HEQ5 AstroEQ

[wormix]

Evening all,

Just wondering if anyone has successfully AstroEQ’d a non goto HEQ5? And if so, how well does it work and how simple was the process?

Cheers

[almcl]

Not an HEQ5, but I did do my EQ5. Still use it.  If you can obtain/make the brackets, acquire the belts and pulleys and appropriate stepper motors, it's all pretty straight forward. 

I had some trouble with the  RJ11 cables and their sockets, so eventually hard wired the motor cables to the pcb, but that may well have been down to the quality of the cables.

Tom's support was excellent.

[joe aguiar]

I have do goto a lxd75 back in around 2008 or so and just put dual axis drives.

And I just did it again 2 weeks ago again with a lxd75 I just picked used for 300.

Sometimes goto just take longer and more issues to deal with. Sometimes simpler is easyier 

Joejaguar 

[PaulE54]

As almcl, I astroEQ'd my EQ5, and I also still use it.  There are suppliers who will 3d print the brackets. Motors, pulleys and belts all still available along with lots of online resource. I also had problems with RJ11 cables but touch wood OK now. I found setting the motor current drive limits correctly with a multimeter is pretty key, but easy to do. And really don't unplug the RJ11 cables with the AstroEQ powered up, you will destroy the motor drive boards. I wonder how I know that? If you do fry a board, get the proper Polulu replacements, they are readily available and cheap. Just plug in. 

Have fun.

Paul

[johneta]

I also did Astro EQ with an EQ5.

I made a post about hardware/software choices I made, if its any help.