Setting up Meade LXD75

[Adam1234]

Hi All, looking for some advice, hopefully someone can help. 

I've just bought a second hand Meade LXD75 as I wanted to upgrade to an Eq mount. It's a few years old but never been used as it was an unwanted Christmas present.

The setup comes with the Meade Autostar hand controller and a battery pack which uses 8 D-type batteries to power the mount.

Would it be safe to use my Synscan hand controller and Celestron powertank that I use with my Skywatcher Dob instead of the supplied hand controller and battery pack or do I have to use these? 

I don't find the hand controller as intuitive as the Synscan and I don't want to keep buying batteries, but I also don't want to use the wrong equipment in case I mess up the electronics in the mount!

 

Thanks in advance

Adam

 

[Cornelius Varley]

The powertank will work, but you will probably need a new lead for it. Celestron and Skywatcher use a 2.1mm power socket at the mount, whereas Meade normally use a 2.5mm. The Synscan handset won't work with the Meade LXD75 mount.

[Adam1234]

Thanks! The guy I bought it off put in new batteries so will use those for the time being.

 

Just been having a play around with it indoors, getting used to the hand controller menus etc.

I'm not sure the declination motor is working? The RA motor is working fine, it moves when I press the left/right arrows, but the dec axis is not moving at all when I press up/down and if I go into the align menus and pretend to do a star alignment, it moves on the RA axis and then comes up with a motor drive failure?

[joe aguiar]

buy recharchable battiers that what I have done with 12"lx90/8se/6se/lxd75/lxd85 

I have never bought or used a power tank and I have NEVER run outta power either.

good rechargeable battiers are not cheap I paid $20 for 2 3500ma but they probally last 5 to 10 years before getting weak.

joejaguar

[joe aguiar]

ops for got to memtion ya the skywatcher hand controller wont work with this mount they make it to only fit their own equipment. BUT I do like the lxd75 mount its a pretty decent mount.

joejaguar

[Adam1234]

6 minutes ago, joe aguiar said:

ops for got to memtion ya the skywatcher hand controller wont work with this mount they make it to only fit their own equipment. BUT I do like the lxd75 mount its a pretty decent mount.

joejaguar

Rechargable batteries is a good idea.

I didn't think the synscan would work but thought I'd check just in case! 

Now to try to get the declination motor working...

[michael8554]

Possible causes of no Dec movement:

Dec clutch not locked. 🙂

Faulty cable or plug to Dec motor 

Low volts under load. 

Finally, get in touch with the previous owner !! 

Michael 

[Adam1234]

13 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Possible causes of no Dec movement:

Dec clutch not locked. 🙂

Faulty cable or plug to Dec motor 

Low volts under load. 

Finally, get in touch with the previous owner !! 

Michael 

Dec clutch is definitely locked, so it's probably another cause. What do you mean by 'low volts under load'? Contacting the previous owner probably won't be much use as they never used it - they got it as a gift but wasn't interested in astronomy.

Is there a way I can identify what the cause is? I have found a place near to me in Clanfield that does telescope repairs so I can contact them, probably not a good idea for me to tinker around with it as I don't know much about electronics.

[Davey-T]

21 minutes ago, Adam1234 said:

Is there a way I can identify what the cause is? I have found a place near to me in Clanfield that does telescope repairs so I can contact them, probably not a good idea for me to tinker around with it as I don't know much about electronics.

Good idea, needs somebody with a multi meter to do a bit of trouble shooting, see if any power is getting to the motor for starters then work back.

Dave

[joe aguiar]

Worst case is u can turn that into a fully manual mount, if the goto messed up even for parts like the motor or hand controller would get u some money.

Alot of  gotos u cant turn it to a fully into a manual mount BUT in this case u can.

U can take out both motors drive and cog wheels put on slow motion controls and there u go. I have done this in the past and u can then sell the motors gear hand controller etc.

Several yrs ago I did that and got a decent amount for it if I can remember correctly maybe $299 for all that.

For someone who has any cg5/ eq5 they can convert that to a fully goto system for still less than half the price.

Consider if u buy a skywatcher eq5 goto mount that's $1200 b4 taxes that's almost $1400.

A brand new sw manual eq5 is 550 b4 tax so $600 then plus 299 if u did this would still only be $900 . A savings of $500 and if u get a used eq5 mount then it will be even cheaper.

In the summer I sold an older synta eq5 probably 12 yrs old maybe even up to 15 yrs. It had the aluminium tripod so it was the first or 2nd generation models. I had for long time. Anyway I sold it for $220.

I am just doing this again with my lxd mount and putting dual axis drives to it altho now being several yrs later I may only get $200 for the hc motors and drives. 

Joejaguar 

Edited December 31, 2019 by joe aguiar

[michael8554]

11 hours ago, Adam1234 said:

What do you mean by 'low volts under load'?

If you've ever started a car on a freezing morning with a battery fully charged, after a few seconds of cranking the motor, the load has dragged the battery down to 10V.

It recovers to normal volts after the cranking stops.

In the case of your mount, the load caused by slewing might drop your battery volts to a level the mount complains about.

When you stop slewing and measure the volts all seems fine.......

Michael

[Adam1234]

1 hour ago, michael8554 said:

If you've ever started a car on a freezing morning with a battery fully charged, after a few seconds of cranking the motor, the load has dragged the battery down to 10V.

It recovers to normal volts after the cranking stops.

In the case of your mount, the load caused by slewing might drop your battery volts to a level the mount complains about.

When you stop slewing and measure the volts all seems fine.......

Michael

I don't have a car, but I think I know what  you mean

[Adam1234]

Well good news all, I decided I had nothing to lose by taking the dec motor off and having a look inside to see if anything obvious was standing out.

Turned out there was a connection with these 2 pins on the board that was rather loose (should have taken a picture for reference in case it's useful for anyone else who may have had a similar issue, didn't think at the time). 

Anyway,  I pushed the pins in properly, and hey presto, the motor now works!!!!

[joe aguiar]

good news then

joejaguar