Sky-Watcher AZ GTI tracking

[Stu]

22 minutes ago, ZBOYD said:

Hopefully they continue to develop the app further, and also tie in better support for app's such as SkySafari.

I raised this issue on the SkySafari forum and I believe it is on their list of things to address ie single device use for iOS. They are a small team though and can only do so much at once. I think the SkySafari guys, quite rightly, feel that Skywatcher should have talked to them first!

[Space_Plane]

Hi @ZBOYD, mind if I ask what tube rings you're using with the 72 EDR?  I have the same scope, and have never been 100% sure what ones would work!

Would love to get my hands on the AZ GTi when its back in stock, and these would certainly help.

Cheers!

[ZBOYD]

Hi @Space_Plane 

The 72EDR scope's external diameter is approx 87mm. I got a set of TS-Optics 90mm tube rings from Teleskop-Express.

Obviously just fitting the scope as it is supplied would be too slack to grip, so I got some self-adhesive neoprene 3-4mm thick rubber insulation tape from Amazon, 10mm wide.  Amazon Link - Neoprene Rubber Self Adhesive Strip 10MM Wide X 4MM Thick X 5M That's one example but there are loads of different manufacturers, thickness widths and lengths.

I stuck the tape to the inside of the tube rings, and this created a good snug grip to the scope's body without marking the scope in anyway, as the rubber deforms it creates a really solid grip. 

Hope this helps.

 

 

Edited April 25, 2018 by ZBOYD

[Space_Plane]

Hi @ZBOYD,

Thanks very much indeed for the detailed info & photos, it's exceptionally helpful! 

I'll certainly be looking into this asap. 

Clear skies! 

[AdeKing]

On 24/04/2018 at 19:05, ZBOYD said:

This perplexed me the other day too,  but Ive since discovered that SkyWatcher have put a new App on the Apple AppStore (can’t confirm whether its the same for Android) it’s called SynScan Pro where as the original and first app is just SynScan.

The Pro version is still free,  but has extra options for users deemed Pro, which includes solar tracking etc

Solar tracking can be found under Advanced > Advanced Settings > Observe Sun. You then need to switch it on and it gives you the standard solar safety warning a maths problem to solve before it unlocks the solar tracking. 

Hope this helps ?

I'm not sure whether I'm being stupid or not (always a possibility), but I tried to put the AZ Gti into solar tracking mode at the weekend and failed miserably.

I have an Android phone (Samsung Galaxy A5) and found the solar tracking option as set out in the box above.  However, when it got to the answering the maths question, I could find no way of inputting an answer.  No numerical keyboard pops up, could not get a cursor to appear in the answer box, I even tried writing the answer in the box on screen with my finger and that didn't work either.

The standard tracking was not too bad, but the disc moved through the FOV over the course of about 10 minutes or so.  Mount had been carefully levelled before starting.  I'm just curious to know how you enter the answer to the maths puzzle after the standard solar warning message.

In the end I plugged in a Synscan handset and set it into solar tracking mode that way.

Can anyone tell me what I have missed?

Ade 

[AdeKing]

I had a quick play around with the Synscan Pro app on the phone during lunch today, and found that it was still not working despite clearing space and rebooting the phone.

In the end I uninstalled then re-installed and now I'm able to enable solar tracking as clicking on the box brings up a numerical keyboard.

It definitely didn't do this at the weekend or during lunch so I guess that it must've just been one of those things.

Ade

 

[Stu]

Glad you got it sorted Ade. I use a SynScan handset and GPS mouse because of the iOS/SkySafari issues but as you point out, sometimes having the keypad connected can be handy.

[Henrique Coelho]

Developing the app is good idea and very welcome. But I think Goto performance should be at least acceptable.

So far I could not get it to align and slew to targets within the FOV. It´s always out.
Sometimes, by far.

I am using a Camera on a L Bracket. Camera is connected to a Notebook using USB. I use Astrophotography tools to align through its doubled crosshairs and magnification of 10x.

I´ll try the Pro version with firmware update in Eq mode and see if that helps.

 

 

[SpaceBass]

3 minutes ago, Henrique Coelho said:

So far I could not get it to align and slew to targets within the FOV. It´s always out.

have you considered contacting the retailer for repair, replacement or refund?

[Henrique Coelho]

On 11/09/2018 at 10:50, SpaceBass said:

have you considered contacting the retailer for repair, replacement or refund?

One thing that I´m still to do is to update to firmware 3.12.
Maybe this error gets sorted out.
I´ll try before returning to vendor.

The list of fixes in 3.12 firmware is big:
 

• Use a new format to save alignment data.
• Fixed problem where app caused third party app using compass/tilt to malfunction
• Updated AZ tracking algorithm
• On Android: can save diagnostic log in Settings > Diagnostics menu
• Improved connection error reporting
• Fixed a crash involving hibernate
• Allow setting SynScan Wi-Fi's 2.4G channel
• Sync encoder: made more accurate and allow performing on mount without aux encoder.

•  

 

[nm1213]

The firmware (latest is 3.13) won’t solve the problem.  The tracking issue in AZ is fixed in the latest Synscan (1.10).  Updating both together makes sense though.  

[knobby]

Old thread but heads up, the Android app has just been updated.

[Spoonerisms]

On 07/02/2018 at 02:10, osbourne one-nil said:

Last night I simply moved it about by hand and watched the coordinates on the app (and on Sky Safari) change....or not change as it happens. When I then tightened the clamps up again, and tried goto, the alignment had obviously gone. I know the manual says you can turn off freedom find if you're never going to use it, to increase goto accuracy, so I suspect that might be what's happened here. I just can't find the setting anywhere to turn it back on!

I have this same problem and haven't been able to solve it... have you figured out a solution?

So far I've tried:

1. uninstalling and reinstalling the app (both regular and pro versions)
2. restarting the phone
3. restarting the mount
4. re-reading the az-gti directions
5. searching the internet (this was one of the few discussions on this issue!)

I'm wondering if our mounts are defective... or if this is a known bug that hasn't been fixed... or if it's some unique bug just between our phones and the app (I use a Samsung Galaxy S8+.... is that what you use?).

 

 

[fireballxl5]

Have you tried enabling the auxillary encoder, the setting is in the Settings menu. It seems that this isn't enabled by default. I've found that enabling this greatly improves goto function accuracy and reliability.

[Spoonerisms]

16 minutes ago, fireballxl5 said:

Have you tried enabling the auxillary encoder, the setting is in the Settings menu. It seems that this isn't enabled by default. I've found that enabling this greatly improves goto function accuracy and reliability.

Thx! That was what I needed to do!

[miscat]

Something / things about the mount don't seem to make sense.

I expect that in alt az mode when tracking that both axes will be working to keep the object centered (depending on where in the sky). 

I expect that in eq mode, with a wedge and imperfect polar alignment, that having told the system that the alignment stars are not where it thought they were that it would have to use both axes to keep an object centered.

What I find, and you can do this in your living room, is  if you align on a star and tell it that it is way out and then look at how the axes are moving it's only the RA axis that's moving. It's always like that.

In practice, with stars, if I align on 3 stars with imperfect polar alignment then the system goes to stars really well (oddly misses things like the moon!). The stars are centered but the stars trail because only one axis is being used.

This makes no sense! It is demonstrating that it knows how it is orientated relative to the sky but doesn't use that info to track.

The upshot is that the tracking ability seems to be dependent on a good poplar alignment, despite it being able to demonstrate that it doesn't need that.

It's really odd. Is it really odd?

 

[michael8554]

On 09/02/2020 at 20:08, miscat said:

I expect that in eq mode, with a wedge and imperfect polar alignment, that having told the system that the alignment stars are not where it thought they were that it would have to use both axes to keep an object centered.

EQ mounts never move in Dec to track an object, they assume that PA is perfect, so the mount only needs to move in RA.

Nothing to do with the accuracy or lack of in the Star Alignment.

Michael

[miscat]

On 20/02/2020 at 23:36, michael8554 said:

EQ mounts never move in Dec to track an object, they assume that PA is perfect, so the mount only needs to move in RA.

Nothing to do with the accuracy or lack of in the Star Alignment.

Michael

Indeed Skywatcher confirm that it does just use the RA axis as if it were a dumb mount. They could tweak the DEC axis but have evidently decided to make the user do an accurate polar alignment.

Issue closed!

[wormix]

I have just been imaging Mars with my new az gti and have to say I’m very disappointed with the tracking in az mode. I could manage ~1 min before Mars moved out of frame. 
 

Am I expecting too much as I was using an ASI120MC on an ETX125 (nearly 2000mm focal length) so tiny fov?  
 

Also, could this just be a backlash issue that I can sort out through software does anyone know?  
 

ta

[wormix]

Thinking about it (now I’ve packed everything away) - could it have been poor balancing?  The mount was making a noise which suggests it’s doing something....

[wormix]

Ok, beginning to think this was user error. 
 

One of the beauties of this mount is it’s so quick to set up and get running so I thought I would try a few things. 
 

Aligned straight away and it’s now had Mars sitting in the centre of a 5mm BST for the past 20mins.

Next imaging session will be the next test. 

[Robin B]

Hi folks, new user on Stargazer'sLounge,

Could you do me a favour and take a look at a daytime video capture which shows, what I think, is a gear problem in my AZ GTi.
I ordered a Skymax-127 + AZ GTi on 12th October and so far I've had only a couple of evenings to use it. The slow supply from China and strong demand in the UK is the reason for the initial delay so I don't blame the supplier. The weather was pretty poor as it has for many of us in the UK. On my first evening I was getting to grips with Synscan Pro App and trying to do some alignment. I kept finding that doing GOTOs back to objects that I had aligned was not working very accurately. By my next evening with some visibility I had done much more reading about people's issues and things to take care over, this time I  was still finding that just hoping between say Moon, Mars Capella was not very accurate, but I spent more time just looking at the moon with the supplied eyepieces and using the fine-adjustment on the Synscan App. I noticed that the tracking was quite "lumpy" - It was as if the telescope was being touched. I wanted to take this up with the supplier because I was getting convinced this was probably a gear issue and it would explain the inaccurate GOTOs.

I thought a video would be worth a lot of words, so in the next cloudy evenings I got the ZWO camera out and had a play on my desk and got FireCapture working on my laptop. By the weekend the weather was still poor, so I decided to setup the telescope in the daytime and do some "tracking" whilst pointing at a daytime target. 
** I'd love to have your opinions on the motion that you see in this short (50 sec) video ** .
https://youtu.be/EK9MFdRJl5E

I turned the mount on when it was pointed north-level. Then I slewed it to point south-east, to point to a neighbour's roof ridge. I then turned on siderial-rate tracking. I was not touching the scope at all. All the "bouncing" is the tracking. The video starts and ends with a short period of tracking turned off (there's no edited freeze frame!) and there was no significant breeze. The clutches were tight. The scope was carefully balanced. The view is of the left top of the roof ridge of a neighbour's house over the back. Once the video is playing you are not really sure what you are looking at unless you know!

Although I haven't had a scope for over 40 years I'm fairly competent with techie things. I've had the mount working as a hotspot and on the home WiFi, without issues, I just paid attention to details. I've had a Raspberry Pi running Astroberry and getting that talking to the AZ GTi and getting it to move whilst sitting on a cork mat on my desk ('cos it was foul outside)  ...so I can follow instructions!

The response from the supplier to my video was "Our engineer would like to have the mount back to check it here for you". That was 7th Dec.  A return was very swiftly organised, it was collected the same day. That was impressive! 

The less impressive aspect was that I made and sent the email on Saturday 28th November, so it took a week (and a chase email) to get to the point of asking for the return (a week where I at least got playing with Astroberry) - I've heard nothing since.

I respect the fact that Covid is playing havoc with supply chains and that people are perhaps not able to work in their usual environments, so I don't want to name names at the moment, but I would really appreciate some experienced people's feedback on the motion which they see in my video. Because the whole thing was brand-new I really didn't want to start disassembling and making internal adjustments. A year down the line I might have, if something seemed to have started to develop, but this is brand new.  I've owned this scope and had about 3 hours use so far and I have little idea what's going to happen next. I hope that after all the wait I'm going to get a replacement AZ GTi and not be told "no fault found".

Final question: would owners of this mount confirm that the EL-clutch is nice and smooth and progressive in use, but the AZ-clutch is still quite stiff, even when slackened? I thought the small knob for controlling the AZ-clutch had a very unconvincing feel. Too many turns to tighten and too many to loosen. It's as if there is an enormous dead-band between tight and a bit slack.

 

Edited December 15, 2020 by Robin B
Add image

[david_taurus83]

That tracking looks rough. Something not right there. I had one for a while and used it successfully for imaging in EQ mode. They have their limitations but mine certainly wasn't like that. I did open mine up as the azimuth axis had a rough spot which felt too stiff when turned by hand. I added grease where I felt it needed it to both axis and it was fine afterwards. Hope yours is an easy fix!

[knobby]

Definitely a problem there 👍🏻

My guess would be the screw that adjusts the worm tensioner movent is just too tight so the worm is held away slightly allowing it to jump teeth occasionally.

Easy fix if it is that though.

Info on YouTube.

Edited December 14, 2020 by knobby

[Adam J]

7 hours ago, Robin B said:

Hi folks, new user on Stargazer'sLounge,

Could you do me a favour and take a look at a daytime video capture which shows, what I think, is a gear problem in my AZ GTi.

 

Looks like something is binding in the drive, easy to adjust it if you know what your doing. Something just a little too tight and its binding then jumping.

I have one on order and I fully expect to have to tune it out of the box.

If you got it from FLO let them fix it for sure, done get a replacement as its just as likely to need adjusting. The AZ GTI is great when you give it a little attention from what I can tell but the QC is horrible.

Adam

Edited December 15, 2020 by Adam J