blinky

Agreed, that's probably how I would have designed such a circuit when I did electronic engineering a long time ago, these buck convertors are the way to go nowadays, dont need any heatsinks due to the efficiency, whereas with that circuit you will need some decent size ones.

The mini is mainly intended for guiding and the non mini for imaging non mini has USB3 I think so better for planetary and lunar imaging but the mini can also do it but at a lower frame rate really depends what you want to do with it...

have you looked for timeout errors in EQmod? im having a similar issue, when looking in EQMod i can see it complaining of timeouts

I have the Pegasus and the ZWO focusers - both very good, nice build quality etc and work fine. If push came to shove and I had to get another it would be the ZWO as it a nice shiny red!

I am pretty much 100% confident it’s not the lead, I now have 2 from different batches with the same issue so it must be laptop, power, mount related but which one...... both laptop and mount and on mains supplies. I have also replaced the plug on the EQ6 with a screw in type so know that is secure and the red light does not flash on the mount either. im. It sure about trying another laptop but I suppose it rules the laptop in/out so should really do that! I wonder..... just thinking out loud here..... the new socket for the supply, will mean that the body of the mount is connected to the negative terminal of the supply plug, since the plug is all metal and is bolted to the mount case. The cable has a metal D type socket and I wonder if there is some sort of noise or something, maybe the lynx cables have the metal body connected to gnd and it’s causing a loop and the old shoestring cable that was hand soldered, maybe the metal body of that D type is not connected to gnd? Just a thought, will see what I can do tonight....

That baud rate does not work, eqmod will not connect. Will have another go today and see what I can do

Baud rates the same, 9600, tried lowering and increasing it in the port settings and changing eqmod to match but the only one it connects at is 9600. Also done the remove old devices, by running device manager with show_nonpresent_devices and removing everything that’s not used, the only ports I have are com3 for the cable, com13 for the old one and com 5&6 as Bluetooth to serial ports. Power management of the port is not ticked either, think I’m just going to need to send it back and stick with the old cable, but why? And I’m worried if the old cable breaks what do it do? It’s so strange! At least I can get the issue in daytime while slewing, so don’t need to wait to be out under the stars to diagnose the issue but I’m basically all out of ideas..... I don’t think Lynx Astro exist, I think it’s just the name FLO put on their brand of cables, so can’t even contact the manufacturer and see if they can suggest anything.

Did you ever get this sorted? See this thread, I have similer issues with a new Lynx astro cable....

Totally confused and looking for suggestions.... Im now on my 2nd Lynx astro cable for my EQ6, I keep getting timeout errors with it on EQMod 😞 Im not using a hub, my camera, guider, filter and focuser are all connected via a little hub then connected to my laptop's USB3 port. The Lynx astro cable is connected directly from the mount to a USB 2 port on the laptop. I first noticed the problem when guidig, it seemed terrible with the new cable in and swapping to an ancient Shoesting asto cable all was good. I then saw in the EQMod window that I was getting Comm errors with the Lynx cable but with the old cable its all good. I connect the old cable in the same way, direct to a USB 2 port - I'm out of ideas! Laptop is running the latest version of EQMod, Acom and Windows 10. The driver for the Lynx cable is the most up to date I can find and its on Com 3, any ideas? :MSD=128 CommErr:MSR=128 CommErr:MSD=128 CommErr:MSR=128 CommErr:MSD=128 RA Motor set at Lunar rate CommErr:MSR=144 CommErr:MSD=128

3.7 micorn pixels, so would work with the widerfield WO 61 quite nicely I feel

Should also say I have a ZS73 and I also love it, there is something nice about WO kit!

what camera are you going to use? I had a Willima Optics ZS66 a few years ago and it was a nice widefield image but with the big pixels of the DSLR I was using at the time it was very undersampled and I prefered my 80mm Skywatcher. Nowadays with small pixel CMOS I would be tempted to go with the 60mm as it would provide the larger FoV for widefield especially if paired with one of those CMOS chips...

Have you installed the drivers? There are ascom drivers on the ZWO website

Exactly, not a lot to them so surprised Im getting errors with it, FLO have said they either work or dont and each one is tested prior to dispatch, which would not have caught an intermittent fault such as this but I still feel its a software isue but no idea what/where!

It does indeed appear to be the cable.... last night I could see timeouts coming through the log viewer portion/tab of eqmod with the newly bought lynx astro cable. This disappeared completely when swapping back over to my ancient shoestring astro cable, I sat and watched the screen like a hawk for 20 mins and not a single timeout. My guiding also massively improved, I suspect because commands were not being held up in a q waiting to get sent to the mount? Will contact @flo this mmorning to see about returning the cable - I never expected it to be as simple as the cable as it does seem a high quality one but I do think I've proven it. I'm not using a hub to connect it to the laptop, just straight from mount to laptop.

Ive asked this on the SGPro forum but getting no answers - recently SGPro has started to disconnect from EQMod but PHD2 and Cartes Du Ciel keeps connected and guiding. Just wondering if anybody else has a similer issue? Ive also just changed guide cam and to a Lynx astro EQMod cable but really think this is a software issue....

I know, loads of different people do different things, I would say go the manufacturer - it is or was.... sealed for life so there should be no need to remove the seal and add grease. That being said, I would not bin it or anything, just remove some of that grease and it should be fine

The SKF bearings i got for my EQ6 were sealed ones and needed no grease added - did you get sealed ones and remove the dust seal to add the grease? I would say thats too much but Im in no way an expert! I think a little goes a long way....

Found the log file after much searching! There is a button on the log window in eqmod that says save to file but does not tell you the location of the file! Its in here: %appdata%/eqmod

@chrisshillito is there a log file in EQMod I can view? I want to leave the new and old cables connected and running with PEC for a few hours each to see if I can narrow down the source of the drop outs

I ordered a Lynx Astro EQMod/Dir cable from FLO a few weeks ago but I seem to be having issues with it.... Its on Com7 (just in case that matters!) and every so often it looses connection to EQMod, or rather EQMod reports it's lost connection to the mount. I assume its only momentary as the symptoms are things like when parking it will suddenly decide it is parked, at some random point in the sky. When doing drift alignment tonight, it was like the mount suddenly started moving in RA, I could hear the motors tone change and the star started moving, I clicked stop in PHD2 then started drifting again and it was fine for a while then it happened again - PHD2 reports no errors talking to the mount. It does not do it all the time though, but this has only started happening since I changed from an old Shoestring astro cable and USB to serial converter, was rock solid before! If i look in the status window of EQMod I can see it reporting communication errors, which I've never seen before with the old cable. Do you think I have a faulty cable? Im not getting any windows errors, not getting the USB disconnected bing bong in Windows etc but something is not right - ideas? I dont want to go back to FLO and ask for a replacement till I've spoken to folks on here and gathered some opinions!

Found a post on another forum that said to drop the processors to 2 and that worked a treat!

Defiantly overdoing it! One of them would power the full lot.... no harm in it though I suppose. Just coming back to something mentioned at the start about clearing alignment points in EQMod - I think the recommended way in SGPro is to not have any alignment points and use plate solving

Cheers folks, wil have a hunt for that autostacker software and see how it copes, will it align the channels if I have 3 separate video files, one for each colour?

Is Registax still the best to use for stacking? I have a 1000 frame image of the moon and when trying to stack it says out of memory