SW EQ 5 pro , Firmware 3.35 alignment failure. WHY?

[lensman57]

Hi,

I spent over 2 hours last night, really I wasted two hours of imaging time, dealing with the mount that would not accept the alignment. It constantly kept saying, to check the time and location, aligment failed. All the parameters were correct, I have been imaging with this mount for the past 6 months. I wonder if something is gone wrong with the board, as it first aligned with no problem, the problem started after the first round of the polar alignment routine and the following 3 star alignment, the mount stopped and reset itself, it then found the home position correctly but would not align with the first alignment star way off. I wonder if anyone else has experienced this problem. I got around it in the end by setting the date to yesterday's and did a one star alignment on vega and it accepted it. I eventually started imaging the Western Veil at about 12.45 am, about two hours later than I should have and with not enough imaging time left so the job was half done.

One more point regarding the new SW polar alignment routine for the EQ5, as long as the intial polar alignment is good the SW polar alignment is not worth a damn as the ALT and AZ adjustments on the EQ5 are extremely crude the corrections are not repeatable.

Regards,

A.G

[astrosathya]

I have the Firmware V3.35 in my handset that I updated from V3.27 about a couple months back. I have successfully completed the polar alignment routine and it works fine. Maybe you could try reflashing the handset again? I know it sounds cliched, but worth a try.

[lensman57]

I have the Firmware V3.35 in my handset that I updated from V3.27 about a couple months back. I have successfully completed the polar alignment routine and it works fine. Maybe you could try reflashing the handset again? I know it sounds cliched, but worth a try.

Hi,

I have done the polar alignment routine every time that I have set the mount up for imaging, there has been no problem with it. I don't think that the problem is with the polar alignment as far as my mount is concerned. It looks as if the memory on board or something has malfunctioned. At the end of the evening last night it set itself up in the wrong home position too, some 40 degreees to the east, I may reflash the handset and see what happenes.

Regards,

A.G