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EQ6 3.35 Firmware update

philming

By philming
in Discussions - Mounts

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philming

philming

Posted
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Hi all !

Just thought I'd pass the info along. SW just released 3.35 FW update, with all star polar alignment re-implemented.

Please post your comments regarding the polar alignment's and 3 stars alignment's accuracy (any improvement on 3.32 (a catastrophy for 3 stars alignment as far as I'm concerned...)

SynScan Hand Control Firmware (Ver.03.35) Release Note

Date: Apr. 24, 2013

================================================== =============

1) Implemented an all new polar alignment algorithm. The Latitude adjustment and Azimuth adjustment have been split into two steps.

2) New adjustment allow users to set the maximum altitude for a GoTo slewing on equatorial mount.

3) Some bugs were fixed, including: PAE inaccuracy in some regions of the sky, frozen of directional buttons after starting from parked position, and incorrect tracking speed after GoTo at the Moon.

Regards

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PARTY MARTY

PARTY MARTY

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I've just updated all my Syncan hand sets to 3.35v firmware! However it mentions the re-polar alignment menu! However I've just looked through the menus on the Star alignment selection, And it seems re-polar align seems to be missing?

I wonder if the menu is avaliable once you achieve 2 star alignment? I wish the skies clear up so that I can confirm this??

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Merlin66

Merlin66

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I'd like to hear from EQMod users and the use of the latest V3.35 under PCDirect settings.....Are there any "issues" when the buttons on the handcontroller are pressed?? ( V3.27 and V3.32 appear to be OK)

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Smashtie

Smashtie

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I just tried it out, and the polar alignment works a treat! Got me in one shot from 0 degrees 39 minutes out to just under 4 minutes out. Worked after 2 star alignment. One more repeat and it was about an arc minute. It gets you to adjust the alt and az separately, one at a time. I'm very pleased - thanks StarWatcher for looking after your customers, and delivering what you promised.

Merlin66, sorry didn't have time to plug in to the PC tonight.

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Smashtie

Smashtie

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Hah, both very good questions... to which I have no good answers.

Party Marty: 'fraid I didn't look before doing the original alignment, on account of following the instructions in the manual. But it was there when I needed it.

Philming: because you have to get the polar axis to the right angle to open the polar scope (I'm on a HEQ5pro), I very rarely go back and check once I've aligned. Plus you'd have to accurately dial in the date and time again. But I did get the original alignment using the polar scope, so it can't have been particularly far out afterwards, if I understand the maths. Next time I'll have a look see. Perhaps you could use the accurate polar alignment to correct the calibration setting on the polarscope dials?? Is that what you're getting at? And that way get a better first stab at it! Sounds like a good idea.

BTW, my polarscope moment of understanding came when I realised that I needed the set of numbers where 23,22,21 are on the right of the dial looking down from parked, not the other set which are on the left and are for southern hemisphere users apparently. After I worked that out, I found that the "position of polaris in polarscope" reported by the handset, and the position from my dials, were in complete agreement, and then alignment basically worked.

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philming

philming

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I know for a fact that the 3 stars alignment is (or used to be ?) a complete catastrophy.

I'm into imaging, so I used to do a 3 stars alignment before slewing to my target, and it has always been out of my dslr's frame.

So I started doing just a 1 star alignment, and ALLWAYS got the target dead centered on my pictures (by choosing an alignment star as closes as possible to the target).

Now since the polar alignment relies on a 3 star (or 2 stars) alignment, if it is flawed to begin with, I'm quiet skeptical on the accuracy of a PA BASED on the 3 stars alignment...

Question is, is there any electronic compensation on this alignment ? WOULD polaris actually be on the proper location after PA ?

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philming

philming

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Damn it why can't one edit a message here ?

The way I do my PA : I set the reticle on the polarscope so as to have the little circle at 6 o'clock when the mount is beeing parked (did that once for all).

Frome there on, I set the park position as well as I can. This means using a buble thingy to make sure both axis are exactly level, and I set the setting circles to zero at the marks on the mount to be sure I start on the proper position.

I never trusted the polar clock on the EQ6's HC. It has always been off 15 or 20mn when compared to whatever software would give me on my computer (Astro Align) or iPhone (AstroAssist).

So I take the polar hour on my iphone, use the top graduations of the setting circle (northern hemisphere as you put it right), and move the axis accordingly.

I then go through the polarscope routine. Seems to me the right position of polaris should not be exactly on the center of the little circle, but rather tangent to it.

Polaris should be on the inside tangent of the little circle, to compensate for the polaris displacement in time from when those reticles were built.

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Smashtie

Smashtie

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I've also found 3 star to be poor, but always assumed it was my cone error. But haven't tried with this image. However, with 2 star I get the target pretty close to centre frame just about every time.

I get usually around 0.3 - 0.5 degree PA just putting polaris in the middle of the circle, having set my transit time up.

I'd be surprised if Polaris had moved significantly since the reticles were built! Magnetic north is another matter, but that's not relevant to PA (unless you use a compass to start!)

Anyway, I'd be interested to hear how you get on when you get some dark skies!

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rkc

rkc

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I loaded 3.35 today to try out the polar alignment feature - which seems to work reasonably well so long as you are not too far off in the first place. You need to be watching through the eyepiece when it moves the scope away (for you to bring back using the alt and az adjusters) so you can see which way to go, if the alignment star ends up out out your eyepiece.

But I think there is something broken in the new firmware - if you try to select a named star to goto, it just resets to the first named star in the list when you press enter, rather than asking you if you want to go to the start you picked.

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Smashtie

Smashtie

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Here are some tips for what I did. Worked fine on two nights now.

1) Do a rough polar alignment by eye, as usual. Make sure your azimuth adjustment screws are not right up against one end of their range. If they are, rotate the mount a smidgeon just to give you some room to adjust in either direction, and then re-align manually.

2) Do a two star alignment. I use the star I'm going to polar align with later as the second star. This may or may not be a good idea, but it works for me and means less slewing.

3) Find the Polar Aignment menu item. It should be just after 3 star alignment.

4) Pick a star with a clear line of sight. Probably works best with a relatively small declination, so it is not too near Polaris. I've used Arcturus and Procyon. I use a DSLR on my scope for this, because it has a focus box in the middle of the screen which makes it easy to see when the star is as central as possible. An eyepiece with a reticle would also help, but I expect centering my eye would also work OK.

If I was quite a bit off polar alignment the first time, the star wouldn't go back to the middle of the view exactly with each adjustment - it will be off a bit in the other direction. Don't worry - just keep going.

5) Perform a star alignment again. See how you did. If the numbers are still big, repeat.

My best performance so far was about 1 arc minute but 3 arc minutes is easily achieved.

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Smashtie

Smashtie

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Here's an important point to note: once you've done the polar adjustment, your star alignment will be out. The handset doesn't adjust your star alignment to account for the changes you just made to polar alignment (presumably this would be "hard" maths or perhaps even not possible). You have to do another star alignment otherwise your pointing will be lousy. Don't expect to just do the polar adjustment and then start finding targets.

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Aenima

Aenima

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i haven't had chance to test the new firmware since updating the handset but am interested in how well the new PA feature works, especially now it's been fixed. When I do try it I will post any points of interest here for reference.

Does anyone know about the problem reported in the quoted post above with Named stars?(GoTo Named star is quite a useful function, I'd be unhappy if the new firmware couldn't do it)

Due to having recently wrecked my alt block and adj. bolts with constant polar aligning I really need to improve my technique, hopefully the new PA feature will allow accuracy while needing fewest possible adjustments to get there.

ps. The bent bolts were the upgrade ones so even with those the process requires a great deal of care.

Regards

Aenima

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rkc

rkc

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Does anyone know about the problem reported in the quoted post above with Named stars?(GoTo Named star is quite a useful function, I'd be unhappy if the new firmware couldn't do it)

I haven't had a chance to retest since I reported that, and I haven't seen anyone else reporting it anywhere. I wonder if it was refusing to go to named star because it thought I had not yet completed alignment (or that I needed to repeat the alignment having done the polar alignments).

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Aenima

Aenima

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Yeah good point, it does need to be re-star aligned. So far my handset is behaving well since update. The PA feature really has improved - one axis at a time is less trouble and easier to not get wrong, also noticed it doesnt move too far away when de-aligning - as long as the error itself isnt huge to begin with it moves the OTA only a short distance to get its bearings then brings it back (say, in a 12mm EP it should return to edge of FOV if your fortunate).

The polar align works fine with a 2-star alignment which i'm also happy about, sometimes my sky is limited in bright alignment stars due to trees roofs etc. the star selection filter can be used or disabled as needed, and alphabetical or magnitude too. But after PA and re-align my goto has been nice and accurate and thats with a max weight scope on a EQ5 so that bodes well :)

Heres hoping there are clear skies for everyone to test their firmware, :p

Regards

Aenima

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