daylight saving throws out synscan controller

[alan meehan]

well tonight was a bit of a disaster set up for a imaging run and went for a 2 star alignment and first star way out moved to centre star 2nd star way out had to move to centre star finished alignment and it tells me iam 45deg out and location out so I start again this time manually putting in all the coordinates iam using hand controller with GPS did this 8 times still the same the only difference from the night before is that I entered daylight savings ..NO Never had this problem before any thoughts

[Ukastronomer]

If you don't have it can you add GPS to the scope

[Startrek]

Silly question
Did you enter date correctly ?
Month then Day then Year ( Synscan has US format )

[Wavytone]

I’m sure we’ve all made these rookie mistakes:

1. Polar axis is pointing north instead of south (doing what the manual says !)
2.. Date wrong (DDMM instead of MMDD)
3. Lat/long wrong - N/S or E/W will equally send it in crazy directions
4. Forgot to put scope in the PARK position before aligning.
5. Forgot to tighten the RA/dec clamps.

Daylight saving error puts it off in RA by 15 degrees (1 hour).

[alan meehan]

Thanks Chaps I have a Gps attached to the controller but when looking up the gps info my first thought the date read 2099 way out so I reset all manually still did not work nick for some reason when I park the scope at home position on start up again it will not move from home position ,crazy,
lat/long is correct for my position unless the earth has shifted,everything tight,tonight I will try my wi fi dongle again and see if that works any better that's if its clear

[Shark6]

NOT DAYLIGHT SAVING........ THE NEW EPOCH OF THE GPS date rollover is to blame:

Synscan versions among many other systems relying on the 1980 being 'Zero" year for GPS systems MAY NOT not handle the rollover well........ A new Epoch signifying the beginning of another 1024 week cycle began a couple of days ago to the chagrin of many systems....

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/06/gps-rollover-is-today-heres-why-devices-might-get-wacky/

[Nikolas]

Depends on your GPS if it's one of those Celestron types you need to charge its battery by leaving it on the mount parked while switched on for a few hours. Then it should work

[Nikolas]

Link isnt working

[billdan]

This one works

https://techcrunch.com/2019/04/06/gps-rollover-is-today-heres-why-devices-might-get-wacky/

[alan meehan]

cannot remember what brand the GPS is but it plugs into the synscan handset has worked fine for many years now going haywire

[Wavytone]

Ah ! The Millennium Bug is still alive after all these years ...

[Nikolas]

what brand is the gps? got a pic of it?

[alan meehan]

well that fixed the problem put on my skywatcher wi fi dongle used my new Samsung galaxy tablet with the synscan pro app and did a two star alighnment no problem ,I guess the old GPS is redundant

[meade expert]

New Skywatcher synscan firmware solves GPS wrong date issue

https://inter-static.skywatcher.com/downloads/synscanhandcontrollerfirmware_v3390 5.zip

[leon]

I don't really know why you guys need to enter daylight saving in the first place, nothing changes in the sky because of it, and the mount doesn't know the difference anyway.

Just go out an hour later if it is not dark enough.

Leon