Geoff_L

I'm sorry to hear of your loss. I guess from your username that you're from Cornwall but I can't guess from where in the county. For info, there are a few very active clubs/societies in the county that might be able to help, particularly if your father was a member. Cornwall Astronomical Society meets near Penzance and Helston; Kernow Astronomers meets at St Columb Major near Newquay and also holds practical evenings at Trevarrian campsite in the winter. Callington Astronomy Group meet at St Dominick, near Saltash. In addition, the Roseland, Caradon and Tolcarne observatories have associated groups. You could also look at the Go Stargazing website to find events near you. While I'd hope you'd "catch the bug", at the very least you'd get the chance to talk to some very knowledgeable people at those events about your father's astro equipment. BTW, if you do 'catch the bug' a local club might be prepared to offer storage in exchange for you sharing the gear with members. I wish you all the best however it turns out.

12 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Okay, so who put that gear on back to front.? 

Looks like Geoff_L gets the cigar! 

Michael 

I suspect that it's not on back to front as there's enough room on the input shaft to slide the gear up to mesh with the smaller cog. However, the RA might be meant to be like the OP's is. I can't say as I've never removed the cover of the RA drive on my EQ5 Pro and can't check right now as I won't have access to my mount for a day or two. That said, it should be fairly easy to slacken the grub screws on the input shaft cog and slide it up to mesh with the smaller gear, adjust the motor position so that they mesh correctly and then try another 'dry alignment' to see whether that's done the trick. If not, it should only take a few minutes to restore the mount to its current configuration.

14 hours ago, msacco said:

I'm sorry, but can you elaborate more on that? I couldn't really understand what should I do

 

The following photos are of the DEC motor and DEC input shaft on my EQ5 Pro. As the first photo shows, the motor is fitted with two cogs, a large one and a small one. The larger of the cogs meshes with the pinion on the motor shaft and the smaller cog should mesh with the cog on the DEC input shaft (i.e. the cog shown in the second photo). It is possible to position the motor on its mounts so that the large cog on the motor meshes with the DEC input. As the large cog has approximately 1.5x the number of teeth of the smaller cog, meshing the wrong cog of the motor with the DEC input would make the DEC drive slew approx 1.5x the correct amount. HTH, Geoff

1.5x suggests to me (at least for the DEC drive) that you might have the wrong cog meshed with the cog on the DEC driveshaft. The smaller of the two cogs on the motor shaft should mesh with the cog on the DEC driveshaft. I've not had cause to strip the RA motor drive and so can't say whether the same applies to the RA drive. HTH, Geoff

9 hours ago, msacco said:

[...]

I've talked with many people who have quite a lot of knowledge about electricity, and they all said that it would make sense as AGM battery voltage is fairly low generally, and since slewing with full speed on 2 motors when the battery is not full cause slight voltage drop, it sometimes reached the point where one motor stopped.

It didn't happen much, but when you have everything set up and one motor stops for a split second, the whole alignment screws up, so I just got this to make sure it never happens.

Anyhow, as I said before, I also used a wall charger, which I don't think should be related in any way.

When I was out I checked that everything is balanced, when made the test in my room the telescope wasn't balanced.

I will try what you said with changing the cables, and also about the DEC drive unit, what can I search in google to be more specific?

Thanks

FWIW, I'm not convinced about a 'wall charger' rather than a proper power supply. A 12v battery connected to both the mount and a charger should be OK. That said, you now have me wondering whether the AGM battery is good -- they wear out eventually. Do you have another 12v power source to try? Have you tried alignment with the mount unloaded (i.e. without any equipment on the mount except, perhaps, something to use for sighting [such as a rule or other straight edge]). With that, you should be able to sight along the straight edge accurately enough to check whether the alignment is way off with the mount as lightly stressed as possible and hence determine whether load/balance is a factor.

As I wrote, I can't find the info I used but the thread I created when I had my issues is at https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/286642-sw-eq5-pro-synscan-dec-motor-which-cog/ You could also try searching for "EQ5 Pro Synscan tuning"

HTH, Geoff

12 hours ago, msacco said:

I had an issue with the voltage dropping when slewing on full speed 2 motors, and I've also seen many others which it happened to them, so I did this.

But it also happens when using wall plug, so I really don't think that's related.

That said, something's awry if you notice a significant voltage drop when using a 75Ah AGM battery to power the mount. Even on full speed, the current draw should be minimal. FWIW, I have an EQ5 Pro mount carrying a Skywatcher Explorer 150PDS with a piggy-backed Orion ST80 complete with a DSLR imaging camera and Bresser eyepiece camera that I power with a 17Ah car jump-start pack that also provides power for my laptop and a powered USB hub without issue. I suspect that your mount is greatly unbalanced, something mechanical is binding or you have one or more electrical issues (e.g. bad connection, defective connection cable, etc.)

Have you checked the mount balance (both in RA and DEC)? Does the mount rotate freely when unclutched?

Is the error repeatable (i.e. does the mount always slew to the same, erroneous position when you slew to the first alignment star)? The cable between the control box (the one that clips to the mount, not the handset) and the RA unit and the one between the RA and DEC units are interchangeable. So, if the error is repeatable, try swapping the cables (with the power disconnected) to see if the mount slews to the same position when you slew to the first alignment star. If the mount still slews to the same (repeatable) position, the issue is probably not with the cables. However, if the position changes to a new, repeatable one, you probably have a defective cable.

FWIW, when I got my EQ5 new, the DEC drive unit wasn't correctly aligned with the corresponding input shaft on the mount and skipped the occasional gear tooth. I had to adjust the position of the DEC unit to get the mount to slew accurately. I can't find the guide I used to help sort my mount out, but there the information is out there if you search. HTH, Geoff

48 minutes ago, johninderby said:

[...] You might consider trying a variable polarising filter as you can then adjust the brightness to the exact amount needed. [...]

FWIW, I have a variable polarising filter and I need to be careful when using it with one of my diagonals because it fouls the mirror. These filters are approx twice the thickness of a single filter. It's still usable, but I can't afford to slide it all the way into the diagonal.

I wonder whether the OP has made the same error as I did. I entered the date as 'dd/mm/yyyy' rather than rather than the illogical 'mm/dd/yyyy' US format that Synscan requires. I was lucky that the mount slewed to an area that had no bright stars when I accepted its offer of Vega and so I knew something was awry. On checking with Stellarium, Vega was just below the horizon at the time. However, if had been a bright star in the EP, I'd probably have assumed that was Vega, aligned with that and possibly ended up with a situation similar to the OP.

Always seem to see nocturnal wildlife when observing. Possums on Mount Dandenong (near the OP); bats and owls back in Cornwall. It was a bit disturbing outside my son's house in Selby, VIC to hear rustling behind me, turn on a head torch to see what it was to find three pairs of possum eyes shining back at me!

The manual for mine was included on the software CD. That said, most of the stuff you need to know is given in the specs at the UK Bresser product page. HTH, Geoff

15 hours ago, SilverAstro said:

[...] I think the RDF is meant to give a dot which does not move   relative to the stars  , ie. when you move your head the dot will move in the circle of the housing but so do the stars, so when you plonk the dot ( sorry got a bit technical there ) on a star it will stay there as you move your head. It does not have to be in the centre of the housing, nor need your head be.[...]

That's certainly my experience with a Baader Skysurfer III RDF. I find that I can keep both eyes open and just look along the scope. The red dot appears on the star field and although the body of the RDF moves relative to the stars when I move my head, the red dot is stationary.

On 08/02/2017 at 10:12, CSM said:

Have a look at this to find Dark Sky sites in the Uk

http://www.darkskydiscovery.org.uk/dark-sky-discovery-sites/map.html

Personally, I find https://www.lightpollutionmap.info/ a better indicator. For example, there's a place near me that's darker than my nearest Milky Way class "Dark Sky Discovery" site.

HTH & Clear skies

8 hours ago, richyrich_one said:

What's the advantage in using the handset?

Surely it's better to just use the eqdir cable direct to the mount, no?

While that might work with the HEQ5, it won't with my EQ5 Pro as the connectors on the control box are different. That is, the PC-Direct cable won't physically fit in the handset port of the control box. I suspect there might be a special cable or adapter to allow the handset to be taken out of the setup, but I don't have that.

Clear skies,

Geoff

@chrisshillito: It wasn't your videos, it was that I was watching them past the time I normally turn in when I have work the following day. I woke up fairly quickly when I heard you discussing connection errors and wished I'd watched those videos before trying to drive the mount from my computer. An hour spent watching your excellent videos would have saved me a lot of time in the long run, and you have my thanks for posting them to YouTube -- and for your sterling work on EQASCOM.

Thanks and clear skies,

Geoff

PROBLEM RESOLVED:

Many thanks for the help. For info, I was drifting off to sleep watching some YouTube videos from Chris, who I understand is the developer, when a portion of one video dealt with some reasons for connection errors. In my case, it was because I hadn't selected "PC Direct" on the handset. While this isn't required when driving the mount with Stellarium directly, it turns out that it is if you're using ASCOM. (D'oh!)

Thanks again to all, and clear skies,

Geoff

13 minutes ago, bottletopburly said:

i found my first eqdirect cable gave me more problems ,then i changed it to one that used the fdti chipset  works far better ,more reliable , search the eqmod yahoo group there may be a timeout thread  https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/EQMOD/info .

Thanks. FWIW I joined the EQMOD group yesterday but only just got approved.

That said, Stellarium can directly connect using the same hardware, which suggested to me that the issue is probably the driver or configuration. The cheapest FTDI cable I've found so far costs about £12 -- but if it'll resolve the issue it'll be money well spent.

Thanks again, and clear skies,

Geoff

Just now, belfieldi said:

[...] are you sure that COM Port 5 is still correct? [...]

Thanks again. AFAICT, it's still correct. Device Manager still shows "USB-SERIAL CH340 (COM5)" and if I disconnect ASCOM then re-start Stellarium I can control the mount via COM5.

Clear skies,

Geoff

5 minutes ago, belfieldi said:

Geoff,

I use StellariumScope rather than the Telescope Control Plug-in. You can download a copy from http://welshdragoncomputing.ca/x/index.php/home/stellariumscope/download-stellariumscope.

 

Clear skies

Ian

Thanks, that should solve the issue of how to connect Stellarium to EQMOD. I've bookmarked that link for when I have EQMOD working.

Much appreciated,

Geoff

I'm at my wit's end with this and would appreciate a little help as I guess that I'm missing something simple!

My EQ5 works fine with Stellarium via the Telescope Control Plugin connected directly via COM5. However, I'm trying to set up this mount for guided imaging, and understand that I'll need ASCOM, EQMOD and PHD2 -- so getting EQMOD and ASCOM 'talking' to the mount seems essential.

I've followed the instructions as far as I can in this tutorial, but when I try to connect EQMOD by clicking the ASCOM Connect button in the EQASCOM Toolbox dialog, I get a "Connect Error, Timeout" message (see attached screenshot). I've also attached a screenshot of my driver setup. Although I can't get my EQMOD to connect with my mount, it connects fine with the simulated mount using the same EQMOD Port Details settings.

My machine is Windows 7 Pro (64-bit) and I've installed the following so far:

• ASCOMPlatform63.exe
• EQASCOM_V200i_Setup.exe
• SkyWatcher(6.0.5999)Setup.exe

I noticed that the EQMOD window (the one that shows the error) suggests that my mount is HEQ5/6 rather than EQ5, but I haven't been able to find a more promising candidate.

Also, I'm hoping that an option to connect via ASCOM will appear in the Stellarium Telescope Control Plugin once ASCOM/EQMOD are correctly set up, as I can't find any 'Exernal Software' options in the plugin that don't require a hostname/IP address and TCP port No. So help with this would also be appreciated.

Thanks, Geoff

@Breakintheclouds An excellent, informative article. Many thanks for posting it.