Goto handset power keeps going off

[bcfcciderhead]

Had a horrible night last (and it was clear), got stellarium and eqmod set up on a new laptop and got it all talking to the mount during the day and was working great, nice and happy.

So when night come out I went, powered everything up and away to go, all working ok but I needed to align the scope better, so parked scope and used the handset to do a 2star alignment, so switched off and started from fresh,

Aligned the first star then as it was near the position of the second the power would go off handset dead, turn back on and start all over again, this happened a handful of times and if I did get it aligned and ready to go it would go off at any time.

Sometimes if I touched anyone of the cables it would come back on, then once on I would wiggle the cables (check if loose) but all seemed fine and would stay on.

I thought it could be a power supply issue, so I changed from the mains to the power tank but still done it, used this power tank many times before with no issues.

The mains I'm using is a maplins 12v car supply plugged into 240v, been ok only now started to have problems,

Do these handsets suffer from the cold? Wouldn't have thought so.

Also sometimes some of the buttons don't at first work,

S o I'm thinking faulty handset, any way to test?

Any help would be great

[Cornelius Varley]

The usual cause of this is a dodgy connection between the power socket on the mount and the cable.

[bcfcciderhead]

That's the one that turns it back on if I touch it, so I thought the same.

But when it is on and I play with that cable nothing happens it's fine

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[Dark Sky]

My dad has just had similar issues with his handset. He tried everything you have aswell as trying different cables .the bloke at the local astronomy shop tried it on his mounts too but no joy. He had to buy a new handset, I think it was 140 quid

[brucen]

The AZ GOTO mount needs a longer plug than other mounts - I got mine from FLO.   

http://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/skytron-power-supply-cable-for-skywatcher-celestron-mounts.html 

[lensman57]

Had a horrible night last (and it was clear), got stellarium and eqmod set up on a new laptop and got it all talking to the mount during the day and was working great, nice and happy.

So when night come out I went, powered everything up and away to go, all working ok but I needed to align the scope better, so parked scope and used the handset to do a 2star alignment, so switched off and started from fresh,

Aligned the first star then as it was near the position of the second the power would go off handset dead, turn back on and start all over again, this happened a handful of times and if I did get it aligned and ready to go it would go off at any time.

Sometimes if I touched anyone of the cables it would come back on, then once on I would wiggle the cables (check if loose) but all seemed fine and would stay on.

I thought it could be a power supply issue, so I changed from the mains to the power tank but still done it, used this power tank many times before with no issues.

The mains I'm using is a maplins 12v car supply plugged into 240v, been ok only now started to have problems,

Do these handsets suffer from the cold? Wouldn't have thought so.

Also sometimes some of the buttons don't at first work,

S o I'm thinking faulty handset, any way to test?

Any help would be great

 First try and run it with a power tank ( fully charged up ) and see if it works. Flash the hand set and apply the fix for the handset reading higher voltage ( SW site , firmware upgrade ) and I hope that it works for you. I had a similar issue while trying to use a Maplin's 12V DC supply, the big black metal one, and the handset would loose the alignment and kept restting itself mid alignment, I resorted back to the power tank and it has been ok since, touch wood.

Regards,

A.G

[davefrance]

Could it be a dodgy fuse?

[bcfcciderhead]

Thanks for the reply's guys, tried power tank and still the same, it's only just started to do it.

Been in touch with skywatcher today and a EQ controller and the AZ/ALT controller have the same hardware as long as the "synscan" writing under the LCD display is in gold, so can be flashed for both mounts.

So will try this.

Just to confirm as we'll the sockets at the bottom of both controllers are the same and the cables from my EQ5 mount fit.

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