JTB

Excellent - thank you I will try this. Is it the same process for the secondary mirror and is there a special way to clean the inside of the OTA? They really is just as filthy! Cheers John

I am just starting out in Astronomy and one of the telescopes I own is a Celestron Astromaster 130EQ OTA that was given to me after being left in a shed for several years. It literally had insects crawling out of it when I picked it up and it is definitely in need of a clean! I am curious to know what method you used to clean the mirror. There are a number of you tube videos showing the use of washing up liquid, cotton wool and a final rinse in distilled water – is this a good method to use? The inside of the tube also needs debris removing from it and I wonder what is the best method to achieve this?

Yes they seem to have done this - but how? If the GPS module is putting out 'standard and proprietary' messages and it worked before the upgrade then, assuming no changes have been made to the GPS module, what is the SynScan firmware now looking for, FROM the SynScan GPS, that other modules do not send? I have seen examples of the message stream from a SynScan GPS on YouTube and they look boringly simple. It would be REALLY helpful to me if one of our members, who has one of these modules, could hook it up, ideally using PuTTY, and record what is now being sent to the SynScan! Cheers John

I agree with you but I do like my 'toys' - And if I can get this working for less than £10 and pass away some daytime hours in this current situation, then it will be worth it to me!

I found a video on YouTube demonstrating the Skywatcher GPS and displaying the 4 general GPS Sentences from it and they 'looked' the same as stanard V2.3 + sentences. I have a couple of old GPS units the both put out V2.2 messages that differ slightly in the GPRMC sentence from V2.3 onwards. Is it possible that the 'cheap' units for sale on eBay still use V2.2 just to keep the price down and it is this that causes the problem? Sorry that I am having to be 'careful' with my spending but it would be REALLY helpfulful to me if someone who has one of these could capture a sample of these messages and determine what Baud rate is being used. This could be done by using software or simply connecting the GPS to a serial port using Putty. I also suspect that they are probably using a higher Baud rate than normal just to make things interesting. John

Not such a bad idea! Assuming that the GPS module puts out the correct messages and at the speed needed by the SynScan, i.e. above NMEA V2.2 4800 baud?, join it to a USB to Serial converter, which should also power the GPS module, and there is a possible fix for less than £20. 'All' I have to do now is make it work!

Thank you. Everything is up to date now and I am still working on getting a 'Generic' GPS to connect to the SynScan! Cheers John

Thanks for the infomation. I tried it again but still no luck - this time. looking at the specs for SynScan it says it used NMEA V3. This has a diiferent message sentence in GPRMC than the NMEA 0183 V2.2 that I am using which I think will cause this problem? V3 is also known as the 'high speed' interface version so I wondered if they are still using the standard baud rate of 4800? After looking a bit more into the menu I have found a GPS option on the SynScan so it looks very likely that this firmware version does support this function. So the 2 things I would like to find out is - 1. Is Synscan Agnostic to the message sentences i.e. do they HAVE to be in NMEA V2.3 or greater or it doesn't care? 2. Does SynScan still use 4800 baud or is it using a high speed? ANY help would be appreciated

Thank you Alan - that is exactly the kind of detail that I was looking for! I (will) have 2 non workers that I have purchased from Astroboot to try and repair. This is partly to try and make a spare unit for my existing handset and partly to keep me occupied during the current world events which look likely to last for at least 12 weeks or more. Looking around the internet the failed or burnt out tantalum cap seems to be mentioned quite often in fault reports. In my trade I normally work on larger sized versions of these components and thankfully tantalum caps do appear very often. The other piece of information that I was looking for was how to identify the package size so a replacement can be easily soldered back into place? Cheers John

Hello Alan. Do you know if the rest of the 106c caps on the board are the same value of 10uf? Presumably they are polarized? but it is not clear to see the polarity in the pictures if they are. Cheers John

Hello Kris, I am trying to hook up a different GPS module other than the Skywatcher GPS Mouse. The cost of the Skywatcher GPS Mouse, in my opinion, is way too high for what it is doing. Did you manage to get a sample of the data that is sent out from the Skywatcher GPS Mouse? I tried hooking up a Garmin to the SynScan but that was not detected either. I would be interested in getting a copy of the data from the Skywatcher GPS Mouse to compare them. I then connected the Garmin to my laptop using a terminal program set at 4800 and collected the standard NMEA 0183 messages which were accompanied with proprietary Garmin messages. After a bit of reading up on NMEA 0183 I discovered that this is quite normal and the proprietary messages are ignored by the device if it is made by someone else - so in theory that shouldn't cause any problems. But, having searching the WEB I found comments that the SynScan had previously worked with standard NMEA 0183 messages and it was only after a later firmware update that it didn't. This makes me think that the Skywatcher GPS Mouse is sending proprietary messages with the standard ones which the SynScan is using to validate that their own device is hooked up and not one that is made by anybody else! Have you made any progress? Kind regards John

Hello, I am very new to Astronomy and with the current 'crisis' I have had a bit of time to look at my setup and decided that adding a GPS to the SynScan controller would be 'simple' and a nice option to have when moving sites. As best as I can make out you need to connect the serial NMEA output of a GPS receiver at 4800 Baud to the input of the controller via the RJ11 connector and configure the handset to accept GPS data. My SynScan AZ V3 handset is hardware version 3.06 and the firmware is 3.39 which I believe should support the GPS option? So before getting the cables made up I plugged the handset into a power source, WITHOUT any other connections, then looked for the GPS options in the menu but I could not find them. Is this because it could not detect any GPS input or is there something about the handset version that doesn't support this option? Is it also possible, using a different interface, to link the GPS to Stellarium running on a laptop? I have looked on the internet and several sites and YouTube videos to find out the above but when I look for the options in Stellarium I was unable to find any. Your assistance would be appreciated!

Yes it was a typo. Thank you for the information - I was concerned that I had missed out on a possible update to this device which I purchased second hand. I am not sure how long it had been since its last download and hopefully this will bring it as up to latest possible version for this device. Thanks for your help. KR John

Hello, I am VERY new to Astronomy and just getting started with my Skywatcher 130 and a Meade EZ80. The Skywatcher 130 has a SynScan V3 that I have updated using the SynScan Firmware Loader 3.3. It currently has hardware version 3.06, Firmware 3.9.10 and Database 3.28. I just wondered where the database updates for the SynScan are found and how are they uploaded? Cheers - John