EQ5 pro 1st light issues

[jobe]

Hi

decided to get out tonight to my dark site.

i had already set the polar alignment reticule as per Astro Baby's walkthrough.

polar aligned in the little circle and the 2 constallations were where they should be. did all the other bits and bobs and was set to go.

now for some reason when turning on the handset struggles to connect to the motor controller. i get an error message come up. i have to turn it off and on again. this can happen anywhere between 1 and 10 times. each time i fiddle with the leads etc.

when it finally connect i input all the info it asks for and asks about alignment. i always opt for 2 star.

sometimes it will be ok for the 1st star which i always picked Sirius. a couple of times (betelgeuse), it slews to it but wont let me fine tune it. the handset just freezes up. i wait a minute or two but most of the time i have to reset.

Lastly i had got the aligning done, so i goto'd to m42 which it pinpointed very well.

i got my sky at night mag out and picked m58(this is from memory) which is right next to cassiopei. i decided to manually slew to somewhere close before i goto'd. it started slewing and went completely in the wrong direction. it looked like it was pointing 100% the wrong way, at Australia. after this i had more of the above so called it a night.

any ideas what i'm doing wrong?

thanks

Jobe

[Breakintheclouds]

Jobe,

I'm not sure about all your issues, but when a mount points completely the wrong way that's often a sign you've input some of the settings wrong, e.g., you've entered your longitude as East instead of West or entered the date as DD/MM/YY instead of MM/DD/YY. These things are very easily done!

With the other issues, do you know what version of the SynScan software your hand controller has?

[jobe]

Hi BITC

yes i am make sure the day/date goes the correct way. i always remember to do it 'wrong'. i have a sheet of paper with me that has a few notes with all the details on.

again with the lat/long i imput it as 000 40w 53 09n. i live south west of lincoln so am west of GMT

as for the time zone i input +00:00 and daylight saving as 'no'

the hand controller has v 3.2 on it. i haven't updated that yet as i don't have a usb adapter for it.

jobe

[jobe]

guess this is an odd one for sure.

i went out tonight and star aligning seemed to go a lot better.

only had 1 'can't connect to m.c.' maybe the system just needs to be used a little although trying to align to betelgeuse would point way off, like 80deg or thereabouts below the horizon.

the only main problem tonight was the handset would 'turn off'. i'd be busy looking and when i tried to use the handset all the lights would be off. no amount of key pressing would turn it back on.

could the handset be broken in some way?

jobe

[gary1968]

sounds to me like you have either a bad cable or hand set. do you have access to another cable to try it? I believe a cat5 straight through cable would be fine for this.

Gary

[Robertt]

I have the same mount and about the same age and have no problems at all even though I have accidently pulled out the power cable twice the mount then reverted to the opening sequence, I also have the SW goto altAz mount and the only time it went strange is when I tried using cheap batteries.. If your sure of your power supply and the connector ( I used a slim penknife blade to spread the center contact SLIGHTLY) then I feel your Hand Control is at fault , As I believe most of the computing is done in the H.C. unlike the Meade mounts I might add the Latest version is 3.7 for the S.Watcher