PHD / Starshoot / HEQ5 autoguide problem

[Tommohawk]

Hi All.

Yet another thread I'm afraid!! Hope I've posted in the right place.

Just got my Autguide system hooked up as per topic title and I cant seem to get a West response when I go to manual on PHD.

The other directions all respond fine. I wondered if its maybe a slower response cos its in the normal drive direction, but I dont seem to get a peep out of it.

I used the handset to check the actuall position - quite a useful tip for those who are hard of hearing and cant detect the sound changes in the drive - but dont seem to get any difference.

The cable is good - I checked continuity of all wires.

Does anyone have any ideas please?? Is it the software, the camera, or the mount.... or none of the above?

Really grateful for any ideas.

[Owmuchonomy]

Well, I had exactly the same problem. In my case the blue lead had detached itself from the control board in the mount. Soldered it back on and it's fine now.

[Tommohawk]

Oh really?? Was it really exactly the same ie west only failing?

Sorry, I know you said exactly the same but I wanted to be sure before pulling it to bits (again!!)

How did you get to the board - Ive had it to bits to get motors out and fiddle with LED, but whats best access route?

Cheers

Tom

[Tommohawk]

Well, just released the connectors from the PCB and traced the wires from the switch panel. Continuity is good from the cable right up to the connector blocks and onto the main PCB.

Maybe I could check the output voltage on the RJ12/11/wotever on pins 2/3 (ground/west) - that would be a more certain check that a voltage is being sent....... got to do other stuff for a while though!

[Owmuchonomy]

Well, I had exactly the same problem. In my case the blue lead had detached itself from the control board in the mount. Soldered it back on and it's fine now.

There are 5 coloured wires. One common, one for each of the compass points. Blue is West. You just remove the two cross head screws holding the control panel and you can then get to the back of ST4 port.

[Tommohawk]

Hi Chris.

The pin arrangement is very confusing - to me anyhow!! Ive found lots of drawings showing pinouts, but all could be viewed from either back or front and hence be reversed! The manual deffo shows pin 3 as west.

This is helpful - from Shoestring.

It has the colours and the pins:

Pin 1:  Usually not connected, but this may bepower pin on some mounts = white
Pin 2:  Common (ground) = black
Pin 3:  RA+ = red
Pin 4:  Dec+ = green
Pin 5: Dec- = yellow

Pin 6:  RA- = blue

So by this I should be looking at pin3, which is red. No?

Anyhow, when I check for continuity at the PCB end in the main housing, all cables are connecrted apart from the white - which seems correct. but the colours are all over the shop! Totally differnet to the cable.

Anyhow, I dont think this is a miswiring issue cos 3 out of 4 commands work.

So do you think I could check the voltage on the cable and see if the various commands send a measurable voltage? Any idea what I should expect?

Cheers

Tom

[Tommohawk]

OK done some further tests - and looks like I'm in trouble.

Followed this thread and tried shorting the pins 2 to 3,4,5,6 in turn. In fact I used an ammeter to do the short as a double test. And I get a response at the mount on all pins except 3. So looks like a mount problem.

I just bought this HEQ5 a while back second hand and Ive already spent forever on it so this is a real blow.

Can anybody please advise my how I might be able to sort this?

Thanks

[Tommohawk]

It gets better!! I just dismantled the small PCB behind the plugs and discovered - the blue wire has fallen off.

Sorry, did I hear "told you so"?

But for sure this was connected when I checked it cos I noticed it was the only colour that was the same on the ST4 cable as the loom. But too big a coincidence that it happened to fall off as I dismantled it, surely?!

Maybe it was a dodgy joint - enough for continuity but not enough to pass any serious current?  But anyhow this should be RA- ie East, not West so didnt ought to be the problem.

Hmmm. Well time to get out the iron. Will post when I've sorted the join. Havent done any PCB soldering for about 40 years so this should be fun.

[malc-c]

I've just had similar issues and ended up purchasing a new main board, only to find that  I didn't need to as the old board worked, even after days of testing and probing with a DVM.  If you get stuck and need a replacement main board drop me a PM, I have a spare !

[Tommohawk]

Hi Malcolm. Sorry to hear you've had similar woes - so you've left me in suspense - what was the problem? Or is it still not sorted?

First step for me is to solder the wire thats dropped off, though I'm sure it was OK when In tested it so this may be a red herring.

Funnily enough I found one wiring diagram online thats shows the East / West the other way round so that blue ie pin 6 would be west, which agrees with what Chris posted above.  Odd.

[malc-c]

The issue I had was no response what so ever from the mount, as if there was no power getting to it.  Checked power, checked the wiring etc all seemed OK, but still no joy, so I presumed the main board was dead as power was reaching it so I ordered a replacement.  After this was received and tested i connected the old board one last time and it worked !  So i had purchased a new board for nothing, and they are not cheap.

So I've fitted the new board and have the old one as a spare.

[Tommohawk]

The issue I had was no response what so ever from the mount, as if there was no power getting to it.  Checked power, checked the wiring etc all seemed OK, but still no joy, so I presumed the main board was dead as power was reaching it so I ordered a replacement.  After this was received and tested i connected the old board one last time and it worked !  So i had purchased a new board for nothing, and they are not cheap.

So I've fitted the new board and have the old one as a spare.

So I wonder what fixed it? Anyhow, sounds as though theres some demand for new boards - hopefully not from me!! - so you should be able to sell it on.

I'll pm you if it looks like mines gone, but I am getting a response in 3 out of 4 directions, so may just be a loose connection.

Dont suppose anyone out there has a wiring diagram for the MCB please??

[Owmuchonomy]

It gets better!! I just dismantled the small PCB behind the plugs and discovered - the blue wire has fallen off.

Sorry, did I hear "told you so"?

But for sure this was connected when I checked it cos I noticed it was the only colour that was the same on the ST4 cable as the loom. But too big a coincidence that it happened to fall off as I dismantled it, surely?!

Maybe it was a dodgy joint - enough for continuity but not enough to pass any serious current?  But anyhow this should be RA- ie East, not West so didnt ought to be the problem.

Hmmm. Well time to get out the iron. Will post when I've sorted the join. Havent done any PCB soldering for about 40 years so this should be fun.

Would I say 'told you so'? Nooooo. So all I can say from observation and subsequent resolution is that I suffered your woes and using PHD the blue wire corresponds to West. I did start another thread on the abysmal quality of Skywatcher circuitry and it showed I wasn't the only one to suffer. Was yours a dry joint? Quite possibly. The mount design puts an undue strain on the cables linking the ports to the MCB. However, on the plus side, the mount is easy to work on and service.

[Tommohawk]

Well unfortunately I've soldered the blue wire back on and it isnt the problem. Still wont work for West commands.

As I said, I'd checked continuity right up to the board before and it was good, and trying the pin shorting trick from the ground (pin2) to each of pins 3,4,5,6 only failed on one which was pin 3 ie the red (red on the ST4 cable - its actually white on the mount loom) So the blue must have broken loose as I disconnected the panel.

I've taken the main control board out and cant see anything obvously amiss - the tracking is good right up to the chip, after that anything could happen. I checked the motors too best I could and they both have common continuites, soI'm guessing theyre OK

Looks like Malcolm has a board, but I'm not absolutely sure this is the problem. Also, I got the HEQ5 just last month 2nd hand - saved about £100 - but have now spent forever trying to sort it and I'd be truly hacked off if I have to spend more to get it sorted.

If anyone has any bright ideas I'd be very very grateful.

[Skipper Billy]

I would contact the person you bought it from.

If I had sold something that stopped working after a very short period of time then I would want the opportunity to put it right.

Although the vendor might be a little wary now you have dismantled it and been brandishing the soldering iron.

Drop him/her a line and you might be pleasantly surprised??  (You may not be but its worth a try!)

I have bought lots of things on here and UKABS and to a man they have all been decent, honest, reliable, upstanding people to deal with both in the UK and abroad.

[Tommohawk]

I would contact the person you bought it from.

If I had sold something that stopped working after a very short period of time then I would want the opportunity to put it right.

Although the vendor might be a little wary now you have dismantled it and been brandishing the soldering iron.

Drop him/her a line and you might be pleasantly surprised??  (You may not be but its worth a try!)

I have bought lots of things on here and UKABS and to a man they have all been decent, honest, reliable, upstanding people to deal with both in the UK and abroad.

Yep, well thats pretty much what I just sat down to do! I'm sure youre right - I dont think there was any intention to swindle me.

It would help if I could be absolutely sure thet the problem defintiely lies with the board.

[malc-c]

Whilst there are some nice folk out there, I personally feel that asking the seller of a second hand mount to replace a main board at a cost of almost £100 two months after it was sold is being rather cheeky.

If (like me) you have checked continuity of both wiring looms from the main/motor board to the power daughter board, and swapped over both motors to confirm that each one runs OK, but the issues is still the same on the one direction then this too would seem that the main board has developed a fault, which in your case seems to be with one half of the stepper driver chip.

Now I've fitted the new board to my mount, so the old one is going spare.  I would not be looking at swapping them back and offering you the new one at the full retail price, so if you want a replacement board you are welcome to my old board (which was tested and working) for £45 plus £5 postage, or if you want to make the trip to Hertfordshire you are welcome to come round, have a coffee and see the old board working  and pay cash on collection.  Drop me a PM if you want the board and we can sort something out.  I would love to simply offer the board for free, but personal circumstances means I need to get something back to help balance my finances.

[Skipper Billy]

Whilst there are some nice folk out there, I personally feel that asking the seller of a second hand mount to replace a main board at a cost of almost £100 two months after it was sold is being rather cheeky.

If (like me) you have checked continuity of both wiring looms from the main/motor board to the power daughter board, and swapped over both motors to confirm that each one runs OK, but the issues is still the same on the one direction then this too would seem that the main board has developed a fault, which in your case seems to be with one half of the stepper driver chip.

Now I've fitted the new board to my mount, so the old one is going spare.  I would not be looking at swapping them back and offering you the new one at the full retail price, so if you want a replacement board you are welcome to my old board (which was tested and working) for £45 plus £5 postage, or if you want to make the trip to Hertfordshire you are welcome to come round, have a coffee and see the old board working  and pay cash on collection.  Drop me a PM if you want the board and we can sort something out.  I would love to simply offer the board for free, but personal circumstances means I need to get something back to help balance my finances.

I dont see it as cheeky - its giving the vendor chance to have a say. If it had been me that had sold it I would be glad to have the chance to help sort it out and I would at least offer 50% of the repair cost.

[Tommohawk]

Whilst there are some nice folk out there, I personally feel that asking the seller of a second hand mount to replace a main board at a cost of almost £100 two months after it was sold is being rather cheeky.

If (like me) you have checked continuity of both wiring looms from the main/motor board to the power daughter board, and swapped over both motors to confirm that each one runs OK, but the issues is still the same on the one direction then this too would seem that the main board has developed a fault, which in your case seems to be with one half of the stepper driver chip.

Now I've fitted the new board to my mount, so the old one is going spare.  I would not be looking at swapping them back and offering you the new one at the full retail price, so if you want a replacement board you are welcome to my old board (which was tested and working) for £45 plus £5 postage, or if you want to make the trip to Hertfordshire you are welcome to come round, have a coffee and see the old board working  and pay cash on collection.  Drop me a PM if you want the board and we can sort something out.  I would love to simply offer the board for free, but personal circumstances means I need to get something back to help balance my finances.

Hi Malcolm.

Yes I'm reluctant to approach the guy who sold me the mount - I dont think there was intent to defraud, but on the other hand it would be interesting to get his take on it. Maybe he noticed that something was funny, but  wasnt techy enough to investigate. If the autoguide was working in 3 out of 4 directions it would probably have worked passably for AP.

Your offer of the 2nd hand board is very fair - I dont think anyone would expect a freebie!!  The only concern is I dont want to throw good money after bad. That said, Ive already fitted belt drives so total investment is now such that I cant really chuck it away. Everything works in normal tracking, though it does seem to suffer a lot of PE. Both motors drive in both directions so I think they must be OK. I'm just worried that if its something other than the MCB I will be in a pickle. Cant be much else I suppose.

What I think I will do is contact the seller and see what he says. My suggestion would be that he and I split the cost, which I tihnk would seem fair. I bought quite a lot of other stuff from him so hopefully he will be favourably disposed to this.

BTW can you confirm its a Mk2 two board? You may know some Mk1's werent upgradeable and some didnt have LED control. If you know the year of manufacture that would probably do.

Cheers

Tom

[Tommohawk]

I dont see it as cheeky - its giving the vendor chance to have a say. If it had been me that had sold it I would be glad to have the chance to help sort it out and I would at least offer 50% of the repair cost.

Hey you beat me to it!! Great minds.....

[Tommohawk]

OK heres the latest. Malcolm has offered me his old board at a fair price, and the guy who sold me the kit seems happy to split the cost. So hopefully this will sort the ST4 guiding.

Apparently guiding used to work just fine with EQMOD - he'd never used ST4 so unaware of a problem. So yesterday evening, seeing that there was the prospect of clear sky, I had a manic crash course in ASCOM and EQMOD, and I must say I find this interface horrible!! Everone seems to rate it, but I found the interaction between ASCOM and EQMOD and the Toolbox rather unintuitive. Maybe it was just all too much of a rush!

That said, after quite a bit of fiddling around I got it set up sending via the SynScan handset, and the guiding commands from PHD do seem to work OK. I dont know how most folk check this is actually working OK, but I found if I set tracking to sidereal, and then send NSEW commands from the PHD manual control, I could see the Dec or RA mount position changing on the EQMOD window. Changes to RA not easy to see as quite minor, and needed the PHD calibration set to 10000 in order to see this. But a definite repetable result. Parking a complete mystery.

The key problem was that I'd connceted via the SynScan handset, which meant that I couldnt use the hanset commands for star alignment etc or object finding.

So - over to stellarium. But I couldnt make scope control work whatever I did. So I downloaded Carte Du Ciel - and this did work for scope control, but again not very intuitive and loads of little windows all over the place (what exactly is POTH?) so I really dont like it.

If the new board fixes the ST4 I think I'll stick with that - I quite like the handset controlller. If anyone has any bright ideas about getting Stellarium to work I'm all ears!

[malc-c]

Tom,

have you managed to get a new board yet ?

[Tommohawk]

Latest update. Whislt awaiting a replacement MCB I had crash course part 2 in EQMOD, Stellarium, and PHD. Upshot is:

After downloading Stellarium Scope Control I got the scope controliong just fine. So although later version of Stellarium are supposed not to need separtate Scope Control I would advise it for anyone struggling with this.

After struggling with PHD, I found PHD2 works much better. The gamma control is way better making it much easier to visualise potential guide stars. Still learning, and seem to need very long calibration step - 1500ms - but it is a short scope so maybe thats why. I get RA and Dec RMA figures averaging 0.2 which I gather is pretty good.

Certainly the subs I've achieved way exceed anything I could do unguided (chorus of "I told You So") I can use pretty much every sub whereas previously 75% were rubbish.

No 1 tip - its really hard to find a guide star with the guide scope lens cap on.

I also found I could use the Handset fine controls to re-align an object if it wasnt quite spot on centre. Not sure why this I had full slew speed first time I tried. Then CTRL +3 to realign Stellarium - neat.

Malcolm - although I would have preferred to sort the MCB so that I have the option of ST4 guiding, I really cant imagine it being any better than EQMOD so am happy to stay as I am I think.

Had a go at Iris Nebula - quite a lot of moon though - but not bad for unmodded camera and limited number of exposures. About 20 x 2 mins I think at ISO800 See below.

Also had a bash last night at Cats Eye Nebula (NGC6543) - about 15 x 3 minute subs at ISO800 - and got..... Zip/Zilch/Nada/Not a sausage.  Could see NGC 6552 OK but no sign of target. Interesting. I guess its a tricky one, and maybe I need to fiddle with ISO. Or get a bigger scope. (Yes, yes, Olly, or CCD!)

[malc-c]

Tom,

Have to agree, PHD2 and EQMOD are a great combo for guiding, I never used the ST4 cable / port so can't compare, but as EQMOD and PHD2 guiding ain't broke I won't fix it

That's a good image considering the conditions - I mean it doesn't get astronomically dark this time of year.

As for connection with the telescope, I know you like Stellarium, but there are other applications, such as winstars2, and C2A.  both of which used ASCOM to connect to EQMOD and drive the scope.  Worth having a look at

[chrisshillito]

I also found I could use the Handset fine controls to re-align an object if it wasnt quite spot on centre. Not sure why this I had full slew speed first time I tried.

Best not to do that and to leave the handset well alone if using EQMOD otherwise you have two different 'master's attempting to command/control the mount simultaneously - something EQMOD (and most likely the handset and mount) are not designed for. For nudging the mount around under EQMOD control a gamepad is the most popular method.

Chris.