Starssense Failure to read Plate Error issue.

[StarDuke82]

I recently bought a Starsense Autoalign Camera for my Celestron Astrofi telescope last week I successfully ran my first alignment and calibration but when I took it out tonight it continuously failed and I kept getting a message Error Failure to read plate despite it claiming to find over 100 stars.  The mount was level, the lens cap was off and I had the scope plugged into a fully charged power tank and the sky conditions were the same as last week. It’s as if the camera has just malfunctioned, because it’s an astro-fi using the hand controller isn’t an option because when I plug it into the second aux port it fails to function, I’m at a loss at what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

[Shimrod]

On 27/01/2023 at 07:59, StarDuke82 said:

I recently bought a Starsense Autoalign Camera for my Celestron Astrofi telescope last week I successfully ran my first alignment and calibration but when I took it out tonight it continuously failed and I kept getting a message Error Failure to read plate despite it claiming to find over 100 stars.  The mount was level, the lens cap was off and I had the scope plugged into a fully charged power tank and the sky conditions were the same as last week. It’s as if the camera has just malfunctioned, because it’s an astro-fi using the hand controller isn’t an option because when I plug it into the second aux port it fails to function, I’m at a loss at what to do. Any suggestions would be greatly appreciated.

This can happen when the scope is pointing quite a distance from where Starsense seems to think it is pointing. Have you checked date, time are entered correctly and the location has not accidently been changed. Also that the scope was pointing north at the start of alignment?

[StarDuke82]

I have made sure the date and time are correct, and my location is also correct, however I did a manual alignment and calibration the other night on Sirius and it worked correctly after that slewing to whatever celestial object I chose accurately but when I tried to use it tonight it was inaccurate until I did a manual alignment so apparently I will have to do a manual 1 point alignment every time I use it which is a bit inconvenient but still quicker than using the 3 point alignment that I was using before for my computerized scope.