8SE alignment problem

[JonnyK]

I've had my 8SE a few months now and have so far been very happy using the 3 star alignment (only a handful of times I've had to do it twice and that was down to me rushing). My daughters school are having a stargazing event tonight and have asked parents to bring telescopes, so I've been and bought a maplin 'power tank' (jump starter) and thought i had better test it, so out I went last night.

I went through the 3 star align as per normal with success, I put in Jupiter and the scope went 180 degrees out? It looked like the elevation was correct but but the scope was pointing North instead of south.

I thought perhaps the power tank was supply a strange voltage, so I tried it on mains power with the same result. Unfortunately I had very little time last night so couldn't perform a factory reset but I just wondered if anyone has had a similar experience?

[jambouk]

Are you starting it up with all the kit pointing north?

In the worse case scenario, even if it does this tonight, you could manually slew it to jupiter and if it didn't track correctly, just re centre every 60 seconds or so.

It seems an odd thing to blame on the power, unless it temporarily lost power and reset - did that happen?

Jd

[JonnyK]

I've never started the alignment process with it pointing North, seems very odd. I thought maybe a strange voltage from the power pack might cause some strange issue but I've ruled that out with trying it on mains power with the same results. It's not temporary loss of power, I had that originally with the dodgy jacks they supply but when that happens you lose all alignment and have to start again.

[x6gas]

I'm not familiar with the SE platform as my Celestron mounts are both GEMs but I have had the software chuck a wobbly before in pretty much the same way you describe.  It needed a factory reset and after that has been fine.  I don't think it was to do with power, but I could be wrong...

[JonnyK]

Yeah I'll reset it tonight and see if that works like jambouk said I can just slew manually for tonight if it won't play nicely

[ronin]

I had a Meade that one night - like you at an event - decided that it was on an Equitorial mount and not an Alt/Az one anymore.

Couldn't locate the Setup Option in the menu to change mount types at the place, gave up, threw it in the car and hit Reset the next day when I had time. Never trusted the damn thing since.

Little option then to check all the data and see if anything i odd, or reset and supply it all again.

The other is to sit and try to recall if when setting it up you missed something, it is easy to do when you are at an event as you tend to want to get the thing up and running as soon as possible and so something can get missed, forgotten or done wrong.

I assume the school was close ehough not to require new coordinates.

[JonnyK]

I was just testing the new power pack last night, the event is tonight. The school is only 10 miles away so shouldn't need to change the location but I'll try a reset and re-enter all the data. It's typical it's done it the night before I'm taking it out to an event!

Although looking at the weather a dodgy mount might be the least of my worries

[jambouk]

Good luck.

[SteMo]

I had a very similar problem with a 6SE. I had updated the hand controller firmware and it all seemed OK but after every align it powered off in weird directions every time I tried to get it to point at something. Eventually I tracked the problem down to an error in the the firmware upgrade. It had installed the wrong software. I attempted to reinstall four times and on the first 3 attempts it again installed the wrong version, the fourth attempt succeeded. After that every align has been perfect.