Confused Sky Sensor 2000s

[Richard]

I recently bought two SS2ks, both with a 'personality'.

One has a flat internal battery, which I haven't got round to replacing, but since I have to enter date etc. each time I use I've noticed that it will accept the date, but the day, which is set automatically, is almost always incorrect.

When aligning, possibly as a result of this, it generally misses the first Refstar, but once aligned with this then it finds the second one without fault. The result is a good alignment for fixed targets such as stars and nebulae, but it misses the Moon and planets by a mile. Also, sometimes I'll pick a Refstar, or target once aligned, and it'll tell me that they're below the horizon.

The second one remembers date, time, etc., replaced the battery, but the RA motor, and very occasionally the DEC motor, wander off on their own, intermittently, but on every attempt to align it and/or use it. I've checked the wiring loom and motors, and they're OK, so it is the handset that's misbehaving.

Can anyone suggest what the issues are here, and how they might be fixed? 

Thanks, Richard

[pete_l]

3 hours ago, Richard said:

 the day, which is set automatically, is almost always incorrect.

As an experiment, try entering a date before year 2000. See if that calculates the correct day of week.

[Richard]

Thank you Pete, I did wonder (grasping at straws) was it a pre-2k thing but hadn't thought of your idea, which is an obvious test with hindsight (like many things!). In the meanwhile -

Did some more thinking overnight and the date problem is my own silliness. I've been trying the usual DDMMYY format, then the US MMDDYY format, but not the Japanese YYMMDD. Date problem solved and it now knows the correct day of the week. The default year was 70/01/01 which should have been a clue....

Problem number two still a problem though.... Any help very welcome! 

Edited April 11, 2020 by Richard

[AndrewRrrrrr]

hi

I had some erratic behaviour with my ss2k, it turned out to be intermittent poor connection between the pin inside the 20-way connector block and the ss2k unit. I gently pressed in the metal bits you can see in the connector block to improve the "grip" on the pins. I also fudged up some gorilla tape to hold the block firmly in place in the unit. Since then, no more randomness.

regards

Andrew

 

[skybadger]

I have two of these, Vlad to see you got the date sorted. The erratic motion thing is always about cables, typically the encoder signal is dropping.