malc-c

Updating firmware on any device is dependent on what that device is used for. For example a graphic card or computer BIOS may be more critical than a SW mount as there may be security issue. Normally the SW firmware is updated to cater for a new device that wasn't around at the time the original firmware was produced, such as the wifi adaptor. Basically if the mount is working and you have no plans to use wifi dongles or such then there is no real need to update the firmware. If on the othrehand the mount isn't performing (possibly due to a bug in the code) then updating the firmware would be the first thing to try to resolve that issue. Most revisions of firmware list what has been fixed or added so you can see if updating firmware will resolve any issue you have.

It's a shame you hadn't read this thread https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/351363-any-ideas-on-repairing-a-slightly-blown-motor-board/ Repaired around five boards now !

I've only had one dealing with Orion Optics back in 2013. I purchased a secondary mirror to "upgrade" my 200p to 200pds spec... The supplied one of their 1/10th wavelength mirrors, and mounted it to the block in the correct location to aid fitting to the spider. From memory I don't think I had any issue with the order, or the delivery. The new mirror resolved my issue with the stock 200p secondary (which was well documented on here) and I'm pleased with the results.

Hi John, welcome to the forum. The issue of Prolific drivers under windows has been well documented, even as far back as Windows 7. If you are looking at using a PC to connect to the mount look at using an EQDIR cable, around £35 from FLO. It would remove using the handset from the equation and tends to be more reliable to install. For those who might come across this thread in the future, maybe include the link to the driver application you used that identified and downloaded the right driver that resolved your issue

Yeah, they already had the CNC machining ability, saw that there was a marketplace and the rest is history. The main disadvantage was in order to maintain the stock ratio the motor pulley would separate. Rowan CNC'd the motor pulley from a single bar of ali and then added the tension wheel to provide more contact with the belt - Neat adaptation, so much so that SW now fit belt drives to most of their high end mount.

On the HEQ5... yeah, more or less. Guys had already managed to convert the EQ6 to belt drive, and the HEQ5 is a lot simpler as the gear train is exposed once the cover is off and unlike the EQ6 doesn't require the dismantling of the mount. I started messing about with boring out pulleys etc in December 2011. I documented the process and making up the firs kits (before Rowan Engineering overcame the stock ratio issue) In this thread Most of the noise is due to resonance through the mount and gear train due to the motors being driven by a PWM driver chip (hence why they sing when parked)... Mine was second hand so had some wear and tear, and the belt mod made a lot of difference. The mic on the camcorder makes the mount still sound loud, but to the human ear it made a big difference

Unless you are experiencing issues with the use of the scope, specifically those listed under 4.39.10 and the GPS module the 4.39.15 covers then there is little point in flashing the hand controller. IF you still want to go ahead, you may have to update to 4.39.10 before updating to the .15 version.

Sorry if this seem harsh, but it's very unfair of you to blow the mount by using an un-approved laptop power supply and then return the mount as "faulty" to the retailer for replacement or refund at no cost under what is a false warranty claim. As far as over voltage protection or reverse polarity prevention, I dare say that Synta could improve the designs of their motor boards to handle such things, but that would increase the cost of what is already an expensive range of products, especially if the over voltage is 60% more than the design voltage. The power specifications for the mount are readily available on the website, and no doubt in the manual, Power Requirements:12V DC 3.5A (tip positive). To presume that a power block for a laptop is the same without first checking was a mistake, and one IMO you should have owned up to. As the retailer has no way of knowing if the mount was DOA they did the normal thing of repair or replacement.. Chances are they didn't lose out as they just pass it back to the importers / wholesalers, who will then determine what happened and will get a clear idea when they inspect the motor board. Bottom line is that someone in the chain ends up swallowing the cost to the board and it's not the person who did the damage in the first place. Granted it was not deliberate, but it was your doing. The onus is on you to have checked the laptop power supply was suitable before plugging it into the mount. Anyway, it hardly matters now as reading your second post it would seem the retailer has either repaired your original mount, replaced the scope with a new one, or refunded the money so you could purchase a new one. Sorry for the rant... but having been on the other side and had customers do this sort of thing to me in the past it touches a nerve

Can't believe it was 8 years ago when my experiments with converting my HEQ5 to belt drive resulted in Dave over at Rowan Engineering bring out the commercial kit. https://youtu.be/dh3F1xkdj98 Guys, enjoy your belt driven mounts... it makes a lot of difference in the performance and noise levels

Is the inside of the tube flocked - or is it stock ? Applying black flocking to the inside helps stop stray light bouncing around the inside of the OTA. https://www.firstlightoptics.com/misc/black-velour-telescope-flocking-material.html However I must say that the images shown are very good...under the condition you have with your neighbours light. Have you asked why it's always on, or if they could install a blind to help you out ?

Hi, You won't find "the answer" because there isn't one. As you presumed the question you ask has been asked time and time again (and will probably get asked a gazillion times more). Browse or search the forum for similar previous posts and you will see the millions of suggestions that people will give, some based on their own experience, or some just suggesting kit that fits your budget. Part of the issue is the quality of the sky, and whilst something that works for me won't work for you as you may live in a different level of pollution. Naturally it goes without saying that getting away from built up areas to a dark site will improve the results, and if you are not particularly suited for carting equipment 500 yards to a clear spot, then recommending an HEQ5 or EQ6 really isn't going to help. Also there is no "one scope fits all" option. To get nice large clear images of the planets you need a large aperture and long focal length scope, which are expensive. Yes you can reduce the aperture and get a MAK or SCT type scope, but the brightness and resolution will be reduced. But these scopes are not ideal for deep sky or faint object viewing. Here you need a large aperture and a short focal length as you want to gather as much light as possible rather than magnification. Like most things in life there are adaptors to come up with a compromise. Barlow lenses to increase the focal length of fast scopes, or focal reducers to shorten slower long focal lengths, but placing more and more glass between the sensor and the target can impact the image. It also depends on what you expect out of the equipment. If you are happy enough to capture the bands and red spot of Jupiter, or the ring system of Saturn, or the phases of Venus then just about any setup from £500 upwards will do that. If you want to see the detail in Jupiter's weather, or see the divisions in the rings of Saturn, or the dust storms on Mars in detail then you're looking at gear that is going to be £1500 upwards. Deep sky is slightly different, as you can get decent results with modest equipment under dark skies. A 6" f5 reflector will capture most of the bright DSO's and £600 would be a starting point. Prerequisites for imaging, well IMO a Skywatcher goto mount for the simplicity of connecting it to a PC or laptop. Why do you need a computer for imaging? Because for DSO's you need to guide the scope to keep it on target. You also need software to run the camera so it can take 20, 30 or more exposures, which are typically between 3 and 6 minutes long if using a normal DSLR camera which is the cheapest way to start serious imaging. There is lots to think about, and reading up on similar post can help. But as mentioned, there is no real answer to your question...

When anyone asks me what the numbers mean, and how things are found in the night sky I just tell them it's like longitude and latitude on the surface, but "transposed" onto the "dome" of the night sky. Otherwise it can get complicated. It may not be totally correct, but they can grasp the principle. (not that I get that hung up on it - I just right click and tell the scope to slew to target )

The slew rate is hard coded into the handset 0-9 are the speed settings. It's not possible to change the rate unless you do away with the handset, modify the mount to use belt drives with custom pulleys that have a closer ratio and use EQMOD to allow you to input the new ration so that whilst the slew rate is improved the tracking rates are adjusted to maintain sidereal rate. My claim to fame was following discussing some ten years ago I experimented converting my HEQ5 pro goto to belt drive (way before Rowan came along and made it commercial, or SW brought out factory fitted mounts with belt drive) https://youtu.be/dh3F1xkdj98 The video above gives you some idea of the slew rate using 4:1 ratio (60t worm, 15t motor) - using the preset now built into EQMOD

This may help...http://www.pas.rochester.edu/~blackman/ast104/coordinates.html

As far as I know NEMA 17s are used in HEQ5 and EQ6 mounts as standard. The governing factor in with these mount is the MIC2171U which produces the 33v the steppers are run at, and is rated at 2.5A. When slewing the mount draws around 1.8 -2.0A when both motors are running (assuming the scope is balanced correctly)

You would need to check the light emission graphs, but basically yes. Baader Filter The Optolong filter is more tuned to allow light around the 500nm and 660nm and cut out everything before, after and in between...where as the Baader passes everything between 400 and 700nm but then allowed longwave IR around the 1100nm to pass. I may be wrong, but IMO in effect they are doing the same thing, just one is more tuned than the other. You might not have needed to have had the Baader filter mod done giver that the Optolong is tuned to pass Hb, OIII and Ha wavelengths which are the key wavelengths.. It makes no odds really, its the end result that matters and that's a cracking image - If you're happy with the results then no need to change things

If I follow that correctly, you basically make your equipment accessible via the internet using the INDIservers. And then connect to any host.... So it's not a local connection, and I personally would not be happy having my geographical location made available to anyone else who uses this service.... And if my Internet goes down...... I'll stick to remote desktopping into my Observatory's PC thanks 🙂

Yes, maybe the glue thing is something new in the process. Maybe SW are bonding their PICs to the board to prevent these sort of repairs, hoping that in the effort to remove them some of the traces or pads or vias get lifted as well, thus rendering damage to the board? Mind you, with the new revisions of boards (mainly with USB sockets) moving away from the 16F886 micro, these sort of repairs may become a thing of the past. Personally I've not looked into programming the PIC32 or STM32 chips as I've not really had the need to use these devices. What strikes me is the confusion that may result when someone with one of these new boards tries to update the firmware for the HEQ5 by using the current 2.0.4 firmware coded for the 16F886....

Peter, The Amazon listing states the chipset used is FTDI, so chances are you need the VCP driver listed Here If that fails then arrange for a refund and return the item to them and purchase one from FLO here as chances are either there is a fault with the one purchased from Amazon, or they are selling cheap chinese imports with counterfeit FTDI chipsets You can always verify the chipset used by opening up device manager, hopefully under the Ports section the device will show up as a new com port but will have an exclamation mark indicating a problem with it. Right click on it, select properties, go to the Details tab, and from the dropdown list of options labels "Property" select Hardware ID. Copy and paste the string of characters shown in the "Value" box into google and that should confirm the actual chipset used.

BathamJ, where do you see yourself going with imaging ? The reason I ask is that we see a lot of posts similar to yours, where you try to fit the equipment to a low budget (and by low I mean for the arena that you are entering - Imaging really isn't cheap when compared to visual). Often people like Vlaiv will do a lot of groundwork for you and suggest various options that fit the budget...with compromises such as entry level drives and DIY options. It will give you a working result, and I agree with his suggestions.... But the point I am trying to make is that sometimes it better to make the budget fit the equipment rather than vice-versa. Often people (myself included) end up regretting not getting the rig they need for the one that fits the budget. It tends to cost you more in the end as even purchasing the next mount up secondhand and the selling a perfectly decent hardly used mount you purchased a few months earlier cost you more than if you had purchased the package from the dealer in the first place. To a degree I would say the mount is more important than the scope when it comes to imaging, so I would suggest you look at the HEQ5 as the most versatile mount. It's sturdy enough to handle a 200mm F5 scope with cameras attached, yet still be manageable to make its suitable for taking to a dark site if you live in a town. It has the higher precision stepper motors and controller. The Goto function is a bonus... With a 150PDS you have more options for guide scopes and cameras so if you do upgrade you won't need to upgrade the mount as well when you come to add additional equipment. Don't rule out second hand. I picked up my HEQ5 second hand, along with an ST80 guides scope fitted with a QHY5 camera for a very reasonable price, but selling the 6 month old EQ5 pro goto mount, tripod and handset still didn't cover the cost of the secondhand gear, but it would have been an excellent way to get the original mount that I should have aimed for originally. I know we could always extrapolate this, always suggesting the next mount up, EQ6, EQ8 etc, but respectively you then enter a different league altogether when spending £3000 on a mount. DIY is the other option... There are things out there such as AstroEQ that provide the alternative to a synscan upgrade. It all depends on your ability and outlook. There are people who love to spend hours tinkering on old cars and making their own parts to replace long gone obsolete originals, then there's those who just want to jump in and drive without worrying too much about what's under the hood... The other factor is location. You mentioned being in Australia, so it could be that you have access to really dark skies, so a 150pds could outperform a 200pds from a UK town. So lots to consider

Hi Wayne, Not used any of this as I tend to use EQMOD / ASCOM under windows, but doing a quick google it seems that EKOS has a set of INDI drivers for SW mounts. Here It may be that you need this (straw clutching )

Is this a commercial cable, or DIY? - Are you you using a PC or laptop, and is the cable connected direct ? The more information you give the less speculation we make

My guess is the device uses an HC05 type module, and these can have issues. I used one in a DIY project and often the com port would disappear and the listing under windows BT devices would need to be deleted and refreshed. I found this website, is that the same device ? EQTooth

That's an interesting response, especially the bit about not being able to be repaired, we all know that's not the case 😉 . I don't know how they would go about justifying the no warranty in a court of law. Having said that, in normal operation they should never go wrong. It's only when the user connects a 3rd party device, or reverse polarity on the supply that these boards fail and thus any warranty that was offered would be null and void. Maybe if SkyWatcher looked at adding better protection and isolation on the at risk components then we wouldn't see so many failures. All I can add is that on the two HEQ5 boards I've changed the PICs on, all have fallen off the PCB once all the legs had been cut, none show any signs of adhesive being used to hold them in place whilst being soldered. Update re: My HEQ5 board My FTDI cable, connectors and 16F886's arrived this afternoon and after an hour I had my board back up an running.... S2680001.MP4 If only I had thought about things logically there was no way my board would have been blown as it wasn't connected at the time. Still we live and learn !

Ah... I see... However there is one fly in the ointment... The AstroEQ site has been closed since lockdown last March of last year With everything in short supply, or sites off line it's going to be hard for the OP to find a resolution - hopefully something may come up in the second hand market