Celestron Nexstar 80GTL Remote

[Kaalbere]

Good evening. I recently got a Celestron Nexstar 80gtl from an estate sale. Everything on the telescope itself I a good, but the remote is not working. I plug it on, and the red LED turns on, but I’m not getting any text displayed on it. What could possibly be the problem, and hopefully the solution?

[Cosmic Geoff]

The problem could be anything from bad connections to a faulty handset.  Since you got it from an estate sale, there is no guarantee that someone hasn't opened it before you and fiddled with the insides.  Are you using an adequate +12v PSU?

You can buy replacement handsets, but i suspect this could cost more than you paid for the whole thing.

[Kaalbere]

5 hours ago, Cosmic Geoff said:

The problem could be anything from bad connections to a faulty handset.  Since you got it from an estate sale, there is no guarantee that someone hasn't opened it before you and fiddled with the insides.  Are you using an adequate +12v PSU?

You can buy replacement handsets, but i suspect this could cost more than you paid for the whole thing.

I’m using the standard power supply it came with. Just 8 AA batteries. Opened the remote up and made sure everything was put into place correctly, still did nothing. Fortunately, I got everything for $60, unfortunately, the remotes I’ve found online have been around $70-$80. Do you think a firmware update could possibly be the issue?

[doublevodka]

Could be a number of things, although I'd suspect power, Celestron mounts are very picky about voltage to say the least.

https://nexstarsite.com/ will be a good resource for you.

Try it with a mains 12v adapter if you can, should be 12v and center postive look for a symbol like this on the adapter (plug config varies per country but you get the idea) - these can be commonly found round the house believe it or not, common devices like broadband routers use them, just be sure to check the voltage and polarity first.

If it's still not powering on correctly then you have at least ruled power out.

 

[Cosmic Geoff]

Premium batteries should work, but I have found that the cheap "8 for £1" batteries are useless. Try a proper power supply if you can.

I have not encountered a case where refreshing the firmware restored an apparently dead handset to life.  I assume you are plugging the handset into the socket marked "Hand Control".  But if you want to try it (which entails buying cable, adaptor and downloading various bits of software) you might at least get an idea of how dead the unit is. 

Does anything happen if you press the R/L/up/down buttons in the middle of the handset?

You could also dismantle the mount base to see if anything is unplugged in there.