system, but it sounds like there are some underlaying gremlins

You beet me too it... I was thinking the same thing... it sounds more like a power issue than a comms issue, especially as an EQDIR cable is being used. One other alternative for the OP is to download ASCOM and EQMOD and see if the same drop out in communications between PC and mount occur

No worries... just gobsmacked the resync didn't work.... Apologies if my directions seemed patronising... not intentional, just stems from writing IT procedures back in the day !

I have no idea. I guessed Local Sidereal Time ?? - I see Chris's supply - My comments when he told me something like that in the past was if the figures are irrelevant then why display them as it can lead to confusion as most people understand the 90 degree / 0 degree Alt /AZ stuff, and it can be confusing when the digits say otherwise.

Just seen your post on the EQMOD group too .... 👍 RA will change - the minutes and seconds match LST. It changes when the RA axis is rotated Not sure why the resync option didn't work... but at least you got there in the end !

If you don't get on with EQMOD then the only alternative is GSServer It's a more up to date version of EQMOD written in C++ but works in the same way

And yes EQMOD is clunky. It was (is ?) written in Visual Basic around 15 years ago... But back then the only alternative was to use the handset.

Close down NINA etc so you have nothing running (worth checking the task bar to make sure NINA or anything else astro is running in the background. From the windows Start button navigate > All programs > EQMOD > EQASCOM RIGHT CLICK on Toolbox and select "Run as Administrator Toolbox will launch. In the setup section select EQASCOM from the dropdown options With the mount powered up, and in the default HOME position click the TEST CONNECTION button EQMOD will launch and connect to the mount Click the spanner to expand the window With the park status showing NOT PARKED, and with PARK To Home Position in the dropdown options click the resync button A pop up will appear asking for confirmation the mount is in the selected park position but not parked Click OK The mount position info should reset to 90:00:00 and 00:00:00 On the toolbox select DISCONNECT EQMOD will close, and you can then close the Toolbox utility

Glad to hear you are OK.

I still have a flashed SPC880 > 900 I did try selling it a year or so ago for the price they went for before becoming like hens teeth and had no takers.... I just hand on to it for nostalgia reasons these days

Yup that's the one This should clear what EQMOD thinks it's directed to, and reset itself to the default for the home position. Just a word of warming, clearing the INI file will reset everything other than alignment data and gamepad data to factory default, so you will need to set the site location up again, and confirm which mount is being used, so its a pain in the ** Try running EQMOD via the toolbox as administrator and try resyncing first again before deleting the INI file

So you're to blame then 😁

You will need to need to re-enter the the site information following a deletion of the INI file

So you can't resync the encoders ? - I must admit I just tried that using the toolbox set to simulator on this PC and that worked without issue. Try clearing the the INI data. Launch the toolbox from the EQMOD > EQASCOM folder Under the configuration files select EQASCOM in the first drop down list, and General in the second Click BACKUP to be safe Then click Delete Close and restart EQMOD with the scope in the default home position

No expert here, but I presume you have the gear set up in the following way? USB lead form laptop to guide camera ST4 cable from camera to ST4 port on the enhanced motor controller That old thread referred to the standard controller which was modified to use that ST4 adapter, so the adapter shouldn't be needed. Basically ST4 is a system where it mimicked the pressing of the directional buttons. So if PHD2 sees the mount drifting, it sends a command to the camera to move the mount in the opposite direction. The camera then connects which ever wire on the ST4 cable that corresponds to that direction to the internal 5v supply and the control box sees that as a button press and advances the mount. Naturally it's a little more complicated than that, but in essence that's how it functions. You have to tell PHD2 that you are using on camera setup, otherwise it will look for an EQDIR type setup where the mount is controlled independently.

No different to using an off axis guider which would be at 90 degrees to the main focal path in a refractor... Give it a go and report back how it performed

Before you go and try deleting the INI file that stores its settings, try the following - I can't confirm if they work as I would need an mount to be out of sync. Place the mount in the default home position. Click unpark.... but don't move the scope Under the Park/unpark section, with the "Park to home position" selected in the drop down options, click the resync encoders button to the right. You'll get a pop up asking you to confirm the position etc, but click OK to reset the encoders. EQMOD should then display +90:00:00 DEC, 00:00:00 AZ, with the ALT matching the latitude of the mount.