NEQ6 Problems Please help!

[mbalkham]

Last night was the first time out for a while. All went pretty well until I needed to flip. As the mount was slewing (controlled via EQMOD from C2C) it froze and lost connection to the computer. I needed to completely restart the mount and EQMOD (and everything else). I then needed to reset everything (guidecam, mount pointing, camera, etc. etc. etc.) which is a real pain. It's happened to me before too same deal doesn't like slewing across the meridian for some reason. Once up and running on the other side no problems imaging for several hours.

Any ideas?

 

[SteveA]

My immediate reaction and I guess obvious thought is that you may have a dodgy USB connection somewhere, that's assuming you are not actually losing power to the mount. I've found that USB connectors are flakey at the best of times and are a frequent source of issues particularly if you have cables snagging. A big slow like a meridian flip would certainly reveal any snagging cables.

Steve

[darknight]

i used to get this, what i found was as the mount slewed it was the power lead going into the mount, after some time the connection gets a bit wobbly, i used a stick on car wire holder to put a small loop in the cable, so as the mount moved the section going into the socket doesn’t move, hence i got no more problems.

oh yes put the wire holder on the main mount section so it doesnt get snagged

[LightBucket]

Or put one of these on, a two pin power input screw on connector....superb

 

[r3i]

I'd agree about checking cabling, particularly the power cable.  My mount came with a self adhesive clip that helps to hold it in position, see this post: 

 

[mbalkham]

I'm fairly sure it's not an external cable issue. It happens at about the same point in the sky and stops with a jolt & funny noise. I'll try taping the cables to the mount and see if I can recreate the issue.

[triton1]

I had a similar problem with mine new out of the box.After I'd set it up with no weights or ota when slewing in ra it would shut down completely always in the same spot it turned out that the ra was too tight and had backlash which once past a certain point would start to bind up.There were two grub screws each side of the ra housing that needed adjusting and the threaded washer that clamps the bearing slackened off a tad.

[DarkStarLord]

19 hours ago, mbalkham said:

Last night was the first time out for a while. All went pretty well until I needed to flip. As the mount was slewing (controlled via EQMOD from C2C) it froze and lost connection to the computer. I needed to completely restart the mount and EQMOD (and everything else). I then needed to reset everything (guidecam, mount pointing, camera, etc. etc. etc.) which is a real pain. It's happened to me before too same deal doesn't like slewing across the meridian for some reason. Once up and running on the other side no problems imaging for several hours.

Any ideas?

 

When you say froze? Do you mean lights were still on but the mount was unresponsive?  If that's the case then it's probably not a power cable issue, though some strain on the data cable could kill the connection to the PC and mine always needed a hard restart if I dropped connection to the pc unexpectedly, which is always frustrating when everything else needs doing again too, so I feel you pain there.

have you ever been able to run through the full meridian flip process successfully with your rig controlled in that configuration before?

 

Perhaps worth setting the mount up during the day and trying to recreate the crossing the marridian problem. Most gem mounts will be able to go a little way past the meridian then need to flip orientation so you can set the Ascom to automatically carry out the maridian flip, or to conduct it manually. If you have it set to do it automatically and it Froze, or did you command the mount To carry out the flip? If it was set to auto, perhaps turning that to manual try it, if it works, back again to see if it is an issue with the command or not.

 

I may be interpreting this incorrectly though of course, but I would be looking for the route cause, as in, did the the pc drop the connection to the mount and cause it to freeze, or did the mount freeze causing the connection to drop.... either way it's always a bonus if you can work out the issue before the next clear night rather than half way through.

ive had issues before where it was the PhD guide software that was causing the fritz on a scope freeze, causing the connection to drop and the cart du ceil control to time out as unresponsive. I got around that one by changing the order that I connected the two to the POTH in ascom.

If you can recreate the problem it's a lot easier to diagnose, but if you can't reacreate it, then crossing your fingers and a splash of wishful thinking on the chucks always helps keep the problem from coming back.

 

Good luck,

 

Adam

 

[DarkStarLord]

18 hours ago, SteveA said:

My immediate reaction and I guess obvious thought is that you may have a dodgy USB connection somewhere, that's assuming you are not actually losing power to the mount. I've found that USB connectors are flakey at the best of times and are a frequent source of issues particularly if you have cables snagging. A big slow like a meridian flip would certainly reveal any snagging cables.

Steve

I agree a dodgy USB connection is a possibility, and the connection can be flaky in humid conditions especially. having it make a funny noise and at the same point, could well be the snag, snag then jolt. Could also possibly be the auto guider trying to work against the maridian flip for some reason and having a panic... have you ever had those two fight?? Not sure if this would be a cause or not but we are looking for some precision guesswork at the moment  

 

Adam

 

[SkyGibbon]

Had similar issues with az/eq 6. I could recreate it any time while in full slew, I would quickly go in opposite direction and it would jolt, stop and squeal until I powered off the mount or manually moved the offending axis (both did it). Going from a 5.0a to 7.0a power supply solved it. I also went to a thicker gauge power wire to the mount. All is running great afterwards.