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Interesting mount problem and solution.

ollypenrice

By ollypenrice
in Discussions - Mounts

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

Posted
Posted

So two nights ago my normally very well behaved Avalon Linear stopped tracking. In the morning I found that, when replicating a star alignement routine, the mount set off correctly in the right direction but then it died in RA and only continued in Dec.

Humph.

Tried a new handset but that was the same. The mount uses an EQ6 motherboard for which I have a spare so I put that in. It would drive in both RA and Dec but, this time, when heading for an alignment star, only Dec would move leaving RA dead.

Humph and double humph.

So I changed the power supply, not expecting it to be that, based on the logic of the history - but it was that all along. New power supply, perfect behaviour from the mount.

Avalon Linear Fast reverse declared innocent of all blame.

And the moral of this story is... not at all clear!!! Why a faulty power supply would deliver this sequence of problems is, like many things, beyond me.

Olly

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Thalestris24

Thalestris24

Posted
Posted

Hi Olly

Glad you fixed it ok. I don't know what power supply you have but maybe it was a grounding or electrical noise problem. I guess the only way of finding out would be to put the faulty supply back on and troubleshoot it. But maybe that would be tempting fate...

Louise

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Hi Olly

Glad you fixed it ok. I don't know what power supply you have but maybe it was a grounding or electrical noise problem. I guess the only way of finding out would be to put the faulty supply back on and troubleshoot it. But maybe that would be tempting fate...

Louise

At about 5 euros a pop it's going on a trip to the skip!

Yes, I guess electronics are easily confused when undernourished.

The thing is, when fixing things, not to be too logical. I had a dead spark plug on one of the two cylinders on my BMW motorbike once. The electrics had an initial set of components common to both sides then a split into two separate sets of bits, one for each cylinder. Being logical I concentrated on the parts unique to the problem cylinder. In fact it was the points which were common to both. Ho hum.

Olly

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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Assuming for a moment that the RA motor requires more juice (not too weird, as it should be doing more than Dec) it is not too strange that an iffy power supply should affect RA before it would affect Dec.

But first time it affected Dec, not RA. After a change of motherboard it affected RA, not Dec. It is this irrationality which I find curious.

Olly

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sharkmelley

sharkmelley

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What you've described is also quite common on EQ6 mounts.  Last time it happened to me, it caused was an almost broken power cable - just a few unbroken strands carrying all the power and causing a voltage drop when both motors tried to run simultaneously.

Mark

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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What you've described is also quite common on EQ6 mounts.  Last time it happened to me, it caused was an almost broken power cable - just a few unbroken strands carrying all the power and causing a voltage drop when both motors tried to run simultaneously.

Mark

Interesting. It's worth putting this info about, maybe, because it could save folks some faffing about. I should have done the easy swap of power supply before changing the motherboard but the symptoms didn't suggest that to me at first.

Olly

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sharkmelley

sharkmelley

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I think I garbled a sentence! I meant to say "it was caused by an almost broken power cable".

The EQ6 does have a red LED power light.  If it begins to flash, it means the voltage has dropped - that should have been a warning to me.  Does the Avalon Linear have the same thing?

Mark

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ollypenrice

ollypenrice

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I think I garbled a sentence! I meant to say "it was caused by an almost broken power cable".

The EQ6 does have a red LED power light.  If it begins to flash, it means the voltage has dropped - that should have been a warning to me.  Does the Avalon Linear have the same thing?

Mark

The Avalon has the exact same electrical face plate and motherboard a the EQ6 but no, the light wasn't flashing during the malfunction. Odd.

Olly

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Zakalwe

Zakalwe

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Sometines you have to have the skills of a witch doctor to diagnose this type of problem. I once struggle to work out why my old EQ6 was intermittently dropping the connection to EQMOD. Multiple deinstalls and reinstall of the software didn't cure it. A new USB hub didn't sort it. Swapping PCs and laptops didn't sort it. It was eventually found to be a dry solder connection in the EQDIR lead...One of the cables in the serial plug was poorly soldered.

It took a fair bit of head scratching and cussing to find that one!

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Earl

Earl

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Coming back into imaging and having to do a reinstall of ascom 6.1 as something was just been iffy and i had problems which did not make any mechanical sense.....

it looks reliable now and I have move over to Maxim from SGP.... so much to learn.

I solved a manula issue with my dome yesterday which had been puzzling me (a grating noise on part of the rotation caused by a wall which was catching the rear of the shutter as it went past it due to a touch of movement post installation.

I decided to do this as I want to use ACP and need to use maxim to do so, ACP wont be on the cars until the winter season , but i goign to use the summer for getting used to maxim.

Control is all sorted everything is linked up bar the flip flat which is not important to be part of the whole as i can take flats easily enough in a semi manual way until i wish to automate it if i bother tbh as i probably wont.

Todo list:

Refine my PA

Learn how to Guide with Maxim

Learn how to use focusmax.

Learn how to sequence in maxim think i do already but need to confirm)

Well this is the theory.

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Earl

Earl

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Imaging and cussing are blood brothers... Tourette's syndrome comes to mind.  :grin:

Olly

I turn the air blue most nights LOL, silly equipment, silly software and silly user... ;)

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Jonk

Jonk

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Not just linear, but properly regulated.

The SW mounts must have a DC-DC regulator within as they can accept a range of DC voltages (11-15V I think?).

If you have a PSU that's dipping under load (i.e. motors moving), then bin it.

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Earl

Earl

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both my bench psu's supply 13.8v and upto 40amp iirc, I use a 12 to 24v jobby for my mount, as the em400 is quiet slow on 12v slewing, not much faster on 24 to be honest lol

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