Will the EQ5 be a better choice ?

[paul schofield]

11 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Bizarrely you have to read the pdf manual for the Goto kit, not the manual for the mount !

On the Bresser website. 

Michael 

Not really that bizarre when you consider supplied documentation only includes the real basics regarding telescope alignment. The included Bresser documents are ok up to a point but do not contain information regarding something not working or trouble shooting. 

[paul schofield]

9 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

I managed to find it. (I should get a prize).  Reading through this, the directions for the initial Polar Home Position align are a bit vague, but it seems to be the same as for the EQ-5 Synscan cited above. The one star, two star align etc seem to work as for the Synscan.

Oh really, good spot sir. A bit vague indeed. I have read and read it so many times. 

My head is so full of astronomical alignments. But I am taking it all as a learning curve. 

6 hours ago, JOC said:

If you need a ready source of data for your setup try the sysnscan init 2.0 app for your mobile phone and switch on the GPS - this will let you double check the format of all the entered data.  Other things - check your North alignment if part of your setup - use North Pole star north not compass north.  Also try to do the setup with the lightest of all your EP's in the telescope - heavy EP's sometimes unbalance things.  Make sure you finish driving the scope with the recommended two clicks (it might be up and left or something similar - the book should say), check you have entered the correct + or - into the Lat and Long set up and also make sure you have included any leading zeros in the Lat and Log coordinates (I had fun with that one myself), also make sure you have correctly identified the stars you are aligning on (this also caused me all sorts of issues) and check you are entering the correct times in terms of 12 or 24 hour clock times.

Thanks JOC.  Great post and very helpful. I was using my 35mm Aero ED, for alignment, balanced telescope also, but shall keep my rig as light as possible for next attempt. 

+ Or -  is yet another new one for me, the more advice I get from you guys, the more I realise, although I believe I did everything perfectly,, I obviously never. 

Computerised mounts are a whole new ball game for me and the problems I have encountered, (probably not many others have, as I'm a bit behind the times where computers are concerned, ask my work colleagues haha)  I'm surprised they ever took off. 😄 🤔

I can't go wrong with all your points of advice. Really really thank you all.

[Cosmic Geoff]

11 minutes ago, paul schofield said:

Oh really, good spot sir. A bit vague indeed. I have read and read it so many times. 

That's not really the point. Did you polar align the mount and aim the telescope at Polaris (with power off) as the starting point, or did you do something else?

Firther down it says "5: If steps 1 through 4 above were performed with reasonable accuracy, your telescope is now sufficiently well-aligned to Polaris, the North Star, for you to begin making observations. "   which makes their intent clear enough. Particularly with reference to the clearer EQ-5 Synscan instructions which cover the same ground.

Edited March 10, 2020 by Cosmic Geoff

[JOC]

It will either be + or - or East E or West W

[michael8554]

Cornelius has already posted the correct settings from the Bresser manual, so what is the point of these incorrect Skywatcher settings????? 

Please don't confuse the OP with these irelevant comparisons. 

Michael 

Edited March 10, 2020 by michael8554

[JOC]

11 hours ago, michael8554 said:

Cornelius has already posted the correct settings from the Bresser manual, so what is the point of these incorrect Skywatcher settings????? 

Please don't confuse the OP with these irelevant comparisons. 

So he might have done, but sometimes folks miss out on things like making sure these sorts of systems know whether you are East of West and sitting in Dartford very close to the meridian this might be an important consideration.  Most of these automatic systems seem to want to know where folks are and at least the SW app. produces this sort of information in an easy to digest way.  Also, leading zeros are also very important to these lat/long things as is making sure that you are entering degrees in the degrees field, minutes in the minutes field etc.  and that you are entering the right version of the data, when you can enter things like decimal degrees, degrees and decimal minutes etc.    As far as I can see no-one had made these sorts of points and getting the wrong data in the wrong field will certainly cause issues in any automated system.  I cannot honestly see how the referred to Bresser manual is going to know where the user is standing to be able to inform the user as to exactly what values they may need to enter into things and it is very easy to skip over things like E/W and leading zeros until they are pointed out - at least someone point out the date and time order as again that is easy to trip over.  Things like dates and times in the correct format and an exact location are easily obtained from things like the SW app. and I can't see any reason why that information would be wrong for a Bresser telescope.

[michael8554]

If you wanted to be really helpful you could, like Cornelius and myself,  read the Bresser manual, interpreted the chart of settings for major cities around the world, and then make correct statements for the use of E, W, +, - , instead of  " it will be either". 

Judging from the Ops current and previous threads, he is having trouble assimilating the posts. 

So as a result he says 

17 hours ago, paul schofield said:

+ Or -  is yet another new one for me

Please don't confuse matters with generalisations about other mounts. 

Michael 

[Cosmic Geoff]

I suspect that some of us are getting frustrated by the OP's apparent inability to deliver a detailed report of the problem, while the OP is hiding from a barrage of techy messages.

I did not have anything to do this afrernoon other than try to compile the following, namely some simplified instructions for the OP which also suggest what could be going wrong, if in fact there is a tectnical fault.

I downloaded the Startracker instructions and have copied some relevant passages along wih my own notes.  These notes cover the initial setup of the Polar Home Position and a one-star align.

Setting the Polar Home Position1.  (page 8 Level the mount, if necessary, by adjusting the length of the three tripod legs.2.  (etc)
A bit wordy.
 In plain English, Polar Align the mount, then with counterweight and telescope fitted, position the counterweight at its lowest position (over North leg) and the telescope above the mount and pointed at the pole star.  Do all this with the power OFF.  The setup should look like Fig 3a in the Manual.  If you do not start from this position, the following setups will not work.

Skip a lot of stuff to Page 13 "Initializing the Handbox" (sic).
This section makes reasonable sense (to me, at least). Engage the RA and DEC locks before you start, otherwise you will lose your setup as soon as a clutch slips.
It doesn't say exactly how you enter the numbers, (and I have not been able to see what the display actually looks like) but probably you can select number groups with the arrow keys and then enter numbers with the numbered keys (or whatever)
You can skip through the Daylight Saving by pressing Enter (or so I assume) No daylight saving this week.
Location: Cornelius Varley helpfully provided the Lat/Long for Dartford, and I am copying these details here. "Your location co-ordinates should be similar to E000 13 11 , N51 26 38 (the centre of Dartford). "
If this looks too confusing, use the other option and select your town and city. "London" will be good enough for now. Time zone for Dartford (or London) is 00.
This should conclude the data entry and the next step is a sky align.

Make sure the telescope & mount are at the Polar Home Position and the clutches are locked.
Press 1 x the ENTER button to access the main menu and select the menu item „Alignment“. Then press the ENTER button. Different alignment methods to choose from now appear.  Select „One Star“, and then press the Enter button.
Do what it says, I guess. Use One Star to start with as this is the simplest option.  I am assuming that you will recognise the alignment stars and where they are in the sky.  Pick a likely one and press Enter. The telescope should slew to the (first) star.
What's happened now? The mount should have slewed to the star with at least finderscope-field accuracy, but if you did a good job earlier it may be in the main eyepiece field.
Did it work? The next stage is to centre the star using the direction buttons and accept the setting.  

Something wrong? There are various possibilities.  With 'Another Clone Mount,' doing the final centering kicks up a fair racket, despite the slow speed.  So you should be able to hear if the motors are still working.
Your power supply may not be man enough for the job of slewing the loaded mount without developing a glitch.  Are you using the supplied dry cell pack? Maybe those batteries are past it several months after purchase.  Or did you buy them from Poundland? They'll be rubbish.  I made that mistake once. Get a new premium quality set.  

Or did you use one of the popular power packs that work fine with Celestron and Sky-watcher mounts and lots of others? Did you know that the Exos-2 mounts use a different standard of power plug from everyone else? Here: (from the manual) Connection power supply: DC- plug 5.5/2.5mm.
If you try using a power source with the popular 5.5/2.1mm plug the results are going to be unpredictable.

Another possibility is that some cable is getting snagged in the dark as the mount moves, with unpredictable results.

Paul - I hope that some of this helps.

 

Edited March 11, 2020 by Cosmic Geoff

[paul schofield]

Hello again all.  I have almost perfectly polar aligned my mount and start in this position each time.  That is as close as I can get in my polar scope. I shall only be using scope for visual obs.

I am not shying away from any technical information, just getting my head around it all.  And I'm sure when I get a clear night I shall be putting all points into action even if it takes me all night, (yeah who am I kidding) clear all night. 

In closing, thanks all for your replies regarding my troubles getting my system to perform.  I'm 99% sure your advice will get me up and running. 

Thanks Paul.

[paul schofield]

Thank you Geoff. Excellent and informative.  As always forum members have given me great help and advice. Thanks. 

[paul schofield]

Just a quick thanks to all who have helped me with my set up problems. I have finally after almost 2 months got my Exos-2 GoTo mount working, and working well. 

I received so much great advice from you guys, given that I am a total newbie in the GoTo operation side of things. 

As expected my troubles were down to my input's, the main one being, I live at E00 and handset was set at E06. (Obviously I overlooked this) also I live at E00 13.11 but was entering as E13.11.00, yes I know, there is a picture of me in the dictionary next to idiot.

Also as suggested by many,  my slewing speed during star centering was barely moving it seemed, so I increased the speed and it works a treat. 

Thanks for your patience and help.

[JOC]

4 minutes ago, paul schofield said:

As expected my troubles were down to my input's, the main one being, I live at E00 and handset was set at E06. (Obviously I overlooked this) also I live at E00 13.11 but was entering as E13.11.00, yes I know, there is a picture of me in the dictionary next to idiot.

Excellent news - glad you are underway.  I do now feel somewhat mollified about pushing the point about leading zeros and location inputs into these things - sometimes, it seems, the experience of even someone with a Skywatcher scope can be helpful 😉   the thing is I made exactly the same error at one point by missing the leading zeros and it even put out my Skywatcher Goto LOL  Def. a case of been there, seen that, got the T-shirt and washed it!!!  The thing is in the dark a 6 can even look like a zero if you look at it quickly and all sorts of errors creep in.  I think we all know that times will change from night to night and tend to update those, but we tend to rest on the fact that we think the lat and long will be correct from the night before and tend to pay less attention to that - or as least I know I did.

Now you can find things take a look at the ring nebula and the blue snowball when they are next up there - quite amazing!

[Cornelius Varley]

Most problems are caused by user error.