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Tak mount saga continues.


ollypenrice

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Didjya get it going Olly?

I had an EM200 a while back, and suffered a similar fate, turned out to be a plug or cable, and given I had made it myself, I needed to make another. I reckon it will be simple, like always, but help from a dealer that doesn't materialize is annoying.

Hang in there, it will happen.

Gary

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Super support for Olly here I must say. I have an EM200 myself and I was over at Ollys last year scratching my head at this issue.

As he said, its not the program, as we were using Astro Art at the time. I think I even brought over my Shoestring cable and that made no difference. Getting a cheap multimeter will help a huge deal, and with any future issues. Its voltage you should be looking for as stated in the 4 directions. Voltge for both Decs anyway, 1 voltage for one RA, and I guess no voltage at the other, as the mount turns off and lets the earth catch up. (Is that last bit right?)

I would also suggest Tak America (Or Texas Nautical Repair as they go by), they sent me a new EM200 guide electronics box, after an airline decided to break my power switch on my mount, on my to Ollys as it turned out. Thankfully Olly has lots of mounts so I could work. They did a turn around in about a week. I suggest you call them though, e mail can be a bit slow, but once you talk to them, its in the post. I bought froma private seller, and this made no difference, they sorted it out.

Olly can you send us a screen capture of the guide just sitting there tracking off, and then guiding on the bad side?

Oh the continuity test by the way is just touching the wires at each end, and getting a beep if the battery on your multimeter goes from one end to the other. Some multimeters don't have this, but a resistance reading will give you a value in Ohms if there is no break in the line. If there is a break it should read out of range, or O.L. Failing that, after a few beers, you could attached a 9 volt battery to one end of the cables, and lick the other end. You'll know of there is a good connection.

Thanks Tom.

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Thanks Tom. (Nice to see that you want me to electrocute myself! If I buy the beers, will you do it for me?? I know it has to be Duvel...) I don't have a screen grab but it is dead obvious what is happening on the bad side. The Dec trace just drifts, slowly, further and further away and never comes back.

Today I received an entire guide cable system from Pierrot Astro, a one man band who makes them for Takahashi Europe. Hello Takahashi, hello? What planet are we on over there? I very much doubt it will be that but if it is, great. If not it goes back again to Tak Europe unless they give me permission to dismantle the thing and try myself without invalidating the guarantee.

As for Robtics Robtics | Astronomische Instrumenten en Accessoires I have had no reply of any kind to any recent email. SGL ask us to be strictly factual in discussing suppliers so I will be absolutely factual. I feel that never, ever, have I dealt with such an awful outfit, and that is as factual as it gets. I know better than anyone how I feel, after all.

Olly

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9v will only confirm that you're awake. Bit of a zesty taste on the tongue. If you offer me Duvel to help, then I can only give you about 23mins, after that, the Duvel does the talking.

You're right about the fact that its obviously their issue, but just from a, its sitting there in the front garden and not working point of view, I'd have a go at it. Of course there may be a fine line between breaking any warranty and trying to fix it yourself.

If the Dec just drifts then there you go really. I presume its the exact same (the AA4 guiding graph) regardless of the Dec guiding being engaged or not.

As for the screen grab, try a "control + print screen" ie keys together, then open up a word doc and do a paste, or "control + v" that will paste the screen capture into a word doc for easy posting to people and groups.

Also hope to get to France at some stage, I'll call in, maybe we can get some imaging done.

I'll check out that website of robitics, but as far as the dealership goes Texas Nautical Repair are the ones I recommend, although I did have many discussions with Nik tru-tech in the UK over something separate that we resolved, but at least you can reach him by e mail or phone. Seems so ridicoulous to have to go to such lenghts. Is it all lost in translation you think, who is supposed to be supporting what with Tak Europe?

Tom.

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@Ant

It's not the issue here, we where using the manual controls but dec guiding was on. During calibration it tried to calibrate n/z but failed to clear the dec backlash. It is definitely one of the dec directions that is broken either in the mount or in the cable/adaptor ...

Thanks,

Yves

At least that's something ruled out.

Sorry it's not sorted yet - does sound like it might be going back though!

Cheer

Ant

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  • 2 weeks later...

As for Robtics Robtics | Astronomische Instrumenten en Accessoires I have had no reply of any kind to any recent email. SGL ask us to be strictly factual in discussing suppliers so I will be absolutely factual. I feel that never, ever, have I dealt with such an awful outfit, and that is as factual as it gets. I know better than anyone how I feel, after all.Olly

I agree, these guys are cowboys. There are essentially two suppliers in the Netherlands and most of my dealing go to Ganymedes near Amstelveen. Unfortunately, ROBTICS seems to be more popular with the main stream imaging suppliers and therefore I'm forced to use them from time to time.

Factual example; they were trying to sell a 10 year old M300 (Mewlon 300mm) for 16k Euros or best offer!!! at the Mijdrecht Astrophotographer meeting earlier this year and this was the same telescope listed on Ebay and "Te-les-koop" the Dutch site. I can get a new one from Japan for 12M Yen or 10k Euro.

Sorry to hear your experience, I can probably dig up the electrical diagram for the guide port if needed. I got it directly from Starbase in Japan who are the main TAK dealer.

SORRY DIDN"T NOTICE THE AGE OF THIS THREAD - NEVERMIND!!!

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Thanks Neil. I am going to get nasty with Robtics in the very near future. The first thng I'll do is list the response times to emails and the number that have not been replied to at all.

I don't intend to try any resoldering type work myself because it will only mean Tak will refuse to honour the guarantee. Since the mount has never worked properly I regard the gurantee as starting from when it first does so.

Olly

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Hi Olly. I'm coming in late and hope you have found a solution already. If not, it might help you to know the pin-out arrangement of that 6 pin plug/socket if you plan to do any electrical testing.

The SX Lodestar web page shows the pin arrangement for the Tak 6 pin socket (at bottom of the document):

Starlight XPress SXV series cameras Page

I think someone said earlier that guide impulses work by effectively making a connection between the Ground pin and the respective RA+, RA-, Dec+, or Dec- pin. With a meter, it should be fairly easy to test if these connections are being made at the plug pins when you 'push' the RA or Dec nudge buttons on the autoguide program. If you get the correct pattern of made or broken contacts at the pins of the 6 pin plug, then the problem must be at the 6 pin socket itself, or deeper inside the control box.

One other thing: is there a simple push-button control handbox for the mount? Does it give movement on all four axes?

Adrian

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Thanks Neil. I am going to get nasty with Robtics in the very near future. The first thng I'll do is list the response times to emails and the number that have not been replied to at all.

Olly

I once considered ordering a scope from Robtics as they had a very good price. However my email to them which went along the lines of "I want to order the XYZ scope today, is it it stock" went unanswered for over a week.

Called Ian King Imaging, scope shipped in hours. Now there's how to run an astro business! ;)

John

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  • 2 weeks later...

Any new news on this olly?

If you are using the ascom temma driver, you can simply switch to pulse guiding and remove all the guide cables. Select ascom in PHD or Telescope in maxim. It will guide through the ascom link.

I've had the same problem and it was slop in the dec motor gearbox. You can see it using the hand controller and looking at the couplers to the encoders. It will take seconds for DEC to reverse direction where as RA reverses straight away.

Tak in Japan tried to tell me it was normal ?

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Thanks Robin, that's very interesting. I do indeed get the feeling that reversals in DEC take forever, so much so that I was convinced no signal was getting through.

The trouble is, it might have been both the inherent mechanical lag and an intermittent electrical fault in the mount or guide camera.

I have now swtched to TheSky6, a new Lodestar and completely new cables. The first run was pretty good, using 0.5x siderreal guide speed.

One other thing is this; sometimes, when I lock the Dec clutch, there is disturbing play left in Dec. You can 'wiggle' the end of the scope a couple of mm against little resistance. At other times (most of the time) this play disappears entirely and all is well. I'm wonder if this is similar to the slop you had in your Dec motor gearbox? Did you do something about it?

I'm afraid I don't follow you on the pulse guiding through ASCOM. I need to do a Google on this because I've no idea how it all works. Sounds interesting though.

Thanks for your input.

Olly

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Olly, pulse guiding is pretty simple, I use it on all my mounts now, most ascom scope drivers support it. Instead of PHD triggering contacts closing in the guide camera, it sends pulses to the mount motors through the ascom link. Gets rid of another stinking cable :)

I checked my reversing time by putting a small screwdriver in the hole on the encoder coupler and used the hand controller, "AT GUIDE SPEED", to reverse the motor. I had to make a video to get the Japanese to see the problem and send me a motor. There was no movement in dec although I got that once when the 3 screws holding the head on came loose :D

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