Mesu Mount 200MKII with SiTech software starts slewing by itself about 5 minutes after unparking

[AstroAndy]

Hello Folks

Looks like my mount problems never end.

I have recently acquired a Mesu 200MKII, and while I may not be the brightest bulb in the chandelier, I'm also not the dullest.

So, painstakingly, I set up the SiTech software (ServoII and Sitech.exe, filling in the values I should, leaving alone the values I should leave alone.

I have read all kinds of docs, and worked on this all day, and still can't figure it out.

After I set a park location, and unpark, it tracks for a while, and all of a sudden, starts slewing, up to 360 degrees in RA.

Sometimes, from park, it moves around almost 360 degrees when I perform a go to, to a close star, where it should stay in the same area, slewing just a few degrees.(looks like it goes North when it's supposed to go South).

I am in contact with Lucas, but also wanted to check on here (yes, I read all the Mesu articles, but could find only one article of a similar nature, which didn't cure my problem.

Disclaimer: all my tests have been done indoors, without a scope on it (and a good thing, too, or it would have banged str8 into the tripod).

I set up the park position correctly (slew dec. east / west by hand, select a star close to "horizon", performed the offset init, manually went to park, parked saved the park, and unparked.

Before that, I also removed the previous PXP files, my encoders are set to ignore.

What could be the problem, and, more importantly, the solution?

Regs.

Andy

Edited December 15, 2023 by AstroAndy

[AKB]

So sorry to hear you are having problems.  I've been through some issues recently with my Mesu e200 and, in the end, it needed a whole new servo controller.  I'm sure this isn't the case for your problem – all out failure of the SciTech box is, I'm told, very unusual.  It certainly is, though, a bit of a learning curve compared to others.

When I had problems initially, I was advised by some good folk here to try the Mesu and SciTech boards here:

• https://groups.io/g/Mesu-Mount
• https://groups.io/g/Sitechservo

...where there are some very knowledgeable people, who may well have seen this all before.

Good luck,

Tony

[AstroAndy]

Thanks, Tony, those will come in handy.

Meanwhile, Lucas, all hail to the Mesu Meister, has provided a cfg file, where I just swapped out my data for his (location, etc.) and now it works. I see there are different values on his.

No more stray slews, meridian flip works, and no more slews to the wrong side of the sky.

He promptly worked with me by email(which I didn't expect), and things got straightened out.

50 points to Gryffindor.

However, since I'm a nerd who likes to understand the background of things, I'll keep at it for my own understanding.

Maybe the values I was not supposed to touch were outdated, or something.

 

 

[AKB]

Ah yes, well that is the other way to do it!

I must say that Lucas was very responsive to my issue too, in terms of aiding diagnosis. 

Add another 50 points!

[AstroAndy]

I've been comparing the settings (in different cfg's and also the settings menu (Sitech config) and I see there are some things different than in the setup guide, go figure.

So I'll go through each of them to reproduce this, until I get to the bottom of it.

Then I'll reconfigure with my updated settings, which in turn will rewrite the cfg file.

I'll get a handle on this yet.

Edited December 15, 2023 by AstroAndy