Could it be done......

[Shelster1973]

After my EQ6R-Pro threw a wobbler a few weeks back, I have been pondering...and there is nothing more dangerous than an engineer who ponders with time on his hands.

When I had the side off the mount to see if there was anything obvious wrong, I noticed that there are empty sockets on the mother board for fitting encoders (pics are here)

Now...what I am wondering is....is it possible to aftermarket fit encoders and home position sensors to the mount?  If so, which ones do I use and where do I fit them?  Have been doing some Googling to see if you can get the encoders for other SkyWatcher mounts as spare parts, but have yet to find anything.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

don't bother,  PHD2 forum perceived wisdom, is that they are disabled while guiding, as they interfere with the process. I leave mine permanently off.....

[Shelster1973]

Cheers for the info Ju-ju...........

but it still leaves the question of could it be done.......not should it be done.....I told you under tasked engineers are a dangerous thing

[symmetal]

The AZ-EQ6 has a ring of very finely engraved lines on each axis which the encoders use to detect the movement. You can see the Dec encoder ring under the puck if you remove the puck. it looks like a black ring but looking very closely you can see it actually has very fine closely spaced radial lines on it, about 5 lines per millimetre. If the rings aren't there on yours you'd have to create something similar to get the resolution required along with the opto-coupler to read them. Not worth the effort I would think.  If your just imaging with the mount and use plate solving, they don't really serve much purpose.

Alan

[Dr_Ju_ju]

It can always be done, its' just whether it's worth the effort in doing it.....

As well as the physical hardware, does the software that is loaded onto the mount capable of recognising any encoders that are connected ??

[vlaiv]

2 hours ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

It can always be done, its' just whether it's worth the effort in doing it.....

As well as the physical hardware, does the software that is loaded onto the mount capable of recognising any encoders that are connected ??

Why would software need to recognize encoders at all?

Encoders should be considered similar / superior to PEC. Guiding and PEC can work together, so can guiding and encoders. Guiding will take care of any discrepancy of internal clock to sidereal rate, atmospheric refraction effects that cause apparent change in star positions, etc ... while encoders will ensure that PE has minimum p2p.

[symmetal]

Posted by mistake.

[wimvb]

On 02/04/2019 at 17:21, Dr_Ju_ju said:

As well as the physical hardware, does the software that is loaded onto the mount capable of recognising any encoders that are connected ??

My thoughts too. Just because the encoder are connected and powered up, doesn't mean that they will be read by the mounts firmware. The firmware of the mount probably doesn't even have encoder capabilities.

And btw, the encoders in the AZ-EQ6 don't have high enough resolution to correct tracking errors. Their resolution is 3.4 arcminutes.