If it could go wrong, it did… help needed ☹️

[Newforestgimp]

First clear night in months and it was a total disaster.

Spent hours trying to polar align & achieve focus, got there eventually, ran a few test exposures waiting for the nights intended target to come into view and then inexplicably decided I need to check the battery status and hit the wrong button & powered it off inadvertently whilst everything was running!!!!!
Then the real fun and games started with a mount totally out of whack,I tried to park it and it crashed into the pier  I’m just hoping to god I haven’t mullered it !!!

I managed to get manual control back on the mount but I couldnt get it to park correctly and it crashed into the pier AGAIN !!!!!

once again regained manual control, released the clutches, moved scope to weights down and scope pointing north and then reset the zero position. Manual movement tested again and then returned to zero position automatically. I was literally too scared to try and park the mount.

Have I busted it ?
Do I need to use the handset to reset park/zero position ?

Is there an emergency stop button so I don’t have to frantically hit The manual STOP and wait for it to stop eventually, whilst watching it collide with the pier ?

So Pi55ed off with myself right now 🤬

the mount in question is iOptron GEM45

on a positive note the guiding until disaster struck was incredible 🤪

Regards

Andy

[Adreneline]

54 minutes ago, Newforestgimp said:

the mount in question is iOptron GEM45

54 minutes ago, Newforestgimp said:

Have I busted it ?

Not sure it is any consolation but I have driven my CEM25-EC into the mount - twice! - when attempting to use Astroberry - sounded terrible but no harm was done.

Not sure I will be able to help, but it might help others help you if you tell us what you were using to control the mount.

I now use an ASIair and it works perfectly all the time - I decided there was a fundamental mis-match between Astroberry and my CEM25-EC that I was never going to get sorted.

Hope someone is able to help you.

Adrian

[Newforestgimp]

8 minutes ago, Adreneline said:

Not sure it is any consolation but I have driven my CEM25-EC into the mount - twice! - when attempting to use Astroberry - sounded terrible but no harm was done.

Not sure I will be able to help, but it might help others help you if you tell us what you were using to control the mount.

I now use an ASIair and it works perfectly all the time - I decided there was a fundamental mis-match between Astroberry and my CEM25-EC that I was never going to get sorted.

Hope someone is able to help you.

Adrian

Thanks Adrian, that sounds like my experience last night, horrible to watch and hear. I’m hoping the fact I can manually power the mount around via laptop and commander that I’ve gotten away with it ?

As for control I was using laptop and APT until everything went south and I then reverted to Ioptron commander on the laptop.

I might try using the handset as if it was fresh out of the box and try setting park position on that.

Andy

[Adreneline]

1 minute ago, Newforestgimp said:

Thanks Adrian, that sounds like my experience last night, horrible to watch and hear. I’m hoping the fact I can manually power the mount around via laptop and commander that I’ve gotten away with it ?

As for control I was using laptop and APT until everything went south and I then reverted to Ioptron commander on the laptop.

I might try using the handset as if it was fresh out of the box and try setting park position on that.

Andy

Hello Andy.

Hopefully no harm has been done.

After my two encounters with the mount I decided to recalibrate the encoders in the mount as mine is the EC version.

When I first got the mount I used Commander with SGPro and it always worked a treat - I just wanted to get away from a PC at the mount. I've used the handset to define/set the zero position - that also works very well.

Fingers crossed you get it all sorted.

Adrian