The LX200 problems progress..

[rogerg]

The problems with my LX200 progressed last night.

I received my new electronics from BINTEL:
- brand new hand controller
- brand new front panel
- refurbished service kit

I was a little disappointed with the quality of parts for the hand controller and front panel. The hand controller is nice and obviously brand new but the front surface is has bubbled up at one point - cosmetic. The large capacitor on the front panel had snapped off presumably during transport, I soldered this back on.

After putting the whole lot in it all now works.

However I'm not happy with the RA motor, which appears to have some sort of backlash or lag issue. GOTO is very accurate considering the lack of recent polar alignment adjustments and the frequent mounting/dismounting of the scope from the wedge. However when attempting to calibrate the autoguider I found bizzar behaviour in the RA axis. Probably simply backlash but I'm wondering if it wasn't moving West as willingly as it was moving East.

I'm thinking I'm going to take out the RA motor and put my old one back in. It had absolutely no backlash at all and better PE than this one currently has exhibited.

I did achieve focus and snap a trailed image of some spiral galaxy near M104, but that was it before I ended the night needing sleep.

Hopefully replacing the RA motor will return the machine to it's previously high level of accuracy & performance.

I managed to blow 2 fuses last night, both in the cable powering the LX200. I'm still unsure how or why, but have put my old front panel back in and suspect a fault with the new front panel, or a fault with the power supply. If it is a fault with the power supply that could have been the cause of all the problems and not the lightning. I think I will buy a new power supply just in case.

Roger.

[mick pinner]

to my knowledge you cannot replace just one motor or both for that matter because they are coded to the motherboard and come as a kit.
this is only relevant to the classic.

[Shawn]

The Errors didnt look like this did they...?

[rogerg]

That's interesting. Well, just last week I had a motherboard working with my old motors which was not the original, the only problem there was that RS232 wasn't working - which suggests to me something other than motor problems. Hmm. Such a tangled web they have woven for us, Meade.



Hmm, is there an easy way (free software?) to generate such graphs? The closest I have come in the past was logging the CCDSoft guide corrections then putting that CSV log in to MS Excel. That was more work than I bothered with again though. And sort of required autoguider calibration which is what I'm having problems with right now.

Roger.

[rogerg]

I had an illuminated eyepiece in for a bit last night checking the backlash etc. No backlash I could detect in RA using the illuminated eyepiece, in fact behaviour seemed quite normal. Quite a bit of backlash in DEC but that I can improve.

So I'm going to need some more diagnosis to work out what was going on with the guide calibrations. Perhaps some flexure or other movement. Unsure.

[Shawn]

I find it easier to understand a graphical representation of the error, you can also see what tweaks make a difference, this error had me completely baffled, the slight underlying undulation was my failure to PEC train, the radical jumps from one side of spot on to the other I have not yet remedied, Can you me informed of your trials and tribulations...

PS the graph , is a feature of Maxim DL,s guide function...

Good Luck

Shawn

...

[rogerg]

I plan to do some more testing tonight. I'm aiming to get it guiding to the point where I can then use the guide corrections to form a graph of the error. I'll let you know how I go, but it may take a bit longer than just tonight.