HELP! New Celestron VX Not working

jeff.cotter · #1 30-11-2013, 04:22 PM

Hi All,

I seem to have a bad problem with my brand new Celestron VX 9.25.

Got it all set up and did an (indoors) test alignment. I uses the "quick alignment" option (which doesn't require stars but builds a sky model based on your site and time information only).

I told it to go to the Moon (which is about 30 degrees above the horizon almost due west. The mount slewed to what looked roughly like the correct position (i.e. low in the west). I then told it to go to Venus, which is high in the east. But this is when the trouble started. Nothing happened (or rather the motors whined a bit with very little slewing actually happening).

Since then I get different behavior each time I power up and follow through with the exact same sequence (i.e. go to the Moon). The first couple of times it went to the roughly correct location and then tracked. On the third try it went to a location that I thought was a bit short of where it should have been and then went totally silent (i.e. no tracking). And most alarmingly, the last time I tried it (go to the Moon), it slewed just a few degrees on both axes at fill slewing speed, but then slowed right down and began making a knocking sound (at about twice a second). I tried the entire sequence again and got the same behavior as last described. I haven't been game to do anything with it since.

Does anyone have any thoughts, things that I can try, or suggestions as to where I could have gone wrong (I'm desperately hoping that the mount itself is not buggered, and it's just me that's missing something).

Assuming the worst, does anyone have any experience as to what I can expect from the dealer/Celestron? I bought the telescope last week from Andrews. Will it be up to me to ship it back to Celestron (that would be a nightmare), or can I reasonably expect Andrews to replace the mount?

Thanks in advance.

casstony · #2 30-11-2013, 04:40 PM

Hi Jeff, I'm not sure if Andrews is a Celestron Authorised dealer, but if they're not they'll take care of your problem if you can't get it sorted. I've always had good after sales service from them.

jeff.cotter · #3 30-11-2013, 04:43 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by casstony

Hi Jeff, I'm not sure if Andrews is a Celestron Authorised dealer, but if they're not they'll take care of your problem if you can't get it sorted. I've always had good after sales service from them.

Thanks for that, that's at least a tiny bit reassuring!

Astromaniac (John) · #4 30-11-2013, 05:12 PM

G'Day Jeff,

I'm not sure I'm following you. If the Moon is low in the West (even if you can see it) Venus is high at the Zenith, roughly. Venus it's visible after 6pm high in the West not in the East. I would make sure to have the correct coordinates and time. Even better I would do a proper star alignment before doing anything else.

MHO, I've been proved wrong before.

Cheers,

John

brisen (Brian) · #5 30-11-2013, 05:15 PM

Hi Jeff

The issue with the motors you are describing sounds like an issue I have just run into with a CGEM mount from Celestron. I will PM you shortly.

Brian

jeff.cotter · #6 30-11-2013, 06:13 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Astromaniac

G'Day Jeff,

I'm not sure I'm following you. If the Moon is low in the West (even if you can see it) Venus is high at the Zenith, roughly. Venus it's visible after 6pm high in the West not in the East. I would make sure to have the correct coordinates and time. Even better I would do a proper star alignment before doing anything else.

MHO, I've been proved wrong before.

Cheers,

John

Hi John, thanks for the reply.

Sorry about my loose words. When I said low, it was actually at 30 degrees (so maybe a better phrase would have been "low-ish")

As for those positions, I just read them off Stellarium and according to that, at my location (Canberra) at 3 PM today, Venus was at Az/Alt +74, +63 and the Moon at +279, +32. And I'm certain that I've set up Stellarium correctly for Canberra.

When I initially set up the AVX, I soon found that they don't even have Canberra as an Australian city (the county's capital

), so I had to enter the lat/long manually. I've double-checked those values and I'm certain that they are also correct.

But if the mount just consistently pointed to the wrong place I'd be a lot happier than I am, since that would just indicate some kind of alignment error (most likely on my part). It's the different behavior after a clean start following the same steps that's the real worry!

But thanks for trying to help.

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #7 30-11-2013, 07:36 PM

Sorry I don't have anything helpful to say about the funny noises, definitely doesn't sound normal, at least, not like mine

it's not the quietest or smoothest sounding mount when slewing at full speed...I even set custom slew rate 9 to 2.5 degrees per second to suppress the noise a bit... But if I were you I'd be contacting the supplier to discuss it with them.

This might be a stupid suggestion, but did you check that the clutches are fully engaged? You might see erratic behaviour if they're not, but probably not nasty knocking

Anyhow, ignoring the nasty noises, set the mount to the home position (white painted index marks aligned), power it on and set it to time zone 10, it should remember the lat and long from before, and enter the time with DST yes. Then follow through with an alignment, say auto 2-star align and select a couple of stars....doesn't matter which. Select center and align for each and it should say align success...it will just believe that it is near-perfectly aligned and should slew to where it believes stuff is. Whether it's pointing in the right direction will depend on the offset from a correct alignment and time values. Btw, you did enter the latitude and change N to S? Sorry if it sounds patronising, it's not intentional

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #8 30-11-2013, 07:42 PM

Btw, for what it's worth I quite like the mount overall, I use a C8 on mine and it's a nice lightweight setup. I can imagine a 9.25 would work quite nicely too. I've found the gotos to be excellent if you take the time to add some calibration stars after a 2-star alignment. As I use mine solely for visual (so far) a rough polar alignment with a 2+4 (2-star alignment with 4 calibration stars) works really well and only takes a few minutes...mostly with it doing all the work

jeff.cotter · #9 30-11-2013, 07:44 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

Sorry I don't have anything helpful to say about the funny noises, definitely doesn't sound normal, at least, not like mine

it's not the quietest or smoothest sounding mount when slewing at full speed...I even set custom slew rate 9 to 2.5 degrees per second to suppress the noise a bit... But if I were you I'd be contacting the supplier to discuss it with them.

This might be a stupid suggestion, but did you check that the clutches are fully engaged? You might see erratic behaviour if they're not, but probably not nasty knocking

Anyhow, ignoring the nasty noises, set the mount to the home position (white painted index marks aligned), power it on and set it to time zone 10, it should remember the lat and long from before, and enter the time with DST yes. Then follow through with an alignment, say auto 2-star align and select a couple of stars....doesn't matter which. Select center and align for each and it should say align success...it will just believe that it is near-perfectly aligned and should slew to where it believes stuff is. Whether it's pointing in the right direction will depend on the offset from a correct alignment and time values. Btw, you did enter the latitude and change N to S? Sorry if it sounds patronising, it's not intentional

Don't worry about sounding patronising...I'm up for any suggestion that might detect the problem.

Yes, I double checked the lat and long, particularly whether E and S. Also, there's a tracking 'mode' which can be set to "EQ-North" or "EQ-South". I've checked that as well. I followed the manual pretty carefully, so yes, timezone 10, lat 35S, long 149E etc, daylight savings. But I would have thought that any error setting these up would result in wrong pointing, but not result in different behavior on each power-up (repeating exactly the same steps).

As you did, I also had the same thought about the clutches also occurred to me. I tried with the both with the clutches fully "tight" (as tight as I was game to have them), but also slightly looser.

The other thing I might try is to repeat the experiment without any weight on the mount, i.e. no OTA or counter-weights.

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #10 30-11-2013, 08:37 PM

You're absolutely right, from my understanding at least, settings would only cause it point in the wrong place. I mention the clutches because first time out with my first gem I managed to leave the clutches off and it gave erratic motion but no knocking or such.

You've got nothing to lose by trying with no weight on it, but in a balanced setup the loading isn't much difference.

Sadly, sounds like you got a duff one

jeff.cotter · #11 01-12-2013, 03:11 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

You're absolutely right, from my understanding at least, settings would only cause it point in the wrong place. I mention the clutches because first time out with my first gem I managed to leave the clutches off and it gave erratic motion but no knocking or such.

You've got nothing to lose by trying with no weight on it, but in a balanced setup the loading isn't much difference.

Sadly, sounds like you got a duff one

That's the conclusion I'm coming too. Interestingly, I just heard about someone else whose also got a Celestron Goto with bad drives. So, it would seem that the risk is certainly there.

The interesting part now will be how I go with the warranty, both Andrews and/or with Celestron.

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #12 01-12-2013, 10:20 AM

The risk is always there, whatever we buy! Celestron sell a lot of telescopes, it wouldn't be in their interests of profitability for many to be faulty.

But it sucks to have a problem for sure

hope you get it resolved soon! I know I'd be gutted to have a shiny new C9.25 and not be able to use it

jeff.cotter · #13 01-12-2013, 06:02 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

The risk is always there, whatever we buy! Celestron sell a lot of telescopes, it wouldn't be in their interests of profitability for many to be faulty.

But it sucks to have a problem for sure

hope you get it resolved soon! I know I'd be gutted to have a shiny new C9.25 and not be able to use it

Gutted isn't the half of it. After years of using Newts, dobs, and SCTs, none of them with Goto, this was a dream I've had for a long time.

I'll let everyone know how I go. First stop, a call to Andrews on Monday morning. Fingers crossed!

brian nordstrom (As avatar) · #14 01-12-2013, 07:11 PM

+1 on this , I have always had good service from Andrews , they will see you right .
Brian.

Quote:

Originally Posted by casstony

Hi Jeff, I'm not sure if Andrews is a Celestron Authorised dealer, but if they're not they'll take care of your problem if you can't get it sorted. I've always had good after sales service from them.

Camelopardalis (Dunk) · #15 01-12-2013, 09:43 PM

You could always just release the clutches and use it manually in the meantime

brunono2 (Brian) · #16 02-12-2013, 12:34 PM

This was on Cloudy nights- old VX mount software Mabe you should check the software version to see if it is old

Re: AVX Mount. http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/images/new.gif [Re: rmollise]
#6221487 - 11/28/13 01:29 PM http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/images/edit.gif Edit http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/images/reply.gif Reply http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/images/quote.gif Quote http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/images/reply.gif Quick Reply
The original HC firmware that shipped in the first batch of AVX had a problem and would brick themselves. So the only way that will be a problem for you is if the AVX mount you get happened to be sitting in the back room forgotten for all this time. I doubt that is the case as these mounts are hot sellers. 99% sure you won't have anything to worry about.

That being said, why wouldn't you want the latest firmware? Just download the CFM from celestron (you can also join Teamcelestron.com for latest beta versions).

jeff.cotter · #17 02-12-2013, 03:26 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

You could always just release the clutches and use it manually in the meantime

Hmmm, a bit like walking 10 km to work instead of taking the car...doable, but definitely not desirable!

jeff.cotter · #18 02-12-2013, 03:35 PM

A few people posting here have said nice things about Andrews (I also found similar remarks when I was doing my research on buying the AVX).

I called them this morning, and they seemed a bit aghast to hear of the problems. The immediately suggested I bring the mount in and they will arrange for a replacement. I'll be heading up there tomorrow, so I'll let everyone here know how it ends up.

Thanks for the info Brunono2, I'll mention it to Andrews tomorrow and get them to check how old my mount actually is.

g__day (Matthew) · #19 02-12-2013, 05:21 PM

Andrews service always seemed good to me. I had to return a faulty CG5 once and they were great to deal with.

I'd check the power was connected snugly and the mount (Hand controller) is set up selecting Southern hemisphere operation.

jeff.cotter · #20 03-12-2013, 06:32 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by g__day

Andrews service always seemed good to me. I had to return a faulty CG5 once and they were great to deal with.

I'd check the power was connected snugly and the mount (Hand controller) is set up selecting Southern hemisphere operation.

Thanks for the reassurance. I'm now glad that I got the AVX from Andrews rather than Dodgy Dick's Online Op Shop.

I gave everything one last try this morning, and I particularly checked the cable connection. But still the same weird behaviour and unhealthy knocking noise from the motors. I had worried that power might be the issue, so I checked that my battery (12V DC 38aH gel) had a full charge, which it did (it's brand new).

Most significantly, the bad behaviour is intermittent and variable, which I think pretty much rules out setup errors as the culprit. The pattern seems to be that the first time I power up after several hours break, I seem to get a vaguely sensible slew for the first object (I've been using the Moon). But it's all downhill from there. On subsequent slews (even if I power off and then on again), it goes in the wrong direction, stops slewing after a second or so, makes knocking noises etc etc.

I'm just about to head off to Andrews so hopefully everything will get resolved!