Skywatcher mount electronics reliability

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

I've heard quite alot of chat about issues of EQMOD devices blowing boards on skywatcher. I personally haven't come across the issue so it may well be a furphy. I thought I'd do a poll (Anonymous) with the plan to send it to Skywatcher themselves with the hope of getting some official support.

If you have had an issue with a certain 'brand' then please pm me with details.

Again - If you have stuffed your mount and claimed under warranty, try to be discrete! I don't care and won't let on, but walls have ears

If you know of someone who is not on the forum, answer for them too.

BTW - This is not a Skywatcher beat-up. My EQ8 is absolutely stunning...

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

So, has anyone heard of anyone ever stuffing up the mount electonics? I'm beginning to think i'm hearing stories from folk in parallel universes

[Gruffalo]

Having spoken to one dealer as well as a rep at Tasco, the issue with blown boards is almost entirely EQMod related, and by using the PC Direct feature of the handset is designed to mediate this issue. I "panic" bought 2 spare boards, and they still sit unused after 4 years.

I have never run my 3 SW mounts through EQMod, nor do I plan to. I don't need any other features that the handcontroller does not give me.

[chrisshillito]

Originally Posted by AstroJunk

I've heard quite alot of chat about issues of EQMOD devices blowing boards on skywatcher. I personally haven't come across the issue so it may well be a furphy. I thought I'd do a poll (Anonymous) with the plan to send it to Skywatcher themselves with the hope of getting some official support.

EQMOD downloads run at over a 1000 a month from the sourceforge site alone - they have run consistently at this level for several years now. So there are a awful lot of folks out there using EQMOD and no doubt many follow our advice to use a direct connection to the mount.

I can't recall any reports of folks damaging their mount where the fault has been positively identified as being due to a commercial EQDirect. That said there is 12V coiming out of the mount and a short on the connector, perhaps caused by a loose wire could potentially damage your mount. The 9 way D type connector of the EQ6 is probably more vulnerable in this regard than the RJ45 style.

Sadly there have been a few occasions where folks building EQDirects for themselves have made an error in their construction and damaged their mount controller. USB type EQDIrects are much simpler/safer to build in this regard as they don't need to pull 12V from the mount and only require the splicing of three wires as opposed to building an electronic circuit.

What sort of official support form Skywatcher are you seeking? If there is a fault with the mount itself then it will already be covered under warranty. If a fault develops because you use a faulty EQDirect then the only support I can see Skywatcher providing is to sell you a replacement board.

Chris.

[Steffen]

How much are those motor control boards worth? I wouldn't mind playing around with direct control of my mount, bypassing the hand controller. I'd probably make my own adapter but I'd like to put a dollar figure to the risk first

Cheers
Steffen.

[chrisshillito]

Originally Posted by Gruffalo

Having spoken to one dealer as well as a rep at Tasco, the issue with blown boards is almost entirely EQMod related, and by using the PC Direct feature of the handset is designed to mediate this issue.

Perhaps you could ask them why this seeming rather important fact isn't mentioned at all in their documentation! To this day the only use Skywatcher document for PC-Direct is for the purpose of updating the mount controller firmware. To claim PC-Direct was purposely designed to prevent EQMOD blowing up boards and then not publicising that fact over the 5 years that have past since its introduction really doesn't make for a credible statement to me.Certainly if had a blown board and had discoverd that Skywatcher had known about the issue, implemented a new feature to mitigate it, and then kept quiet about it I think I'd be looking for some compensation.

Chris.

[Tandum (Robin)]

The only board I've ever heard of that blew was due to bad wiring in a home brew adapter.

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

Originally Posted by chrisshillito

What sort of official support form Skywatcher are you seeking? If there is a fault with the mount itself then it will already be covered under warranty. If a fault develops because you use a faulty EQDirect then the only support I can see Skywatcher providing is to sell you a replacement board.

Chris.

I reckon that skywatcher should be standing on the shoulders of you 'modders'. The celestron/synscan ascom drivers are very ordinary whilst the mount itself is a beauty. If they want the eq8 to play with the big boys in the mount game them they need to step up to the proverbial plate. With this new product on the market and first in Australia, there is a window of opportunity to have some say. I say take that opportunity, but I need to gather some stats first

[chrisshillito]

Originally Posted by AstroJunk

I reckon that skywatcher should be standing on the shoulders of you 'modders'. The celestron/synscan ascom drivers are very ordinary whilst the mount itself is a beauty. If they want the eq8 to play with the big boys in the mount game them they need to step up to the proverbial plate. With this new product on the market and first in Australia, there is a window of opportunity to have some say. I say take that opportunity, but I need to gather some stats first

Please note that the Celestron ASCOM driver is not the product of Celestron/Synta themselves. It is, like many ASCOM drivers, a driver written by a private individual and made freely available for the benefit of fellow astronomers. The driver itself is in fact very capable and supports a wide range of mount variants and features. The restrictive feature set you get when using the driver with Skywatcher EQ mounts is entirely due to the reduced subset of Celestron Nexstar protocol commands that the synscan itself supports (essentially just "go here" and 'where are you").

As far as I can see Skywatcher haven't made any changes or improvments in that area since their very first release of synscan firmware, irrespective of the other mechanical improvements and new mounts they' have introduced. But that may be our fault - EQMOD came along an provided a way for users to get the extra functionality they desired and in doing so relieved any market pressure for Skywatcher to pick it up themselves.

Chris.

[Garbz (Chris)]

I think what you're seeing is observer bias. There's a lot of people with blown Skywatcher mounts because there are a hellovalot of mounts. Seriously I haven't been into astronomy very long and I couldn't name any other GEM. Just looking at the classifieds right now there's 8 Skywatcher GEMs on the front page.

Even if they are more reliable than other mounts you'd still hear about more broken ones than any other brand.

[BPO]

Originally Posted by Steffen

How much are those motor control boards worth? I wouldn't mind playing around with direct control of my mount, bypassing the hand controller. I'd probably make my own adapter but I'd like to put a dollar figure to the risk first

A couple years back, I upgraded the original controller PCBs (v1.06) in my EQ6 Pro mounts to the then-latest version (2.04) at a cost of NZ$159.00 per board.

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

Its funny Chris - I know more than one person on this forum that has blown a mount with a home-brew connector, yet nobody fesses up. The reality seems to be, buy a proper connector, or be one of the 50 that killed their mount last year

[BPO]

Originally Posted by AstroJunk

So, has anyone heard of anyone ever stuffing up the mount electonics? I'm beginning to think i'm hearing stories from folk in parallel universes

I've heard of it happening but it's usually the result of pilot error, such as incorrect voltage supply polarity. (The PCBs had no polarity protection... Don't know about newer versions.)

[AstroJunk (Jonathan)]

Originally Posted by BPO

I've heard of it happening but it's usually the result of pilot error, such as incorrect voltage supply polarity. (The PCBs had no polarity protection... Don't know about newer versions.)

Yes. I think so too. I have a USBEQ5 in my hands and they are not a complex device nor expensive, but the less electronically minded homebrewers seem to be blowing a card or two!

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

I voted for No problems, but only used synscan.
Which is a bit of a white lie.
The hand controller recently blew and has been replaced (for free).
But this is on a 4yr old mount that has seen approx 10 thousand hours of use. So I think that counts as reasonable wear and tear.

[RobF (Rob)]

Originally Posted by Tandum

The only board I've ever heard of that blew was due to bad wiring in a home brew adapter.

I prefer to think of that episode as knowing I needed glasses but too proud to have yet bought them. Not checking the wiring before connecting it was plain dumb and lazy though

The HEQ5pro has run happily under EQMOD ever since however, and outperforms my EQ6 for tracking within its 10kg limits. I don't particularly enjoy using the handcontrollers but would be nice to have it available as a backup occasionally. I'm not personally aware of anyone else who has had a blown board as a result of EQMOD and I've met a lot of people with these mounts in recent years. There are a lot of relatively inexpensive commercial solutions available now (HITEC and Shoestring) so less need/temptation to wire up your own EQMOD cable now anyway. Once you start using EQMOD (and routinely have a laptop for astrophotography usually anyway) you'll wonder how you got by without it. Fantastic bit of coding.

I posted elsewhere too, but this thread is a good read for those tempted to make your own: USB EQDir for under £4