HEQ5 "loses interest"

[Tinker1947]

May be the PC is playing up, try removing the memory and wipe the contacts with a cleaner (meths) then try again....

[DaveS]

Might try that, though it's a fairly new Dell Vostro laptop, i5 with 6 gig ram. I have another very old laptop, a Dell Inspiron 9400, but it does have 6 USB ports rather than the 4 this one has. Unfortunately the Win XP has been corrupted and will no longer add or remove programs, so the only way I'll be able to use it is if I do a clean install of Win 7 on a new boot drive. I may actually do that though.

[swag72]

Have you tried resetting all COM ports?

[DaveS]

Tried being the operative word.

COM ports only show up when I plug in the EQDir cable. I've tried following the method that I saw when I did a search, the one Paxo suggested, but only the Prolific adapter comes up. When I go into the advanced settings I see ports 1-3 clear, then 4-16 marked as "in use" but cannot see how to clear them. Right clicking on any of the port numbers has no effect.

I'm probably missing something very obvious, but so far I cannot see how to deregister the ports. I'm running Win 7 sp1 BTW.

[swag72]

Does this link help at all?

http://www.digi.com/support/kbase/kbaseresultdetl?id=3308

It was a difficult process even with XP - But it worked.

[DaveS]

Yes, that's what I followed, I found it from your old (2011) thread on the subject. Unfortunately until I plug the EQDir in no ports show up in Device Manager, and when I do only the Prolific USB to Serial adapter shows up, so there are no unused devices to kill.

[swag72]

Do no hidden devices show up?

[DaveS]

Only the Prolific, when I plug it in, until then no ports at all show up, even when I follow the steps, or even run the Command Prompt in administrator mode. I must be missing out something, but what I don't know.

[kookoo_gr]

Check the usb hub cable if it is cut. It has happened to me, also make sure the peripherals make contact at the usb ports. How do you connect your mount to your pc? via the remote or the handset? About two months ago my mount would disconect or gave me a wonky tracking rate. One culprit was the fact that the pins at the mount where the handset connects had dust. I blew it out of the way but the real culprit was the fact that the cables inside the RJ45 plug of the EQDIR adapter i use did not make contact so i had to cut it and punch a new plug. I found it when i slew my mount at various positions and suddenly the slew stopped, that meant that the cable had poor contact at some point.

[DaveS]

I think the problem was the hub. I now have all the main componants on their own laptop sockets. The only thing plugged into a hub is the joystick which pluggs into the Trius

[pyrasanth]

There is an aluminium USB 3 hub made by Satechi with either 4 or more ports. I use the 7 port version. I broke the first ones connectors due to a cable tangle that ripped the port out of the box!

I bought a replacement & cemented extension cables into the hub & sealed all the gaps with mastic. This hub has proved fantastic & has never dropped a connection other than when I blew up the first one with the cable damage. It is also small & compact with nice cosmetics. If your in the market for a new Hub check it out!

http://www.amazon.com/Satechi-Premium-Aluminum-White-MacBook/dp/B00CIY0KUG

It is also reading about the very loose implementation of the USB standard on Wikipedia. You may be unpleasantly surprised that your powered hub does not deliver maximum power to each of the required ports so caveat emptor on that one!

[DaveS]

Ah, I should have updated this.

I now have the mount on its own USB port on its own root hub. Everything else comes off the hub in the Trius camera, which is connected to a USB port on a different root hub.

So far it appears to work.

[Ikonnikov]

Hopefully you'll be fine now but FYI I had a similar problem (sporadic loss of communication between EQ Mod and HEQ5 occurring minutes to hours after start-up) that suddenly began after months of everything being ok and it appears this was down to electrical/hardware issues.

I ended up changing from a linear/unregulated power supply to a  Maplin switched mode/regulated supply and also took a punt and placed a USB optoelectrical isolator (http://uk.mouser.com/ProductDetail/Olimex-Ltd/USB-ISO/?qs=hO3QYTFrOd09eOKVRIujMQ%3D%3D) between the laptop and the EQ Dir cable to guard against electrical ground loops.

At the risk of jinxing myself, the mount has worked fine ever since apart from when I left out the isolator once by accident (in my case it seems both the new PSU and isolator are needed for glitch free operation).

Paul

[michael8554]

I used Macavity's "show hidden devices" trick to clear out all the redundant USB and device duplicates.

Then connected the hub and let it beep and settle down.

Then connected the devices into the hub, one by one, and now I always use the same ports.

I do this step by step procedure every time, may be overkill but doesn't take long.

Michael