EQ6 Pro SynScan - Mind of its own

[johnb]

Hi

wel i set up last night and follwed my normal procedure, polar aglin, balaancing etc. The i follwed the aglinment process and it went down hill from there, I selected Sirus to start with and the scope simply would not go there, its hard to describe but it roated round to a southerly direction but quite simply refused to aim correctly, when i manually attempted to get to move down it went so far the simply stopped and lifted up, as if it thought it was going to hit something, this has never happened before and im really puzzled

John B

[Mikea]

Is it a power supply voltage problem? That would be my guess.

[Euan]

Hi John,

I've had this before and it was that my power supply wasn't a high enough current rating, get something capable of at least 5amps with the EQ6. Also watch out for any cables not connecting properlly, I've seen one start to move then not stop because a control cable had came loose!!

[johnb]

thanks for that, you are of course right, set it up in the house this morning (in the daylight and warmth) and no issues

Let hope tonight is a better one

Cheers

John B

[Astro_Baby]

They can also occasionally throw a hissy fit. Mine did at Salisbury last year. I had to do a flush back to factory settings to get it to work again. Almost as if something in the settings had been corrupted.

[johnb]

Just a random thought, could really poor balancing have caused this, does the eq have any saftey built in ?

John B

[Astro_Baby]

Theres no safety on the mount at all. Even down to polarity protection or fuses for power. You put the wrong power into it and pfffftttt thats it.

But yes thay can be upset by poor balance but not to the extent where they point completely the wrong direction - at least not so far as I have seen.

[SteveP]

John

I had a period with mine when this was routinely happening. For me, it turned out that it wasn't the power supply to the mount but rather the operator's (ie me!) involvement. I got into the habit of putting in the date in UK format rather than US format. It was a lesson well learned. Switching to EQMod now avoids the issue

If it is a power issue, you should notice that the red light fails to maintain a strong, constant light during slewing

Steve

[adamsp123]

Theres no safety on the mount at all. Even down to polarity protection or fuses for power. You put the wrong power into it and pfffftttt thats it.

But yes thay can be upset by poor balance but not to the extent where they point completely the wrong direction - at least not so far as I have seen.

Just amazing, but most mounts don't even have the most basic, ie cost just pennies, safety circuits, or even protective coatings against moisture on the circuit cards, again costs pennies, sort of beggars belief. Of course replacements cost big money, nice big profit in that.

[simon84]

I use my NEQ6 with both mains supply and 12v from my car booster pack. When using the booster I get a solid red light all the time and with the mains pack the red light is intermitent when slewing but its never suffered from a loss of power when moving. The only thing I have notciced on the last couple of occasions when running from the mains is when turning on, the handset dosnt power up. If I turn off and back on again its fine.

The PSU I'm using is a 1200ma that was supplied with the mount from Astro Engineering. Time to stop using that then I guess.

I can also say that I had the problem of using the date in UK format, the old problem of popping the Synscan manual to one side instead of sitting reading through it in my case.