malc-c

Guys, It's been four years since I last used my 200P/HEQ5 combo, but with all this lockdown I needed something to stem the boredom, so over the past four / five days I've stripped down and overhauled the scope and took advantage of the clear(ish) evenings to set things up. The optics were cleaned and re-collimated and the star test at both extremes of focus produced nice circular images with clear evenly spaced concentric rings. The ST80 was removed and the 9 x 50 finder converted to a finder/guider using the QHY5. Over the past couple of nights I've spent time checking focus, aligning the finder to the main scope and Celestron star finder pointer so that all three have the target central in the field of view. The mount was polar aligned using SharpCap's tool to 10 arc seconds. So that left two things to check out, the first being to gather some guide data, and to generate a PE curve for EQMod to use in its correction. So having tweaked EQMod's pulse guiding settings and a few PHD2 settings, the calibration ran fine with about 18 steps in either direction E/W and 10 steps N/S - It didn't complain and PHD2 started guiding. I was pointing at NGC2903 (darks are still running so it will be a while before I get to play with processing) so the weight bar was out fairly level, with a declination of 21.4 degrees. I've attached the resulting log file trace, and would like some opinions if this is good enough for guiding. The RMS values of 1.24 arc seconds for RA and 0.59 arc seconds for DEC sound OK, but the graph doesn't look as smooth as some I used to get when using the ST80. One last question. There is obviously an underlying sine wave on the RA trace, which could suggest the mount needs PE training. In order to do so I guess I should fit the camera to the main scope and log the guiding trace through it in order to get better accuracy ?

Cheers... I actually managed to find the originals I downloaded some time back. All working now, but thanks for the link

I would also agree with the others with regards to the EQdir cable and pulse guiding. You can make your own using an FTDI 5v logic USB to serial adaptor and crimp on the RJ45 connector (or use a network cable and terminal block inside a small plastic case to make the connections) for around £20, or buy the same thing made by Hitech for around £35. Run the active USB cable to the USB hub from your single USB socket on the laptop. Plug the EQDIR cable into the mount in place of the handset, and the other end into the HUB. Connect the QHY5 USB port to the USB hub. This, plus the use of the ASCOM driver should resolve the issue. If not then there is an issue with either the USB cables or the Port on the laptop

As mentioned I had the same issue and I resolved that issue by using the ASCOM driver There are several variants for the QHY5 (QHY5, QHY5-V and QHY5-T - no L??), and each have an ASCOM driver - I would have thought that as its somewhat generic it should work with any QHY5 camera - https://www.qhyccd.com/en/Download.html Worth giving that a try You will need to have the ASCOM platform installed as well https://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/Index.htm

Ian, I can't help much as I've never used the ST4 port for guiding. I connect directly to my HEQ5 using a DIY EQDir cable, with my QHY5 camera connected to a 6 port USB hub, which in turns connects to the PC via a Startech active USB cable. It could be that there is issues with ST4 guide ports. If it were me I would try connecting the QHY5 direct to the laptop using a straight through cable direct to the laptop. Your problem seems to be with communication with the camera rather than the mount, and if using the handset PC connection (don't you still have to have the handset connected to the mount for this to work ??) works and you can slew the scope around then leave that as is for now. With the camera connected directly, select it in the PHD2 settings and see if that works better. As mentioned I've had to use an ASCOM driver with my QHY5 in order to stop Sharpcap crashing or PHD2 to recognize the camera.

Trust me, even at the entry level, astrophotography is not cheap. But there is the second hand options. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/342492-imaging-setup-celestro-c8-heq5-pillar-stand-guide-camera-dslr-many-other-goodies/ £499 for the HEQ5 on a pillar mount - or a quid shy of a grand for the C8, guide camera and 450d body plus a host of other goodies, Not sure if the chap selling still has it available, but the thread is still open which would suggest the kit is still available. This is just one example and I'm quite amazed it's not been marked as sold as these mounts are much sought after. When imaging the old "rule" was to load the mount to no more than 75% of its capacity. The 200P I use weighs in at 8.8kg, which is 64% of the 13.7kg load bearing capacity of he HEQ5, so there still is plenty of head room for adding cameras etc. On the EQ5 the same 200P is at 96% of the load carrying capacity of that mount, leaving very little left for cameras let along a guidescope. If we punch the numbers in for your ED72, which at 1.995 kg is a fraction of the weight of the 200P, it's just 21% of the load capacity of the EQ5, and with its wide field you should be OK, and may not need the precision of the HEQ5. It has a decent review here https://www.amateurastrophotography.com/skywatcher-evostar-72ed-review and its worth reading the reviews on FLO's website https://www.firstlightoptics.com/pro-series/sky-watcher-evostar-72ed-ds-pro-ota.html £840 gets you an ED72 plus an EQ5 pro goto. Add another £185 for the flattener / reducer (recommended apparently) and you're over the £1000 mark.... If you want to use the scope visually as well then eyepieces are on top. Like I said, it ain't cheap

Ian, can you advise how you are connecting the camera to the computer. If you are using a long (5m or more) passive USB cable then this could be your problem. In passive (ie just direct wires running from end to end) the USB signals can become corrupted due to voltage loss and the PC then thinks the camera is disconnected or faulty. This is easily fixed by using an active USB cable (these have electronics in them that boosts the signals. One other thing I found was that I had to install the ASCOM driver for my old QHY5 mono camera, but that was basically due to older dedicated drivers not being supported in Sharpcap / PHD2 etc.

Those binoculars will be difficult to hold still for astronomy. But they do come with a tripod adaptor, so invest in photographic tripod as well to get the best results

Personally, if you are going down the imaging road then the mount is the important part more so than the optics. A DSLR is fairly heavy which also adds to the equation. Then to do any long exposures you will need to guide the scope, which means a guide camera and either an off axis guider, or seperate guide scope, again adding to the weight. To save too many headaches you also need a mount with decent proscision which means you are really looking at £790 for the HEQ5 as being the mount. It has larger weight bearing capacity, higher precision stepper motors, and should you need to upgrade the scope later down the line you don't need to worry about replacing the mount too. Don't get me wrong, I started with the EQ5 pro goto / 200P combo, but then wanted to venture into imagine and even converting the finder to a guide scope and bolting on my 400D the mount struggled. So when I had the opportunity to build an observatory several years back I upgraded to the HEQ5 pro and whilst you still get some of "those" nights, it performed really well on most occasions. There have been posts where people have used mounts and scope combinations that would normally not be recommended (150P / EQ3 for example) for imaging and have shown reasonable results under their rural night skies. You could find that the EQ5 / Evo 72 works OK for you. If you can wait until this CV19 lock down is over, go and visit Adam and the crew at Rother Valley Optics (other companies are available) or call them and talk things through. There are so many variables that each circumstances are different. Your location, sky quality, interests and subjects to image might mean the EQ5 / Evo 72 will work OK. Or they may advise using the HEQ5 with a different scope... One thing for sure, it's not cheap to get into imaging

If you are going to use the scope visually then using the older reticule will be close enough. If you are imaging then the more precise the PA the better the images will be. Yes you are correct in that the idea is to use the alt / az bols to place polaris on the circle using it as a clock face. For example let's assume for simplicity that Polaris is at the lowest point in its orbit around the NCP. Looking through the polar scope use the alt / az bolts to place Polaris directly under the cross in the centre of the reticule. Then using just the az bolts, turn them so that Polaris moves down to the point that it intersects the bottom of the circle on the reticle. In this example the mount would then be polar aligned. The fun comes when Polaris is at any other time other than 12, 3, 6 and 9 O'clock positions as you need to use both az and alt bolts to do the alignment. If Polaris is say at 02:30 position, then, having centred the cross over Polaris, use the alt bolt to move Polaris up to the point where it intersects the circle (you move it up if the HA for Polaris is between 9 and 3 running through 12, down if between 3 and 9 running through 6). Then you move the mount with both AZ and Alt bolts so that Polaris moves right and down until it is under the reticle on the 02:30 position. If Polaris was at 10:30, then you would do the same, but move Polaris left and down until it was under 10:30 on the scale. Naturally it's easy to polar align when polaris is at the 12, 3, 6 and 9 positions as you only need to move it up, right, down and left respectively. Hope that helps explain the clock rational when polar aligning.

I'm not very familiar with these new mounts and the boards contained in them. Can the OP confirm what the AZ control box is ? - do you mean the hand controller or are there multiple boards in the mount ? Whilst the EQMod cable does indeed have 5v logic, if the port it was plugged into had higher voltage levels then who knows what damage that may have done to sensitive components, especially if they are running at 3.3v logic.

I'm no electronics expert, but have built my own projects, and fixed my own HEQ5 main board, which was indeed the replacement of two electrolytic caps. Looking at the images the PCB us very modular, with what looks like lots of surface mount links designated as L1, L20 etc as most other components will have values printed on them. It may be worth checking continuity through these components. The other issue, is that if you heard something crack and fizzle then that would suggest something major has happened to a component. Just because you can see it doesn't mean it hasn't happened. Chances are it may have popped under the component which is why its not visible.

After a gap of almost 4 years I'm starting to get back into the hobby, if only for casual use. Without going into too much detail I've spent the past few days stripping the 200P, cleaning optics, re-balancing and recollimating the scope. Everything was fine, but since its last outing I've notices a lot of the software applications have advanced dramatically, including sharpcap, which now has a nice polar alignment routine which, for £10 I thought was worth a punt compared to shelling out almost £300 for polemaster, that, as the scope is permanently house in an observatory, would then gather dust after it's done its job. On of the issue I had was with an ST80 on top of the 200P the HEQ5 mount had a lot of mass to move around, so I opted to remove the ST80 and ordered an adaptor ring to connect the QHY5 to the 9x50 SW finderscope. Everything was hooked up, and a quick focus test / collimation test was done a few nights back and please to say the rebuild went OK, so all I needed to do was wait for the adaptor to arrive to complete the task. The adaptor arrived today and so I continued with the refurbishment. With the QHY5 connected I downloaded and installed the latest version (3.2.6269.0) version of SharpCap having purchased the annual licence. This is when I ran into a slight problem. The application wouldn't install as the Observatory PC was running Windows 7 without SP1. No issue - just spend an hour or so downloading all the windows 7 updates that were still available from MS and try again. Two hours later the installer was still complaining that it needed SP1 installed, even though it had been installed... OK time to bite the bullet and update the PC to Windows 10 To save time I used Reflect to place an image of windows 10 on the PC and then activated windows. I have now spent best part of the afternoon installing all the USB / Serial drivers (yup one was a Prolific device !) but having got all the latest versions of EQAscom (EQMOD), CdC, and my licenced copy of APT installed and all talking to the hardware I then turned my attention to the QHY5 camera, and having installed the driver that worked under windows 7 and the QGvideo software it was checked and connected just fine. Installed Sharpcap and it didn't complain about anything. Pasted in the licence key which it accepted, so launched the application and sure enough it had picked up the QHY5-M camera. However on loading it produces the black screen, and populated the right hand panel with exposure data but then a pop appears with a bug / error report "Error 'QHYCCD_ERROR' from call to Camera.BeginExposure" I'm hoping Robin reads this forum (I know he used to) and can shed some light on how I can get this resolved. I've read the comments on the website, which mentions possible driver issues - but then doesn't go into any further details on Ascom drivers, but there are no links. So more searching through old folders on my network drive I found a possible old ASCOM driver for the QHY5. This stopped SharpCap from crashing, but I still get the warning message that functionality is limited. Hopefully it will be enough to allow me to undertake polar alignment later this evening. Given the popularity of the old QHY5 (see attached) I'm amazed that there doesn't seem to be a proper driver from the manufactures, even if it was only a windows 7 variant. Does anyone know of a dedicated driver that will work rather than using the ASCOM platform?

Hi, That wasn't my intention.... But reading the OP's posts and reading about the list of various (and expensive) collimation tools that David used (and still wasn't satisfied with the performance he was getting until Es did the equivalent of putting the scope on a dyno rig) compared to who most of us collimate our bog standard Newts would possibly be beyond most people's patience. Hence the reference to super cars, and like super cars, when it's tuned right the performance is stunning judging by the professional (and award winning) quality of David's astro images.

To be honest, having to place £10 and £15 orders here and there for part, plus you have no idea yet what the final bill would be from your tech, I would bite the bullet and buy a replacement for £159 https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/skywatcher-replacement-motherboard-for-az-eq6-gt-mount.html https://www.microglobe.co.uk/sky-watcher-motherboard-az-eq6-gt-with-usb-p-20187.html? Not sure about modern board, but Synta were always criticized for not providing adequate protection on their boards for reverse polarity. It may well be that other components have been affected and you could be constantly chasing your tail in order to resolve the issue.

And I though collimating a Skywatcher 200P was complicated ! I often think that at this level of imaging these scopes are like highly tuned supercars, where the tolerances are so tight and small that unless you spend ages setting them up with specialist equipment you just don't quite squeeze that last bit of horsepower or performance from them. David had one (he'll kill me for saying this) "tool" to hand that others are sadly lacking, namely Es... His experience in optics, and his test methods are second to none, as can be shown in this thread when he re-established the focal length as contributing to David's issue. Guys I hope you manage to resolve these issues and collimate these precision scopes.

Deleted...

Found this by google

Maybe I worded that wrong. I was suggesting that guiding through a longer focal length would give better precision.

I have a 400D - it lacks live view, but for modding it was quite easy - mine has both IR cut filters removed both of which have been well documented on the net

To be honest IMO you are pushing the equipment beyond its limits. I've been off the forum for a while and a few years ago the recommended mount for use with a 200P when imaging was an HEQ5. I started with an EQ5 and soon realised that the mount wasn't geared for imaging. The HEQ5 has finer stepping stepper motors, and higher load capability making it the more suited platform, especially when using DSLRs as the main camera. However, as you have already purchased the equipment there isn't much more you can do other than change the way you guid the scope. Using a finder as a guide scope has the advantage of being lightweight, but being a short focal length not a lot of movement would be detected, hence why your PHD traces were good but the resulting image had trails. Longer focal lengths will improve guide accuracy, to a point in that each guide step will only be as good as the resolution of the mount, so even if you opted for an off axis guider it may well be that the stars appear more rounded. Having said that the results may be perfectly acceptable, but most OAG, especially the narrow ones for Canon cameras to ensure there is enough travel on the focuser to focus the image on the sensor and guide camera are quite expensive, between £120 and £180. Also, an element of luck comes into play... sometimes the image you are capturing is in a position where balance of the scope works in your favor and it all works...

I have the D400 which was marketed as the Rebel and it is fine for use as an imaging camera. There are plenty of DIY circuits for a PC controlled shutter release as USB only permits max 30 second exposure. The camera is also fairly easy to modify to full IR

What version of EQ6 do you have - the new R version has a USB port that permits direct connection to a PC (basically the serial to USB chip is now on the motherboard) - But it seems after a little research it needs to set the port baud speed on the PC to 115200 bps in both the port settings and ASCOM driver setting. If you have the older mount with DB9 connector, and it works with the handset but not the EQDir cable, then it has to be a fault with the cable or incorrect communications settings on the PC / ASCOM

By "the same" are you saying that when you use an EQDirect cable your get a time out, but when you use the handset you have control? Presume you've check the obvious, that the comm port setting are the same that the EQDir cable device is set to ?

Actually it's the Elves that do the hard graft of pushing all the 'bits' around. The fairies do all the admin work to make sure the Elves behave themselves and keep things in order 😉