martinclayden

I noticed today that the "jaws" on my HEQ5 Pro are not symmetrical - see attached pic; being wider at the bottom than at the top. So a clamped scope might sit squarely on the mount.

Does this matter ?

Martin

1 hour ago, almcl said:

There are two aspects to this.

First, daylight saving time or British Summer Time is in force at the moment, so your  DST should be "yes".  That may take out some of the error but possibly not all of it.

The second part is how accurately the home position is pointing at the pole. PA doesn't affect this, you need to make sure you are as close to the pole as possible looking through the eyepiece or finder when initialising the mount if you want the first goto to be accurate.

OK - I'll set DST on next time.

I'm a bit confused about your second statement though; "as close to the pole as possible" - means Polar aligned I think ? If so, what's the relationship between "home position" and PA ?

Regards

Martin

I've just received a new HEQ5 Pro and discovering it's capabilities.

After a reasonably accurate daytime PA (compass and inclinometer) and mount levelling, I find that the initial slew to an object is consistently off; to the West and South of the object.

I'm a bit uncertain of the setup parameters for time zone and DST - I'm in the UK and entered 0:00 and No respectively.

Has anybody any tips or observations about this please?

Will this resolve after a star alignment?

Thanks

Martin

Recently I've noticed an odd effect when processing Canon 77D .mp4 videos. I've converted a 45 second 50fps .mp4 to .avi using ffmpeg with Autostakkert. When passed through AS! the resulting RGB image has the blue channel misaligned from the red and green! Hopefully this effect is visible in this image - which I've processed a bit to illustrate. As well as being visible around the sunspot (yellow shading bottom left) , the effect is quite visible at the image boundaries. Has anybody any ideas please?

I seem to remember testing calibration with a simulated star - but maybe I've mis remembered 😞

What I don't understand is how mount slewing IS possible from PHD2 via the drift align dialogue, but NOT from the manual control tool.

I'm on v 2.6.9dev4 btw😁

I seem to remember testing calibration with a simulated star - but maybe I've mis remembered 😞

I've just acquired an HEQ5 Pro mount, connected via an EQDIR cable to my laptop.

I've installed the ASCOM platform and installed and connected EQMOD - which is able to slew the mount; either in response to EQMOD control or under instruction from Cartes Du Ciel. All well and good I think.

PHD2 connects to the mount correctly, pulse guiding is set up and I've set the Ascom PulseGuide settings to x0.9 (RA & Dec). For daytime testing I'm using a PHD2 simulator camera. 

BUT PHD2 fails in calibration - "star does not move enough in RA". Calibration steps are 1700ms. PHD2 IS able to move the mount in the draft align dialogue - so the connection is there, but manual control does not seem to move the mount - even at 5000ms pulses.

I'm stuck now - any suggestions are most welcome

Thanks

Ok, I'll give EQMOD and EQDIR cabling a try, thanks for your help

I have a new HEQ-5 Pro mount and I just started using APT (V. 3.87) . I've already downloaded the ASCOM drivers from the Skywatcher website and the ASCOM 6 platform. I am connecting the mount to the laptop through the Synscan hand controller using a USB type B port on the hand controller. When I connect on APT, it says "connected to sky watcher driver, unrecognized model #56". Some control over the mount is possible, but is this error message a problem that needs solving ?

Thanks to all for your replies - I'm a lot clearer now on the options!

1 hour ago, malc-c said:

The options you have, depending on the generation of handset are to connect the mount directly to the computer using an EQDIR cable.  It's advisable to get a genuine EQDIR from FLO or RVO (other retailers also stock them), and then run ASCOM and EQMOD or GGS server under windows as the mount controller and use a planetarium application of your choice, PHD2 and any imaging application.

Or use  a USB cable between the computer and the handset (assuming the handset is the newer generation) and connect the handset in PC-DIRECT mode to the mount.  You can then run ASCOM on a windows machine as described above.

If you have an older version of handset that doesn't have a USB socket, you can use the supplied serial cable, with a bog standard USB to SERIAL adapter (unless you have a really old PC with a DB9 serial port fitted) to do the same as the USB cable on newer handsets. - Place the handset in PC-DIRECT mode to allow communications throughput.

If you want to remotely access the mount, rather than sit by it then you can either remote desktop into a windows based machine controlling the mount as described above, or you can use a Raspberry Pi, and run EKOS and INDI along with LINUX to do the same function as the windows PC.  You will still need some connection such as an EQDIR cable between the Pi and mount.  You would then VNC into the the Pi and control the mount remotely.  Remote access is more suited if you have a permanent set up with a pier or observatory.   

I personally use an old windows PC in my observatory set up.  The mount is connected to the PC via an FTDI based EQDIR cable with EQMOD as the chosen application with ASCOM platform handling the comms between CdC and PHD2.  I remote into the PC from my main PC in the lounge (twin 24" monitors) and perform my imaging sessions form the lounge. - It works for me

Thank you! Very comprehensive. For the time being I'm planning to go down the route of USB into the handset. If that proves to have shortcomings, I'll change to EQMOD/EQDIR method direct to the mount and skip the handset

4 hours ago, Budgie1 said:

 

With option (2) I just connect the USB cable to my laptop, start APT, PHD2 and Carte de Ciel and it connects to the mount & cameras. I have a USB hub on the mount, which everything connects into, then |I have one active USB cable running from the mount to the laptop. I had a new HEQ5 delivered last week and the handset is still wrapped up in the box, never been unpacked.

 

I did not not know that it's a USB port on the hub - so a standard USB cable works in this arrangement (in your case from hub USB A to mount USB B). That's good to know.

I'm trying to understand how to connect a laptop (with PHD2, APT, Stellarium) to a new HEQ5 mount.

I've read of a couple of solutions to this (there may be others)

(1) connect from a laptop USB to the USB B port on the Synscan hand controller. 

(2) connect from a laptop USB to the mount directly, cutting out the HC. This requires an EQmod cable.

Both solutions need Ascom

I do like the first option, but what's the forum's opinion of these approaches.

Tia

Martin