Jonathan Sabin

Hi Miguel, I guess the question is... did your hand controller not "talk" to your PC when you attempted to make the update? Or when you did it, did it simply overwrite your existing firmware. Looking at the photo you provided of your hand-controller, you have version 4.12... which was the most recent update that was available PRIOR to the recent GPS fix. (version 4.22) If like you said, you attempted this last year, version 4.22 wasn't available then, so you either updated to 4.12 from an even older version, or it simply overwrote the firmware you already had. BTW... my computer is an HP PC desktop that I've had for 10 years. In fact, it's so out-of-date that I was thinking of replacing it in the next few days to take advantage of Florida's "back-to-school tax free weekend!" For step-by-step instructions on how to do the firmware update, there are two resources that I used that were quite helpful. The first is a text-only description of the procedure https://www.nexstarsite.com/OddsNEnds/HCFirmwareUpgradeHowToVersion4.htm and the second link is a Youtube video I found very instructive.... Good luck!

The update is complete... and other than a momentary coronary after seeing my time was off by several hours (scrolling through the menus revealed that the new firmware had reverted my unit's time zone back to PST... which I've now fixed), the date on my CPC1100 controller now reads... 05/21/19! Heck yeah!!

Great news! I haven't updated my CPC1100 hand-controller yet, but I've been checking every single day, and just a few moments ago, I noticed that Celestron released the NXS 4.22 h/c firmware update!! Looks like many of us are back in business!!

I just attempted to update my Celestron CPC1100 (running firmware version NSX 4.12), and it successfully re-installed that version on to the hand-control, but there does not yet appear to be an update that corrects the GPS problem. There are later versions of the firmware that I can download from the web, but the newest one that shows up is version 4.21, and according to the data, it's from February 2012. Unless I mis-read the posts, a couple of you seem to have successfully updated your H/C's with the GPS fix... if so, where did you find the updated firmware?

I had heard there was a patch available for the affected Meade equipment. (I have two 10" LX200s... though I'm somewhat relieved that they're "classics" without GPS!) I wasn't aware that the "fix" came not from Meade, but rather a 'team of amateurs.' Hopefully, there's an equally-capable team of Celestron-owning amateurs working on a patch! ?

>>>The Celestron Firmware guru on the TeamCelestron forum (Celestron beta test) has this to say: Everything dies eventually. <<< What a flippant response! First off, a telescope that originally cost several thousand dollars, and has been well-taken care of, is not an appliance. And even if you think of it that way, the oven that we installed when we built our home 20 years ago is still there--and still used daily. <knocks on wood> Frankly, I'd be ticked off if a $1000 appliance bit the dust after just six years. I own a CPC1100 that I just acquired a couple of months ago. It was kept in near-perfect condition by the original owner, and I've had the opportunity to use it about four times now. The first three times it tracked beautifully, especially after setting it up with a 3-star alignment. This past Saturday however, the tracking seemed to be lousy...and I initially thought it was due to the fact that I set it up with a "solar system" alignment on the moon, since I aligned it prior to sunset. Because of the bad tracking, I tried after sunset four times to do a proper 3-star alignment. After four failed attempts, that's when I started scrolling through the hand-controller menus and discovered the out-of-whack date. Later on that evening, a friend who was with me decided to try looking online to see if he could gain any insight into what was going on, and that's when we found out about the GPS bug. Celestron needs to step up here and be a good "corporate citizen." A response like the one posted above, even if it's not official, makes them look HORRIBLE. ("Well sure you spent six grand with us, but that was six or seven years ago, so you shouldn't expect anything more than a paperweight at this point") I'm not even suggesting that they go out-of-pocket and absorb the entire cost of a fix. I've seen where they've suggested that affected users can buy a new hand-controller, or a new plug-in GPS unit to fix the issue. That's all well and good, but if they were smart, they would offer all affected parties their choice at, say, "Cost plus 10%." If they did that, not only would they not be eating *any* costs from this debacle, they would also avoid the inevitable bad PR they'd start to accumulate if Derek the Firmware Engineer sent out any more flippant e-mails. Just an idea.