malc-c

If you can't re-connect to the mount by selecting the ID then have a read of this thread In the end the user had to purchase a wi-fi dongle as the in built wifi module would simply not function despite resetting and rebooting the firmware in the mount.

Steve, There have been several threads discussing HOUK - Some waiting almost a year after ordering for their observatory to be delivered and erected. These threads also discuss the lack of communication which seems to be the main bone of contention as most customers are patient and willing to wait for the end product. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/373850-are-home-observatory-uk-still-in-business/ https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/381735-home-observatories-uk/?tab=comments#comment-4127799 Most of the threads got locked as it's against forum policy to "bash" a supplier... But I believe one customer was considering court action to recover his substantial deposit.

Its a 5" f5 reflector with a spherical mirror that retails at just over £200. The quality of the optics at this price point, won't give you the resolution you need. Adding barlow lenses to increase the focal lengths really needs a larger aperture scope as the resolution decreases and the image is darker as the magnification increases, so you loose detail. Regretfully there is not a lot you can do with the equipment mentioned to improve things. Niks suggestion may help, but IMO your scope is not ideally suited to planetary work.

The OP had a faulty mount, which was returned under warranty

That's part of the issue... If you are mobile, and setting up each time, then you'll get the use out of it... If you have a fixed setup in an observatory, then for something that may be used once or twice, then its not really a cost effective solution.

Polemaster camera connects to a PC / Laptop running the dedicated software that seems to be hardware keyed to the polemaster camera firmware. It basically performs a plate solving process in real time, but with patter matching of concentric rings to confirm the alignment. Personally I wasn't impressed when I reviewed one of the original products when it came out. The package was expensive, and the software was fiddly to use. My scope is permanently mounted in an observatory which made the price tag even more hard to swallow as once PA is set you don't really need to use the camera again unless the mount is knocked. I've since used Sharpcap and found that my PA set by Polemaster was quite a bit out, and since resetting with Sharpcap the goto accuracy and tracking has been a lot better. Based on my experience I would recommend the £12 for a years licence for Sharpcap Pro and use their excellent tool. Its far easier to use

Yeah, thinking about it logically, DEC would be small pulses to maintain the position, remaining stationary in between... Well the simple proof would be if the spike no longer appears once any of the three items have been swapped...

Steve, it depends on the software developer.... Currently there are two main interfaces for telescope control when it comes to Skywatcher mounts (and again we're speculating here as the OP is being secretive about the equipment and all this may be irrelevent). EQMD and GSServer. The development team of both products have always been flexible and added functionality to these products, even if it only benefited the minority or single user. For example, a decade back when I was experimenting with converting an HEQ5 to belt drive (long before Rowan Astro came on the scene) Chris at EQMOD added the option for custom gear settings for 3:1, 4:1 and 5:1 gearing ratios, as it was impossible to get off the shelf pulleys to match the factory set ratio. The guys at GSS server later added this when I started playing with that as an alternative to EQMOD, even though I was probably the only guy wishing to have that functionality. GSS server had its own operational quirkiness that meant I went back to EQMOD for my choice of telescope control, but that is another story. In my case the changes didn't really have any safety issues.. If the request was to remove a safety feature, or modify something that could result in someone else with a standard set up driving the scope into the mount then I can see why developers may be reluctant to make those changes...

My logic was that any spike caused by the pulley would show up on his PHD trace, but on the DEC axis rather than RA ??

I seem to recall suggesting the issue might be with the motor pulley in your other post Now you mention that this became noticeable when you fitted the Rowan kit, so my best hunch would be that the machining of the motor pulley is slightly off. The simple way to confirm this is to swap items. Start with the two belts. Remove the belt from the RA and place it on the DEC and vice versa. If that makes no difference then swap the two 9t pulleys. If that makes no difference, then just swap the steppers... If the 120s pulses migrate to the DEC axis then this confirms the cause. If after swapping the steppers, belts and the pulleys the spike is still percent then the issue may be down to the controller board...but it would be very strange for the controller to glitch on the RA at 120 sec intervals, suggesting to me that this is more mechanical rather than electrical.

Again, without knowing the equipment people may struggle making suggestions, and could be wasting yours and their time. For example I could spout on about EQMOD being an ASCOM compliant "driver" for SW/Orion mounts with configurable limits, and options to chose an auto Meridian flip or not... but if your hardware isn't supported by EQASCOM/EQMOD then it's of no use to you whatso ever... I confess I'm not interested in the depths and complexities of how ASCOM communicates between applications, so long as my planetarium application, camera control application, PHD2 and EQMOD all talk to each other and work, then for me that's all I need to know

You've been very cagey not naming names of the equipment you have and the software you are using, so it's hard to comment. I do know that software such as EQMOD does allow you to remove limits and disable a flip, but you mention a commercial controller which I'm guessing doesn't run windows.... I'm also intrigued how you have a pier that makes it impossible for a scope to strike it... Any mount in a weights up surely has a risk of having the scope strike the pier ?

Before I set my scope up in the observatory I placed washers into the patio on which the tripod legs sat. To get close to the initial polar alignment position I used a compass to find North, and then using a 4' strip of wood parallel to the needle made a chalk mark so I had a line running North South. I placed the North facing leg of the tripod on this line, and then placed the strip of wood against the other two legs, on the ground, and used a set square and tape measure to place them evenly and squarely either side of the line. I then used a permeant marker and drew round the foot of each leg where is sat on the patio. This left me with tree circles. I then used a masonry drill, three 1" stainless steel washers, and stainless steel screws and fixed the washers centrally in these circles. The first night out I placed the tripod with each leg on its washer and polar aligned the mount. Now magnetic North and true North are not the same, but I found for setting up the mount it was close enough and well within the adjustment of azimuth bolts. I would still polar align each time I went out, but it would be very quick as the mount was already in a very close proximity to being aligned. An alternative to using a compass is to use a stick that is set perfectly vertical, and let it cast a shadow at exactly midday GMT (you can be exact at 8 minutes past, but in the scheme of things its negligible) and then scribe the line using the shadow as a reference, and then repeat the process above to square off the other two legs. Hope that helps

Just read Stuarts Post a touch of Deja vu

Stu, this seems to be a common issue for some reason or another same here

Full change log details of NINA can be found here - maybe this new positioning check is documented there ?

I have an HEQ5 permanently set up in an observatory, and did a review of the Polmaster (I presume that is what you are referring to by QHY Polarscope ?) when it came out, and whilst it was a nice (expensive) bit of kit it seemed to work OK. However I recently tried the excellent utility in Sharpcap software. This resulted in detecting the mount was quite a bit out, which was confusing as it being permanently set up shouldn't have moved and I don't recall bumping the mount enough to displace it. But the resulting gotos after I had fine tuned the PA were very close and well within the field of view of the canon D400 attached to the 200P. I would suggest paying the £15 or so for a 12 mount licence for Sharp Cap and see if using that to Polar Align the mount makes any difference. If the targets still appear to be 10-15 degrees out (east or west) then this would suggest that the handset is somehow getting confused with BST and UT.... Steve's tip about releasing clutches and manually centre the target and then lock the clutches and see if the next target is within the FOV of the eyepiece / camera is a good one.

Bit late to the party, but just wanted to clarify a few things that may help the OP. Yes the mounts use the serial format to send the skywatcher protocol between the handset and the mount. However it's TTL serial and not true serial. If you use a true standard USB to Serial adapter to connect a serial cable to the mount you will blow the motor board. An EQDIR cable is a serial to USB cable, but operates at TTL levels, ie 5v. Therefore if you want to have a direct connection between the PC and the mount get a dedicated EQDIR cable from FLO or RVO (other retailers are also available ) The alternative is to use a standard A-B USB cable of less than 5m and connect the PC to the USB port on the handset. Then set the handset to PC-DIRECT mode. This basically makes the handset act like a TTL serial adapter and will pass through the commands from EQMOD or GSServer to move the mount Both options will come up in Windows Device Manager as com ports. The normal default is 9600 baud (the speed the data is transmitted and received at), but its worth checking the properties to confirm. From the start menu select ALL PROGRAMS > EQMOD > EQASCOM > TOOLBOX and when the application launches, with EQASCOM selected in the dropdown list select driver setup - This launches the configuration panel for EQMOD. Ensure the port settings match that of the port in Device Manager. Here you can also enter the other parameters including the long and latitude of the site, and other options. Click OK and then click TEST CONNECT - this will launch EQMOD and if all is well will establish connection to the mount. Hope that helps

and all with built in conservatory Observatory

Peter, I agree, the DEC is 180 degrees out. In the PDF the DIN socket is at the front of the mount, pointing Northwards, where in the first image of the OP the DIN is pointing towards the ground

I've been comparing the images with those on retailers sites and it would seem that the DEC could be in the correct position. In your image the scope is facing left and the DIN sockets are on the far side, which corresponds to the images on FLO's site where the scope is facing right and the DIN sockets are on the side facing the camera. But it would be worth checking. Its been a while since I set up the handset but I seem to remember that the date information needs to be entered in US format, ie mm/dd/yyyy

I would have thought that a camera costing around £2000 or more would have some form of protection built into the circuitry against over voltage / current and possibly reverse polarity (the latter can be achieved using a simple bridge rectifier / four diodes, so not complicated). If its failing to power up and you have 12v (or there about) coming out of the power block and its under warranty then contact the retailer the camera was purchased from with a view of having the camera inspected and repaired under warranty

Nice image. You've discovered the dark science is more deep than just taking the images. This is where a lot of people (myself included) fall and end up getting disappointed and disheartened by the end results. The learning curve for the software tools, and the methods to pull the data that is in the stacked images (which we often can't see) is a dark art. I remember taking 30 or so images of a galaxy and being frustrated at my attempts to make it look anything half way decent and giving up, only for a friend who is more experienced in this field, take the lights / darks etc and present me with the image I wanted. The data was all there, but just beyond my ability at the time to pull it out. Personally I think you have cracked it

Steve, this is an amazing turn-around. Fantastic news. FLO are a main stockist for ZWO, maybe it's worth dropping them a mail to see if they can offer any advice on repair.

It depends on the design of the hub. The cheaper ones simply take the 5v and GND coming in, be that from the USB socket or the 5v power plug, and place it across the 5v and GND pins of the outgoing sockets, with the aid of a few current limiting components (the standard is 100mA for USB 2 and 150mA USB 3). But it's not the current that killed the devices it was voltage. The 12v that was applied to the hubs power socket got fed through to all the connecting devices (and probably blew the hub in the process) not a high current draw. If Steve had left the hubs power lead unplugged he would have been OK (sorry to rub salt in it Steve), and just had the USB leads connected the 5v from each USB lead would have been fine. From my dissecting of some hubs, the more expensive ones tend to have more isolation between the 5v USB lines and the power out... but even then, unless the hub has its own built in regulation, shoving in more than 100% of its nominal voltage is gonna hurt