Frustrated and Cranky!

[iceman]

Went out last night, no jetstream, a nice cool night, ambient at 8.5°, mirror within a degree.

Look through the eyepiece, WOW! :eyepop: 8/10 at least! Hurriedly set up the laptop, hmm what's this, the image won't stay in the FOV.

My EQ platform isn't working.. the stepper motor is making a loud "tick a tick a tick" noise that I haven't noticed before, and the roller than drives the top plate just doesn't appear to be making contact. The top plate seems to just be slipping and not being driven.

Tried everything between 11pm and 12am last night, just couldn't get it working. Something's broken, it seems.

Sooo frustrated because I missed an almost perfect evening of seeing to get some great images, because my tracking wasn't working :(

And now I've gotta figure out what's wrong with it and Fix it/replace it/burn it. :sadeyes:

No images from me for a while :( :mad2:

The only upside is I had some great eyepiece views of Jupiter in very nice seeing.

[Dennis]

Ouch - I feel for you Mike! On the positive side, you should have awakened this morning as fresh as a daisy, ready for Mother's day! Although re-reading the subject line, this may indicate otherwise?

Hope you fix it soon.

Cheers

Dennis

[davidpretorius]

got any photos to post, some of us may be able to help.

bugga this is not good!

[xstream]

Sounds very :screwy: Mike.

I was thinking it may have something to do with that incident at Wiruna.:whistle: :shrug:

Or has it been OK since then?

[h0ughy]

the cheese or the wine, might be stuck in the cogs!

Get the an EQ mount Mike, perminantly have it polar aligned and just add scope! thats all Scott does! so you can keep the dob EQ base for trips and such. BTW, best of luck finding and fixing the problem!

[davidpretorius]

yup, a g-11!

belated mothers day present! it will go down a treat!

[iceman]

Would love to houghy, have the EQ platform for travel and the EQ6 at home.. but an EQ6 is $1500!

Will post photos later today, got mothers day things to attend to now.

John, it's been fine lately (a bit wobbly in parts, but generally ok). Last night it just stopped working.

[spacezebra]

Hi Mike

Yes, Jupiter was absolutely fantastic last night, I was out till about midnight, until the FA cup came on.

I was going down the same road as you with the platform - you will need to let me know if there are any bugs that I need to be aware of before I order, or should I go for something else?

I have the ToUcam set up on my laptop and still waiting on a few more bits and pieces before I can kick off, hopefully in next couple of months. I have been noting some goods times to view Jupiter, ie transits of moons, GRS, so I cant wait.

Hang in the Mike, Cheers Petra

[iceman]

Hi all.

Have been working with Brian from Round Table Platforms (http://www.roundtableplatforms.com) to try and troubleshoot the issue with my platform.

I've sent him some pictures and mpeg video using my old digicam to help show him what the problem is.

When I took the cover off the motor, it showed that it was "pulsing" instead of rotating. Brian's response:



Talk about great service! :thumbsup:

Thanks very much Brian! I look forward to receiving the parts and getting busy making it work again!

[Dennis]

That's great news Mike - what excellent service too! Hope it all works out.

Cheers

Dennis

[h0ughy]

Tom Hanks whilest flying the FedX plane with Mike's board and Motors on board crashes on some remote island. Mike has launched rescue efforts to retrieve the items and found them, leaving Mr Hanks on the island.............

[davidpretorius]

that is great news mike, well done, houghy i am still crying from laughing and happy 8000 mike!

[ving]

super stuff mike, let us know if it fixes it :D

[netwolf]

wow thats some service you recived. Great job Brian.

[spacezebra]

Well Mike - I think that has eased any concerns that I may have had.

Dont forget an update when all up and running

Cheers Petra

[ballaratdragons]

Why?

What ever happened to just taking pics of stuff just for the fun of it! Without tracking. Remember that method? The 'old fashion' way.

That's what I enjoy about this hobby, playing around. With or without tracking you can still get pics of stuff. Doesn't have to be Jupiter all the time, and it doesn't have to be better than the last effort.
Just happy snap away. You might end up with some interesting pics of anything while you are waiting to fix your platform.

There is life after tracking :lol:

[leon]

Yea Ken i agree with you, that's all i ever used to do, and it was just as rewarding, but we all strive for more i suppose. :)

[iceman]

When you go from frustrating, to not frustrating, it's very hard to go back to frustrating.

I did take a non-tracking image that night anyway Ken, it's posted in the solar system section.

[ballaratdragons]

yep, saw that Mike. And it was great!

Don't worry, I'm not picking. Just stating that you can still take pics. Never know what you might end up with :thumbsup:

[iceman]

yay got my replacement parts today! Now to fit them and hope it fixes it.

[davidpretorius]

you beauty, good luck!

[iceman]

Is it possible to relax the swear filter just for this post? :cranky:

I'm a bloody idiot sometimes.. I had to put in a new motor, no problems.. the wires had the plastic hooky-up-thingy on the end of those wires, and the wires from the circuit board had some metal crimpy-thingos on them, and I just had to feed them into another plastic hooky-up-thingy and then plug the two plastic thingys together.

But stupid me, put the wires with the metal crimpy things in the wrong way into the plastic thingo, so it was like a male-male instead of male-female.. and of course the metal thingos have little hooks to hold them in place, and so I can't pull them out..

And of course, in my trying to pull them out, they strip.

So now, instead of being 2 minutes away from turning it on and saying "yay it works", i've now gotta go to d.ick smith tomorrow, get 6 new metal crimpy bits and a plastic hooky-up-thing, strip back the 6 wires, feed them into the metal crimpy things, and then feed them (the right way) into the plastic thingo again.

I was frustrated and cranky when I first posted this thread, I feel about the same right now! aargghghh!

No fault of Brian's! I must thank Brian for being so prompt sending me the replacement bits!

[davidpretorius]

damn thingyos and thingermarooos

[RAJAH235]

Mike, the 'pins', (if the round type) can be removed from the 'plug top or base', using an appropriately sized piece of metal tubing, (eg; a neat fit). Simply place over the pin from the front & push right down to the plastic base. It compresses the lock tab, enabling the pin to be removed/repositioned...
If they are a 'flat' type, then a small ordinary (negative), screwdriver can be used to do the same thing...
HTH. :D L.
ps. Good luck with your mods/repairs..
pps. A few pics would help..

[h0ughy]

any pics mike, closeup of pins, my confirm the previous post

[ving]

dontcha hate it when thing go wrong like that... been there, done that, bought the t-shirt.
gah!

best of luck sir ice-a-lot :)

[iceman]

Guess where I am?

Out in the backyard, connected to the 'net through the wireless router, and doing some imaging of Jupiter!

My platform works again!

Will post more later, my hands are freezing and my battery on the headlamp has gone flat!

[iceman]

Ok, so I got a replacement nylon 6-pin plug/socket connector yesterday, for the one I busted.. unfortunately the only ones they had here were much larger (about double the size) of the ones that Brian sent.

So I had to strip and replace both ends.. I made very sure I put the wires back in the right slots!

So I replaced the motor and the wires, hooked it up, turned it on.. Damn, the motor is still pulsing. Not fixed! Very frustrated now.. one last option.. replace the circuit board.

So off I go, unscrew, unplug and take out the circuit board, fit the new one making sure not to mix up any connections.

Plug it in, turn it on! It's rotating! It's working! Yaaay!

Put it all back together, take it outside for a long awaited session under the stars.

A few teething problems still - the drive wheel is not making enough contact with the top plate and i'm getting slipping.. so last night was a very frustrated imaging attempt, battling the whole time to find a spot along it's motion where it wasn't slipping so I could capture an avi.

Anyway some stuff still to work on, but at least I've got some tracking again.

[gaa_ian]

That's great service Mike, I wish a few more Aussie suppliers could take a leaf out of his book !

[davidpretorius]

it is fun to be connected to IIS whilst doing what we love!

good to hear it is nearly back to normal!

[ving]

especially if IIS is doing wht you love :P

glad to haer your up and running mike. the slipage sounds like it'd be easy to fix :)