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EQ6-R owners club


mikey2000

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5 hours ago, Vangelis said:

And how do you set up the clutch to slip Stub? Just not tighten it too much. But then the scope moves?????

They just do, I thought mine were faulty and asked earlier in this thread why my clutches wouldn't tighten, and was told they are designed like that to prevent an ham fisted idiot like me from breaking my new mount.👍

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Hi every can i join the group please. Im reletively new to astronomy but have finally got my eqr pro. As with buying anything like this guess what its now raining. Im trying to set it up indoors so when there is good weather i can take Dvantage of it and get straight out there. As i have said im a newbie so some of the things you are writing about i havent got a clue what you are talking about. So if i ask a stupid question then please bare with me. 

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Craig

welcome from a fellow Devonian. You will really like the mount.

Feel feee to ask as many questions as you want and don’t worry if you think they are stupid. I always say the only stupid question is the one you don’t ask. 

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On 28/02/2019 at 20:11, Gareth88 said:

I’m blown away by the accuracy of the mount tbh, think you’re better at polar aligning than myself ha! Here’s mine .. a 49x2 minutes on horseshead 

211364D4-216C-4AB8-953D-2198E4ADB4B4.jpeg

Hey Gareth, do you have a photo of your ed80 on the eq6-r ?  I'm going to buy that exact setup in three weeks 😋 Cheers Ivan

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I'm slightly annoyed that the AZ adjustment bolt has gone wrong on my mount now.

 

Well the, actual bolt that screws into the mount is OK but the spring loaded adjusting handle seems to be made of toffee and the internal stuff has rounded out so it doesn't grip the bolt any more.

 

It's a bit inconventient but a standard 12mm spanner fits exactly and has saved the day quite nicely.  I just wish the springy handle hadn't given up quite so quickly....

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  • 1 month later...

Definitely having some trouble with my EQ6-R; I thought I had guiding issues initially but I'm now thinking that I might have a mount problem.

I set up last night for half an hour or so amongst clouds, so not ideal conditions, but set my guide rates in EQMOD to 0 and let PHD2 guide without being able to influence the mount, so I could get some data. This is a 200PDS plus a Primaluce 60mm guidescope mounted on very solid rings (CNC machined, friction-fit to the guidescope). Imaging for guide is a 120MC at 3.75um pixel size/260mm for ~3"/px.

84906017_2019-08-0708_09_20-Window.thumb.png.8c97b8906d10cdfc6f36647fa911c118.png

This is what I got - obviously a bit in the middle where it lost tracking but RA  just seems to be careening off. I polar aligned with a Polemaster and did a polar drift alignment with PHD2 before I started, which entailed only very minor corrections from the Polemaster alignment. In practice on 2 minute subs I'm seeing this sort of thing, guided - these are from a ASI183MM-PRO at 0.5"/px.

326248101_2019-08-0322_57_33-Window.png.556c998e9cffa8a729c64adbb9038e0d.png

So I'm not sure what to make of this or how to really go about debugging it - any ideas? As far as I know the mount's in good health, I had the scope off it the other week and followed Skywatcher's backlash compensation guidance but this doesn't seem to have changed anything. It's got good power (a Nevada 12V supply off mains) and is in a stable location (solid grass where it's been sat for over a year). DEC looks pretty much perfect with ~1" of wobble unguided...

Any ideas?

 

2019-08-07 08_14_08-PixInsight 1.8.6.png

PHD2_GuideLog_2019-08-06_220852.txt

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To my (untrained) eye that looks to me as if the mount is not tracking in RA at all.

If you do a 'dummy' setup during the day and just have the mount tracking via EQMOD, does it move as expected?

It may be a setting within EQMOD that needs adjusting.......or not being one to point the obvious, you have enabled tracking within EQMOD?  I have made that mistake on more than one occasion.  If you can manually slew the mount in RA then the motors must be working fine and it has to be a control issue somewhere along the way.....

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2 hours ago, Shelster1973 said:

To my (untrained) eye that looks to me as if the mount is not tracking in RA at all.

If you do a 'dummy' setup during the day and just have the mount tracking via EQMOD, does it move as expected?

It may be a setting within EQMOD that needs adjusting.......or not being one to point the obvious, you have enabled tracking within EQMOD?  I have made that mistake on more than one occasion.  If you can manually slew the mount in RA then the motors must be working fine and it has to be a control issue somewhere along the way.....

For some reason I'd never considered that, but I do wonder! However, it doesn't feel quite right - I'd be expecting to see much larger variance, and a quick number-crunching exercise suggests the mount is tracking, just with an average 1.25 arcsecond error per second of RA motion.

1390106997_2019-08-0717_16_12-JupyterLab.png.bda4b4ad5637b82388b5312a94911077.png

Should mention I'm using KStars/Ekos/Indi, so not the usual ASCOM/EQMOD drivers, but the eqmod drivers for INDI.

Edited by discardedastro
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2 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

If you set the pulse guiding rate to 0 then it wont guide at all? It will just track at sidereal. Try setting it to 0.5.

Yes, sorry, I should point out that the pictures were both taken at 0.5, which is what I normally have the pulse guiding rate at - I set it to 0 so I could record in PHD2 what the RA was doing *without* any guiding. My anticipation was to load this into PECPrep but the runaway RA belies something more than just PEC!

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6 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

If you set the pulse guiding rate to 0 then it wont guide at all? It will just track at sidereal. Try setting it to 0.5.

I was just about to jump in with this one.  

A good read on all things guiding with EQMOD can be had here.

I would still set up a non-guided, tracking only dummy run.  Use the setting scale rings to mark a zero point, then head away for a cup of tea, or other beverage of you choice (over 18s may imbibe if desired) and then head back after an hour or two.  If you are tracking ok, then you will have moved.  Not sure of the number, but am sure another user well versed in maths will be bale to provide how many degrees will have moved in 1 hour.  My crap maths says 6 degrees........ but was never good at the numbers

Just read/noticed that you are using KSTARS/ekos/indi.  Do you have a way of using the Windows iteration of EQMOD as a way of ruling out an issue with your current solution?

Edited by Shelster1973
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22 minutes ago, Shelster1973 said:

 

I would still set up a non-guided, tracking only dummy run.  Use the setting scale rings to mark a zero point, then head away for a cup of tea, or other beverage of you choice (over 18s may imbibe if desired) and then head back after an hour or two.  If you are tracking ok, then you will have moved.  Not sure of the number, but am sure another user well versed in maths will be bale to provide how many degrees will have moved in 1 hour.  My crap maths says 6 degrees........ but was never good at the numbers

That is what I did, basically - I just used PHD2 (with mount set to a 0 guiding rate, while tracking sidereal) to record it against a star. Sorry if my explanation wasn't particularly clear above! Also, I think sidereal rate should be ~15 degrees per hour? 15.041'/s, so 15.041*60*60 = 54147.6 arcseconds per hour, 60 arcseconds per arcminute, 60 arcminutes per degree, so you come back to 15.041 degrees per hour.

Edit: I don't have an easy way to use the Windows flavour of things, no. I could just use the Synscan controller (which would definitely just do simple sidereal tracking) and do the same recording exercise, I suppose...

Edited by discardedastro
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Said I was crap at maths.  I was planning on dividing 360 by 24 which gives 15...not sure where i got 6 from...........

Hand controller would be a very good test. Cuts out all of the other parts and would give a true representation of the mount on its own

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Hi discardedastro, 

I see in your two images that star lines are going different directions, I had this problem and I suffered a lot ( RA were not guiding at some points)  it turned out that clutches were not good fixed, they seem always to be solid, try to tighten them more and your problem will be solved. 

Best regards, 

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Well, I'll try the hand controller out. I was doing my last bit of testing just before running off to a festival (any other Cropredy-goers?) so haven't been able to check that yet.

However, I did get one quick test in before I legged it - using PHD2's automatic/guided star-cross test I got only a single line in the output image and the guiding steps (other than West) completed "instantaneously" rather than taking any time,  so I think this is probably software - I just need to dig into what's going on and work out which bit of software is failing to do its thing. Next step I think is to pull the whole rig indoors and do some tests in the evening. Either it's comms between PHD2 and INDI (less likely) or an EQMOD INDI driver setup/configuration issue (which my money's on).

I did tighten the clutches up very thoroughly as I've had issues with clutch slippage in the past. I did have a mount crash early in my ownership of the mount which went unchecked for some minutes, so in the back of my mind there's always the possibility that I've knackered something mechanically; in which case I'll have to strip it all down and replace anything damaged. But mechanical damage wouldn't cause that PHD2 weirdness, so that's still my leading theory.

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On 30/06/2019 at 22:53, mikey2000 said:

I'm slightly annoyed that the AZ adjustment bolt has gone wrong on my mount now.

 

Well the, actual bolt that screws into the mount is OK but the spring loaded adjusting handle seems to be made of toffee and the internal stuff has rounded out so it doesn't grip the bolt any more.

 

It's a bit inconventient but a standard 12mm spanner fits exactly and has saved the day quite nicely.  I just wish the springy handle hadn't given up quite so quickly....

Mine is fine, but also don't like it, they should have put a knob on it like the azimuth bolts, only bigger.

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On 10/08/2019 at 23:47, OJ87 said:

Hi discardedastro, 

I see in your two images that star lines are going different directions, I had this problem and I suffered a lot ( RA were not guiding at some points)  it turned out that clutches were not good fixed, they seem always to be solid, try to tighten them more and your problem will be solved. 

Best regards, 

Clutches might be the answer - I am running 15 kilos of stuff on the mount, and being a Newt it's got plenty of sail area.

I set up a couple of tests in the living room to explore the software tracking issue angle, with no kit on the mount - just a fairly precise marker on the RA axis (scalpel-cut piece of tape to form a nice pointer), set to 0 on the setting circle. I ran the mount for a couple of hours on the hand controller with tracking set to sidereal.

I repeated the same configuration with INDI's EQMOD driver doing the tracking instead but otherwise identical. A quick bit of maths gets me an averaged arcseconds/second value for both configurations. I got answers within 0.5 arcseconds per second of each other, both within 1 arcsecond/second of 15.04. I reckon my measurement precision with the setting circle and pointer is probably +- 2-3 arcseconds/second.

1641203613_2019-08-1822_56_38-Tracking.xlsx-Excel.png.3905b1be6e80097c7094791145606db7.png

I'll repeat the same with the full load on and see how it fares. I could also point a big fan at it for the duration 🙂, but one thing at a time.

Then I think the only thing I can do is wait for clear skies and do two 1-2 hour sessions where I track something nice and high altitude, once with PHD2's guiding output disabled, once with the guiding output enabled, with the clutches very firmly engaged. Recording both should give me a good A/B comparison that will at least tell me if the problem is guiding related or not, and if not, might give me a hint as to what it is with some FFT analysis.

Edited by discardedastro
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21 hours ago, discardedastro said:

Clutches might be the answer - I am running 15 kilos of stuff on the mount, and being a Newt it's got plenty of sail area.

I set up a couple of tests in the living room to explore the software tracking issue angle, with no kit on the mount - just a fairly precise marker on the RA axis (scalpel-cut piece of tape to form a nice pointer), set to 0 on the setting circle. I ran the mount for a couple of hours on the hand controller with tracking set to sidereal.

I repeated the same configuration with INDI's EQMOD driver doing the tracking instead but otherwise identical. A quick bit of maths gets me an averaged arcseconds/second value for both configurations. I got answers within 0.5 arcseconds per second of each other, both within 1 arcsecond/second of 15.04. I reckon my measurement precision with the setting circle and pointer is probably +- 2-3 arcseconds/second.

1641203613_2019-08-1822_56_38-Tracking.xlsx-Excel.png.3905b1be6e80097c7094791145606db7.png

I'll repeat the same with the full load on and see how it fares. I could also point a big fan at it for the duration 🙂, but one thing at a time.

Then I think the only thing I can do is wait for clear skies and do two 1-2 hour sessions where I track something nice and high altitude, once with PHD2's guiding output disabled, once with the guiding output enabled, with the clutches very firmly engaged. Recording both should give me a good A/B comparison that will at least tell me if the problem is guiding related or not, and if not, might give me a hint as to what it is with some FFT analysis.

Hi, 

Looks good. Let me if it worked also for you.

Best regards, 

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4 hours ago, OJ87 said:

 

Looks good. Let me if it worked also for you.

Well, something worked. I did some final fine tuning of the RA/Dec worm offsets, just to be sure that was all happy - still not 100% on that, really, but anyway. I then made the fateful mistake of looking outside, seeing clear skies, and immediately lugging  it all outside!

Polar aligned with Polemaster for starters, re-calculating the mount center axis. First run of PHD2 with guiding disabled showed the runaway RA again - not a good start. Guiding assistant couldn't measure south backlash because it never achieved consistent moves, which makes me think the worm tuning might be a bit tight on dec. Polar alignment also reported being 4-5" off, so I did a PHD2 drift alignment - not averaging for a huge period of time but getting within 1-2', after some very minor moves.

As I write this, I've been guiding for about half an hour with an RMS error of 1" (.8" RA, .62" Dec) on a fairly low target (Heart Nebula in Cassiopeia) using PPEC/ResistSwitch in PHD2. While that's not quite where I want to be, it's a heck of a lot better than prior, and I'm getting some halfway credible frames out at 240s with a 1000mm f/l. I forgot to re-run the guide assistant after polar aligning so I might be able to get some improvements to guiding by running through that again. It's much more consistent than it used to be, though, so I think that getting the backlash out has made a decent difference on that front. This is all still using the INDI/KStars/Ekos stack.

So I think my PA via Polemaster must have been off enough to cause RA issues and I need to practice the art of drift alignment further - here's hoping it's that simple!

Edit: Re-ran guiding assistant and got backlash measured OK:

1407369016_2019-08-1923_54_05-x0vncserver.png.3aa693ff9bffc5a4ba36030a8c6efd47.png

Interestingly, despite having fairly good (I think?) PA, as I ran the assistant RA ran off again, heading off to 6" or so off target...

Edit: Just for completeness, a 5x240s quick cal-align-and-stack in PI from tonight with a 30 second DBE+histo+curves...

heartnebula-test-2019-08-19.thumb.jpg.b0cb499d2f20f22c89d168840c302a46.jpg

Edited by discardedastro
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Sorry for the spam, anyone notified to replies - but thought I'd conclude after a long night of imaging. I've added some Celestron anti-vibration pads to the steel tripod, so had to re-do my PA from scratch; I did a rough PA with the Polemaster which PHD2 static reckoned was >16' out. I then used PHD2's drift alignment mode to align, with estimated error in alt and az over a couple of minutes falling around 1-2'. I re-checked with the guiding assistant and had an estimated error <3'. Last but not least I rotated my tube to set my focuser pointing straight down, towards the counterweights, to help radial balance, and spent a half hour getting the tube balance in RA and Dec as good as I possibly could.

I imaged for about 4 hours last night and guiding was under 1" RMS throughout. The RA tracking did still seem to run away occasionally, but this seems to be completely hidden/fixed by the PPEC in PHD2. Either way, I'm getting sharp images at 0.5"/px, so I'm happy! Moral of the story - take your time and use drift alignment.

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  • 1 month later...

Hi Everyone, another EQ6-R pro owner here, got to say I love the mount, it's a serious upgrade from the EQ3-2 mount with single axis drive I was using before. I'm using mine with a Skywatcher 150P and a 50mm guide scope.

This is the first chance I've had to play around with guiding, plate solving and a bunch of other cool stuff, it really has opened up a whole new world of stuff to tinker with 😀

I've already picked up a couple of new tips from browsing this thread (thanks for that) and noticed a lot of talk about cable connections to the mount.

One thing I haven't seen mentioned (apologies if I've missed it) is that on newer versions of the mount there is an onboard USB-B connection that can be used to connect the mount directly to the guiding computer.

I got my mount in May/June of this year from FLO so I imagine anyone getting a new one from now on in will have the USB port by default, worth asking about it if you are considering buying.

Basically I was able to get the mount hooked up directly to a laptop/raspberry pi running INDI server and EQMOD using an old usb printer cable I had lying around the house. No lynx astro cable required!

Though I'd mention it as it might save someone a few pennies to put towards some other gear instead 👍

Clear Skies

Mark

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  • 3 weeks later...

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