EQ8 Electrical problem

[Neil56]

Seasons greetings to all.  I have a Sky-Watcher Eq8 Pro mount with synscan , a bit over 2 years old having had fairly light use ( due to moving house).  This has sadly developed a problem. When all plugged in and switched on the LED on the switch comes on , steady red, no flashing, the hand control lights up, but looks somewhat dim and anaemic and the screen remains blank, there is no initialising, in fact there is no anything other than an orange glow. I have tried the obvious things, I have cleaned contacts, replaced cables etc. No better.

 Reading other posts, it seemed likely that this may be a power supply problem, especially as mine  was somewhat  dodgy and on the end of a very , very long wire.  Santa helpfully provided me with a new regulated switched power supply delivering a steady 13.5 Volts DC  at up to 5 amps.  To try this out I brought the whole thing inside so that there is no longer the long wire, I plug it in full of high hopes and guess what. no change, still nothing on the synscan screen. BU**ER it !! 

Clearly there is a fault in either the hand control or within the mount itself.  Can anyone suggest a way of determining which is at fault ?  I don't want to pay quite a lot to get the mount to a service agent only to find that a replacement hand control would have fixed it.  The handbooks that came with the EQ8 give little information on troubleshooting and what little there is, requires a working connected hand control.

Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

NEIL

[discardedastro]

I'd definitely start with a replacement hand controller, just to rule it out - it's a cheap thing to get and the more up-to-date Synscan controller is probably useful anyway if it's not the problem.

Beyond that, if the mount is drawing much current at idle (>0.5A) then it might be a short or similar, otherwise likely to be a controller issue either internally or externally. If it's external replacing the hand controller will fix it. if it's internal, off to your fave mount service team it is I think!

[ollypenrice]

It might be worth asking on here if a member living near you might be able either to lend you their handset or try yours in their mount. The second option wouldn't require them to be without the use of their mount.

Olly

[Jkulin]

Have you tried plugging the mount direct into your computer and using EQMOD to see if you could control it directly without having to attach the hand control.

[Neil56]

Thank you all for these suggestions, quite why it hadn't occurred to me to try pc control is probably best glossed over !  Always was good at missing the totally obvious.

Thanks again

 

Neil

[gorann]

Another thing you could try is to connect the handset to a computer to update the software. If the handset is defect you would probably notice it when you try to upgrade.