The dreaded flashing red light on my HEQ5Pro

[pmrid (Peter)]

This mount was new in July and has just come back after nearly 6 weeks with Tasco under warranty as part of which the motor control board was replaced and the autoguide port also. I had previously had the handpiece replaced also. So tonight was the long awaited return of the mount and a new moon to boot.
Not to be. I am getting the flashing red light treatment on the mount. And it isn't in the power supply. I have swapped in 3 different PS units - all of them 5 Amp and previously reliable.
I did a 3-star alignment and on the 3rd star, got an 'alignment failed' message but I haven't drift aligned the mount yet so that was no surprise. So I decided to just slew to a known star - Acrux - to focus the camera. The handpiece gave me the RA and Dec of Acrux but would not go to it. Just sat there. But it did accept a Park command. And that's when I noticed the flashing light.
So I switched it off, put on a new power supply and turned on again and the red light started flashing immediately - even before the initialization had completed.
I'm at my wits end.
Anyone got any ideas?
Peter

[AlexN]

Get a multimeter and test the lead that you're powering the mount with for starters.. The supply might be fine, but the lead between the supply and mount may be shot, or the inline fuse in that lead...

even with a poor polar alignment, doing a 3 star alignment should work provided you centered the right stars and input the date/time correctly... (Remember its MM/DD/YYYY not DD/MM/YYYY in the hand paddle.)

The fact that the red light is flashing, and the mount will not slew are both indicators of a power issue.. As you say, your power supplies are all good, so check the lead and any other connectors between the supply and the mount... Other than that, I can't think of anything.

[sheeny (Al)]

The "get RA and Dec but no goto" sounds awfully like a problem I had with my CG5 a while ago. I pulled the covers off to fault find it and found one of the servo motor cable connectors just slightly off square to its connector on the circuit board. When I fiddled with that and got it straight, it was all fixed.

Al.

[jjjnettie (Jeanette)]

There's so many lemons from this batch.
Sorry you're still struggling to get yours to work correctly Peter.