First light Celestron Starsense

[robulaic]

Finally the weather gods allowed me a night out after getting this neat gadget. The build quality of the parts seems quite good. The new HC has more text on the display and allows manual scrolling through text. The cable is still short, that would be my one gripe.

Ok on to the interesting parts. Scope was a C9.25 on a Cgem dx (autoguiding issues solved with help from fellow IISers)

After doing an autoalign you can then slew to any bright star. Press align and centre the star in your scope. The SS saves this so you only need to do it again when you change scope. After doing this, you power down the mount and move it back to park. Then you can do an autoalign. After taking 4 images you're good to go. Total time including the initial setup was under 10 minutes.

So at full focal length and with the starlight xpress H694 I slewed to Cent A galaxy. Bang on the chip, not perfectly centred, but considering the chip size I would be the last to complain.

I often struggle with alignment as my views are limited in the urban backyard. This item did exactly what it says on the tin. One of the few times that I've bought something that's delivered that.

[C8er]

Hi Robert,

Good to hear yours worked fine first up. I tried my newly unboxed unit last night (Bay of Plenty) and had all kinds of problems and couldnt even get a successful first align on one mount (CG-5 Eq), and on another mount (8SE Alt-Az) couldn't get it to slew to a named star to do the initial camera-ota calibrate after the first auto align said it had finished successfully.

I was thinking there may be a general southern hemisphere problem with the units but your experience indicates that isn't the case at least, which is good news.

Details of my very frustrating experience last night are below. I've tried to think what I may have entered wrong that could have led to the problems but I can't spot anything so far. If you spot anything in my description below that I may be doing wrong that can put me right I'd appreciate it. We may have a few cloudy nights in a row now which will probably delay my next attempts.

I at first thought I had managed to get my brand new starsense autoalign accessory to do a successful initial auto align tonight on an 8SE alt-az mount. At first glance it did it apparently successfully as it certainly said it had done a successful align, but from there on I found problems that stopped me calibrating the camera to the OTA as the align actually seemed to be anything but correct and I couldnt go to any named stars to use for the calibrate process.

The short version of my unit's symptoms on the SE mount are that on the first align I entered my position in deg/min/sec of long and latitude for my southern hemisphere location(long east and lat south), entered the time and date (date would only take and display a two digit YY year rather than the four digit YYY year the manual says it takes) etc, did the initial auto align which said it had completed successfully, but when I went to choose a named star to do the first calibrate of the unit to the OTA after the first autoalign, many of the stars listed were below the horizon for me, and many stars above my horizon were not on the list (on later equally unsuccessful attempts I changed the slew limits to 90 and 0 from the defaults of 70 and 10 before doing the align). Then when I started to investigate I could see that after the align process the HC/unit had changed my entered location data (yes I know that sounds very weird but I have photos of what I entered and what was there after the align) and now showed my latitude as North, not the South value that I had entered before starting the align. As well as it changing it to north the actual latitude numbers had also changed as well, but only slightly, perhaps by the amount the camera is misaligned to the ota.

If I tried to goto any star after the supposedly succesful align the ota seemed to want to point somewhere around 180 degrees away from the actual position of the star and I had to stop the slews as the OTA of course tried to crash into the mount as it pointed downwards, or in one case the OTA tried to flip itself right over backwards, going up and backwards through the zenith.

I repeated the process several times with the same result, including after doing a reset to default settings on the hc and a reset of the ais camera and starting again, several times.

After repeated attempts, to check I hadn't entered something wrong, I found I am also getting occasional lock ups during attempted autoaligns which seem very similar to the lockups reported by one northern hemisphere user. Hitting the back key seems to get past the lockups mostly, but in one case it didn't and I had to power the unit off and start again.

I also tried the unit on my CG-5 mount (with the new aux port splitter) and I had different problems there that also stopped me even getting a successful initial autoalign. On that mount any attempt at an autoalign would only point at one area of sky (it would always slew the OTA left and up from my home position and point to the SE) where the sky is obscured by trees, and wouldnt go and try a different area even after several minutes of the unit slewing around and retrying in the same general area (on the SE mount it would move around over large areas od the sky during the same autoalign process but on the CG-5 it seems to just look in that SE quadrant and not want to move from that region of sky). I then tried a manual starsense align in areas of clear sky (measuring around 21.2 to 21.3 on my Unihedron SQM) on the CG-5 mount and the unit/camera wouldn't find any stars after acquring an image and sensing despite it looking at the same areas of sky it found stars in when connected to the SE mount. It didnt say too few stars, it just went from saying "acquiring image" then "sensing" to asking me to move the mount to another position, time and time again. This was quite a different seeming set of problems from what I had on the 8SE mount, but also with an utterly unsuccessful result.

A VERY frustrating first night with the unit on two different mounts.

Cheers,
Chris

[sil]

Do you know if the Celestron GPS accessory works in conjunction with this since its replacing the handset? I'd like to still be able to use mine along with whatever guider I end up with. I'm still scratching my head for what guiding solution for my CGEM DX, forever having both alignment and tracking issues (eg on the weekend after doing the first two stars for two star alignment the first calibration star it added was Hadar..it put a blank patch of sky into the wide eyepiece on the opposite side of Alpha Centauri to Hadar so AC was the closest bright star).

Really very unsatisfied with this mount, my Celestron 102SLT using its all star alignment works perfect every time. Puts targets into the eyepiece, rarely far from dead center and tracks solidly. A very no-fuss package with no need to both about uneven ground or anything, yet the CGEM DX is very tightly polar aligned, mount platform is perfectly level, mount is accurately angled. For something that is meant to be so much better its so incredibly far off the mark. (Balance and the dodgy factory grease are probably contributing, but I didn't expect it to be this bad).

[C8er]

Hi Sil,

In the menus on my newly arrived starsense hand controller there is something called Time/Loc source and there you can choose from GPS accessory, Internal real Time Clock, or Saved Site. I don't have the GPS accessory but that would indicate the starsense unit is intended to work with them and get its location/time from that.

In the manual somewhere else I think it says it only needs to be told the location and dt/tm so that gotos to solar system objects are precise. That implies that for deep sky objects its solving of the camera images and software let it work things out accurately enough without any input of dt/tm/loc data.

It also I think says the unit will try to automatically select the GPS accessory as the time/location source if you have one fitted and plugged in, but that you can manually select it from the menus if it doesn't aqcuire it automatically.

As I say I can't test if it that works as I don't have a real time clock or gps accessory on my mounts, but the manual says it all should.

Cheers,
Chris

[C8er]

Sil you can download a pdf copy of the starsense unit manual from the support tab on Celestrons webpage for the new Starsense units. that will tell you a lot about how they intend it to work. They have called the unit the "Starsense Autoalign" in the end, not "Starsense Accessory" as the pre release publicity had it called

[Brucew63]

Have recently bought a Celestron Starsense Auto and have tried to get it to work with my Celestron CPC1100 but it will not communicate with the Telescope. When it does it cannot recognise what model telescope it is. Does anyone have any idea what I can try. Thanks.

[Harb]

I just fitted one to my CPC1100 last night......
The manual is a bit misleading, as it tells you to press incorrect buttons making the process a lot harder than it actually is.
The main problem I have found, and am yet to fix, is when you do a request to point at say Jupiter, it is not on the list.
The software is supposed to allow pointing to any object ABOVE the horizon, but brings up things that are below the horizon instead......its like its ste to the northern hemisphere, yet is you manually steer it to Jupiter and press identify, it happily tells you it is jupiter ???
Tell it to point to Sirus though and it goes right to it ???

[C8er]

Hi Harb,

There are still known problems with the SSA on some mount models in the southern hemisphere, but Celestron are working on firmware fixes to those problems at the moment. I have been helping their engineers beta test the southern hemisphere fixes here in New Zealand, and while there are still some things to fix, some of the major southern hemisphere SSA problems are already fixed in the latest beta firmware that you can get access to by joining up with the Team Celestron website. I would urge you to do that, and you might find that the latest firmware available there fixes at least some of your SSA problems.

The "out of the box" SSA firmware certainly doesnt work on some mount models down here in the Southern hemisphere.

Cheers,
Chris M

[kon1966]

Hi guys, looks like I have a similar issue with my SSA from Sydney. I sent the below to celestron support yesterday and waiting reply.

Regards
Kon

Hi support, I setup my starsense accessory yseterday during the day and also downloaded the latest firmware updater to update my 8se and starsense accessory. I connected it like the picture in the photo and the software worked and loaded successfully.

I followed the initial steps and selected International/Australia/Sydney and used DST yes and +10 and entered the time in date and time in USA format. The starsense went through its autoalign process and completed in a few minutes. The only planet above the horizon at 9:30pm in sydney is Jupiter which is about 40 degrees East. All other planets are still below.

Selected solar system to slew to Jupiter and the planet was not in the display listing. All the other planets and moon were listed. The accessory I assume thought I was in a different part in the world. I selected moon to slew to and the scope did a 180 and started to point downward. I powered off since it was going to hit the mount.

I checked my settings again and tried several times but same happened. I tried no DST and put time 1 hour back but same issue.

I then tried solar system align as a test and this worked correctly on Jupiter. Please advise on what could be the issue. The starsense was bought from BH photo/video and was delivered in december when their new stock arrived after being sold out.

The s/n on box is 5023494005

HC
Ver 01.07.13311
Bld Nov 7 2013 00:53:09

SS CAMERA
Ver 01.01.13288

MC
Azm ver 5.14
Alt ver 5.14

[kon1966]

Response below from celestron..Very disapointing releasing a product thst does not cover the whole world.

Kon


Yes, we don't have it available in Australia because the firmware for the southern hemisphere is not yet available.* You will either want to contact B&H regarding a return, or hold onto the unit until a firmware update is available.* At this time, I do not have an ETA when this update will become available.* Sorry for the inconvenience.Thank you!Alex CaveCelestron Technical Support

[C8er]

Hi Kon,

While wholheartedly joining you in being disappointed, as all of us in the southern hemisphere who like the idea of the SSA have been, there is progress on the southern hemisphere SSA firmware changes, so hang in there.

I know there is progress as I have been helping as a volunteer private beta tester for Southern firmware fixes for the Celestron engineers on my SSA here in New Zealand since before Christmas.

When all the fixes will be finished and ready to release no-one can tell you (or even the private testers) yet, but I can assure you that they are working through fixes for the various southern problems and progress is being made as fast as the very dedicated and busy firmware engineers there can get it done.

You can get more information, and will be able to get early notice of when the southern fixes get released to public beta and then full public release by joining up at the Team Celestron website, which I would urge you to do if you have a strong interest in the SSA.

Cheers,
Chris M

[kon1966]

Thanks Chris,
I have joined Team celestron and hopefully will not be too long before a firmware upgrade is released.

Regards
Kon

[moonview]

Hi there. A number of Members have spoken about problems with the Celestron Star Sense Autoalign. I have had the same problems as other users in the Southern skies and cannot get the device to sync to Southern Hemisphere. Has anyone found a Celestron software upgrade or know when one maybe expected? This is taking a very long time to provide a solution.
Thanks

[C8er]

Hi Chris,

The southern hemisphere align problems are definitely fixed in recent beta releases of the SSA firmware that you can get access to by joining the "team celestron" website and becoming a member of the SSA testing group there.

I think though that the southern hemisphere align fixes are also in the latest publicly released SSA firmware, which you can get by downloading and installing the latest release of the CFM firmware installer from the support pages of the main Celestron website, under software downloads. If you install that CFM and connect the SSA to your computer exactly as per the connection diagram that is in the CFM package (use as short a micro usb cable to the camera as you can find for best success with the update), you can then fire off an update for the SSA from CFM which will automatically find, download, and install from the internet the current latest publicly released SSA firmware.

So that is two ways you could get the southern hemisphere SSA fixes. I'm in NZ and the SSA is working brilliantly here now with the latest firmware. They are also working on updates to the SSA manual to match the latest firmware, but I don't know if the manual changes have made it to public release yet, but definitely avialable in draft form on the team celestron site if you register as a beta tester.

They still have to fix ASPA on the SSA and get SSA aligns working on wedge mounted Alt Az mounts in Eq mode, but those are the only important bugs remaining that I can think of. I've been helping them beta test fixes including the southern hemisphere fixes.

Cheers,
Chris M

[moonview]

Thank you very much C8er.
You make it all sound so simple.
I have just joined Team Celestron and will take your excellent advice.
If I have issues I may repost the situation and any success noted.
Cheers
Chris

[moonview]

Hi C8er,
I registered on Team Celestron, followed thread to download CFM_1.7 Celestron Fireware Manager.
Orange Celestron Firmware Manager Icon appeared along with Java Virtual Machine Launcher error message, "Could not find the main class:cfm. Celestron Firmware Manger. Program will exit."

This is as I expected, seems very inefficient way Celestron has taken to offer software upgrades fro the Star Sense for Southern skies.

Is there another way to link to their downloads menu so I can get the problem resolved?
Many thanks
Chris

[C8er]

Hi Chris,

CFM works well for me. Obviously you have something about the software environment on your PC that isn't working well with the CFM software, perhaps a problem with your java platform installation.

Since you are now a member there, the best place to sort that out is I think by raising a thread about the error message in the forums at Team Celestron and then the engineers there can assist you with the error message. It may be a very simple thing to fix once you inform them about it.

Regards,
Chris M