Checking out a used scope

[Miguel1983]

Hi,

this evening i’m going to check out a Celestron Nexstar 11 GPS, according to the current (=second) owner the scope’s production year is somewhere between 2005-2007 . 

Anyone who knows what to look out for ?

Also is there still firmware support for the mount ?

Thanks

[Miguel1983]

Guess there aren’t many Nexstar GPS users ?

anyways, i bought the scope...

[happy-kat]

That's an elegant looking beast, hope you get great views.

[MikeV]

Nebula,

 

In addition to what Celestron has posted on their site you can check out the Nexstar Resource Site firmware page http://www.nexstarsite.com/Firmware.htm  It should have info on what firmware is available for your scope and some tips on how to do the upgrades. I see you have already purchased it but aside from clean optics I would be mostly concerned about the electronics. Run it through the alignment procedure and see how the motors run, if the GPS gets a fix, etc. Bad electronics that are out of warranty can quickly get very expensive to repair.

[garryblueboy]

As MikeV said , they had GPS problems I had one of the early carbon fibre ones great optics but GOTO was hit & miss but if you got it cheap a bargain as the CPC is much better set up and I've seen them go as little as £1450 

[Miguel1983]

Hi all,

since my last post i'm a bit wiser and had the chance to use the scope a couple of times.

I found that my HC is version 4.12 and MC is 4.06, this means the MC is the latest published so i'm good there, but the HC is update-able to 4.21.

I've got the serial to USB cable and followed the procedure as shown in the HCupdate program from Celestron, but it keeps telling me to put the HC in Transmit Data mode by pushing Undo + Info on start-up so i did, but it keeps prompting the same.

The cable works, i've controlled the scope in Stellarium, i've tried an old laptop running an old Windows , i've installed the latest USB to serial firmware, i'm running out of idea's, anyone ?

Anyways, since i have a later HC version, i don't have the GPS Align, instead i've got the "newer" SkyAlign, selecting 3 random bright stars, the procedure is very easy and doesn't take that long.

When finished the GoTo is spot on every time, sometimes just needing to centre the object a little, also the motors are really quiet, silky smooth soft noise without gear cracks, you'd never believe this is a 13 year old scope.

As a bonus this really is a good looking scope wearing that carbon fiber suit like a boss ?

 

[Demonperformer]

That looks like one very impressive scope. Congratulations on your purchase. Glad you are getting on well with the "skyalign" feature.

If you get no joy with an answer to your "update" problem (sorry, no idea) it may be worth trying the Yahoo NexStarGPS Group.

[Cosmic Geoff]

If the GoTo is working fine, why do you want to upgrade it? What problems is the upgrade meant to fix? I would leave well alone unless you actually have a problem.

Engineer's old saw: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

[Miguel1983]

On 4/3/2018 at 13:16, Cosmic Geoff said:

If the GoTo is working fine, why do you want to upgrade it? What problems is the upgrade meant to fix? I would leave well alone unless you actually have a problem.

Engineer's old saw: "If it ain't broke, don't fix it."

I guess you're right, it seem's less and less unlikely i'll be able to sort it out anyway.

[ollypenrice]

The last thing in the world that I'd do to a working scope would be to update the software. Your efforts so far tell you one thing for sure - the update software doesn't work! I'd keep well away from it.

Olly

[Miguel1983]

Someone resurfaced this topic with a like.

Since the start of the topic i've used this scope as stated above and for a while i deforked it and used it on my EQ6-R, but i used it less and less because the EQ6 was being used for AP with a frac so i mounted it back in the fork.

However, a few months back there was the GPS rollover problem, something with the date register that was at his end rendering the internal GPS useless.

A fix was made by Celestron in the form of a new update, so i had to continue my previous efforts to update the HC.

I managed to do this by trying a different USB to RS232 adaptor, everything works like a charm again, really liking this scope 😀

Edited March 13, 2020 by Miguel1983