bilkusg

Sorry not to have done this. My canon camera has died, so I can't test or reproduce anything at the moment. I will reopen the issue if it recurs once i'm able to try again.

Many thanks for writing this software. I have a Sony A6000 which I am hoping to test on a Pi4 as soon as the weather in London permits.... I have managed to get the software to control the camera indoors which is a promising start, but I noticed that the number of frames it says it's downloaded is many more than the number of times the shutter has activated on the camera. Is this expected behaviour, or would you like some logging information?

Just wanted to close this off by confirming that the mount is now behaving impeccably with the RA setting circle loose. Hope that this thread may save someone else a bit of time or expense in the future. Thanks again for the suggestions.

Thanks all for your suggestions. After playing around this morning with the moon, I think I've finally discovered the problem, which is, in retrospect, trivial, but may be of use to others. The cap for the polar scope was on tight, and the RA setting circle appears not to be well seated, so when I had the setting circle tighened against the RA axis it was causing just enough friction to cause juddering when tracking slowly, but not so much that things didn't appear smooth at any faster speed. The RA circle appears to be slightly out of true, which is why it was worse in some orientations than others, but not consistent. When I loosened off the RA circle, the problem disappeared, although it means I can't use the RA circle for manual setting, but that's a relatively minor problem! Hopefully the fix will be confirmed when I give the scope a good test tonight. Otherwise, I'll be back! Phew....

Thanks. I am familiar with the maintenance guide, and have already tried to adjust the worm gear before this post ( but after the original symptom ) but it makes no difference ( unless i've done it wrong ). This post is my final attempt to work out what's happening before I bite the bullet and try the full strip down.... I noticed it first shortly after I got the mount about two years ago, but only during one particular session. When I investigated further at the time, I couldn't recreate the problem at all, so I put it down to possibly my battery needing charging at the time and forgot about it. Since then, the mount hasn't been used much until a few weeks ago when I took it down to southern France on holiday, and now it's happening a lot, but more often when the telescope is to the east and the weight to the west. I've tried balancing the thing very carefully, and it makes no difference. In fact, even when it's out of balance deliberately, there's no difference which way the balance is wrong. I've also updated the SynScan firmware to the latest version just in case, but that's also not helped. My options at this point seem to be 1. Try adjusting the RA worm again 2. Try the full strip-down 3. Send it off for repair. But i'm kind of hoping someone will recognise the presise symptom......

I have an HEQ5 which often, but not always, judders slighly every few seconds while tracking an object. The mount is well balanced, and behaves fine when using the motor to seek or otherwise manually. Every time the judder happens there's a slight banging noise from inside the mount. I've taken off the gear train cover and can't feel or see any lack of smoothness in the gears . If I disconnect the RA so the mount runs free in RA, but leave tracking on, the noise stops. Any ideas - is this a known issue with a fix which doesn't involve sending the mount away for repair? Thanks