Heq5pro Slewing Problem

[RobF (Rob)]

I spent a few hours playing, and found I could often get the mount/handset connection to fail during a slew by shaking and "twanging" the handset and cable quite aggressively. By "fail", I mean the slew wouldn't arrive correctly, or the handset wouldn't respond after arrival. In almost every case then, powering off and on gave the "unable to connect to m.c. / stand-alon message" which to me says "My handset brain can't talk to the mount!".

Since reversing the cable and wedging the handset end RJ45 carefully with a piece of plastic it seemed fine for an extended session of aligning and GOTOing last night. Still a bit soon for me to say problem solved though I guess. Certainly, I haven't been able to get it to fail the "twang test" since!

Being in Brissy dealing with Sydney (Andrews) by post/phone, I'm not too keen to return it if I can avoid it - even if it means having to mess around with it a bit.

Originally Posted by pjphilli

Hi All
Looks like I opened the proverbial can of worms by originally opening this thread.
Rob - Yes I am still getting the same problem with my HEQ5Pro. I have just upgraded to the newest version 3.2.3 software but I am not confident that this will fix the problem.
A few nights ago it took me 3/4 hour before my mount stopped playing up, then it performed perfectly for the rest of the night. The problems I had were getting the message that the mount was not connected and when I did connect and tried to do alignment the mount went to crazy directions.
I am not sure whether the problem is hardware or firmware.
I too suspected the lead as I am not too impressed by RJ-45 connectors for hand controller cables as I think there is too much freedom of movement in the plug/socket connection. However, by extensive wiggling, changing the cord around etc I have not been able to prove that this is the problem.
The fact that when I can eventually get the mount going and it then performs perfectly, appears to me that the problem is in the initial firmware/hardware handshake. I hope that somebody will eventually throw some light on this problem. Geoff, best of luck with the new handset, please let us know the results. Cheers Peter

[pjphilli (Peter)]

Hi Rob
I see this problem has spread over to another thread where quite a few others are reporting similar difficulties and even someone with a HEQ6 is seeing the same problems.
I live in Sydney and I have bought most of my gear from Andrew Lee at Greystanes. He is a nice guy and employs Luke who has a Astrophysics Degree who is most helpful and cooperative.
I got my first HEQ5Pro mount from them in early June. After just one outing the dreaded "not connected" message appeared. I could not clear this after countless retries. So I took the mount back to Andrews and got a complete replacement. The "new" one is not quite as bad as the first one but I am not confident at all that I will not have to spend a large slice of my viewing time coaxing the thing to perform. I am getting the impression that this is a design fault which appears in a large number of these mounts. I am losing patience with my "new" mount and it looks like another trip to Andrews may be in the offing. A pity as otherwise it is a great mount.
Cheers Peter

[RobF (Rob)]

There's nothing more demoralising than an intermittent fault that's hard to demonstrate. Definitely interested to hear how you go with the "new" mount in future sessions Peter.

My gut feeling is its connection issues. Shame the connection isn't wireless or bluetooth or something, but hey, its amazing technology for the price really. Hope we haven't "lucked" onto a bad batch from the factory.

[AlexN]

You think you would have LESS connection issues with wireless or bluetooth.... No offence, but HAHAHAHHAAAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAAH

AHAHAHH
HAH..
Ahh...

That was hillarious.

[Tandum (Robin)]

I get the runaway problem now and then and it's not connection related, it's software for sure. I get it sometimes when doing a star allignment, it just keeps going after I release the arrow button. I've found changing the slew rate while it's running away stops the mount, but pressing an arrow key starts the runaway again but at the new slew rate. Pressing the enter key when the runaway scope passes over the alignment star stops it and calibrates it.

I tend to calibrate if shooting east and recalibrate if shooting west. The first cal may or may not run away and the second cal may or may not run away. There is nothing repetative in it at all and I can't foresee when it will happen. I've just learnt to live with it

[marki]

Wow, I have had no trouble with mine at all in resect to pointing (ver 3:21) it just does what it supposed to do. It did give me some hassle when I updated from ver 3.10 but that was more to do with the usb-serial connection then anything else. I hope you guys get it sorted as a mount that performed that badley would drive me nuts and I would certainly be banging on the dealers door demanding a fix or money back.

Mark

[Karls48 (Karl)]

I got my HEQ5 vPro from Andrews in May. Hand controller did come with V3.1 software and I updated it to V3.21. Same as Marki, the update was very slow via USB to Serial converter. Mount is fixed on pier and I use it for imagining with GStar EX camera. I do one star alignment every time I use it. Then I switch the control to SkyMap11 using ASCOM’s Celestron driver.
The mount will always put target object in FOV of the camera. I have never experienced runaway slew. Only 2 times the mount did not finished the slew and got stuck half way. Going back to original object and the slewing again fixed that. I got few small problems with it, but I think that’s my fault. Sync in SkyMap doesn’t work properly, and when I tried Eqmod the alignment always failed. I’m very happy with this mount, it is huge improvement on EQ 3 with Autostar Modification I had before. I get about 1.5-pixel drift per minute in RA and 1 pixel in DEC. For the camera I’m using it is OK. I’m powering my mount from old car battery.
I have been working with various microcontrolers for past 16 years. That is the brain in your mount’s controller. Basically – they either work or they don’t. I have not seen yet intermittent microcontroler. So what are the possible causes of the problems some of you are experiencing.
Software – If you still running original V3.1 that your controller did come with, update to V3.21. It works on my mount and on others people too. V3.1 was original software and most likely it got lots of bugs in it

Power – The mount needs power source that can provide at least 12V and 2A DC. When you switch the mount on or when it starts slewing the power drain on your power supply can be 6A or more for few milliseconds. If your power source cannot supply required current, the voltage will drop under 12V however briefly and the voltage regulators that are usually regulating voltage for the micro will drop out of regulation and supply lots of noise to the micro. Microcontroler will then act unpredictably – like runaway slews. Electric motors draw 3 to 10 times more current on start up then what they draw when they run.
To test your battery or power supply – get 5W 2.7Ohm wire wound resistor. Wire it between probes of you multimeter (parallel). Touch your battery terminals – power supply output terminals with multimeter probes for about 2- 3 second. If the voltage drops below 12V your power supply is no good for powering HEQ5. Do not leave probes connected any longer or you will burn out the resistor or your power supply.
Dry solder joins – those are very rare today as almost all the electronics are SMD and are soldered by machines.
Bad connections and broken wires in the leads and the connectors are very likely cause of the problems.

[gmbfilter (Geoff)]

BINTEL had my new handset + cable, I upgraded to V3.21 and put it on the mount it works as advertised...very happy.

Did a 2 star align. I just agreed with the first stars that came up only 1:30PM... no stars visible then went to the moon which was up. BINGO in the field of view of camera (40d with 70-200 )

Fiddled with the slewing buttons for ages keep going back to the moon tracked the moon for about 4 hours and it was still on the same AF spot in viewfinder

[AlexN]

Good to hear it got sorted out for you Geoff. Dont you just love it when things work as they should.

[pjphilli (Peter)]

Hi Carl
Thanks for the interesting information regarding your experience and the problem of momentary voltage drop under high initial slew current. This got me thinking about the rather slim 2 metre power lead supplied with the mount. I have just measured that the loop resistance of this lead under a constant 2 amp current is 0.13ohms. This would give a voltage drop of 0.78v with a 6 amp load - so although contributing slightly to the problem the lead looks pretty robust for normal operation.
That is a good point though when operating the mount through a regulated power supply which normally give a sharp and rapid voltage drop when the max current rating is exceeded.
At present I am operating from a 5amp max switchmode power supply. Previously I was using a good fully charged 12volt car battery. In both cases the problem that I (and apparently others) am experiencing is only on start up. It appears that the mount gets into a false start up condition which either results in a "not connected..." message or crazy initial movements of the mount. I find that if after several attempts I eventually achieve normal start up and can proceed with a three star alignment after which the mount works perfectly for the rest of the night. I think that the problem is in the initial firmware/hardware handshake perhaps caused by something such as marginal pulse lengths.
I would be interested if anyone else could throw some further light on this problem. Cheers Peter

[Merlin66 (Ken)]

I'd strongly suggest getting a computer step-up transformer 12V-16V for the HEQ mounting. They are usually selectable voltage output. I use 16V for the HEQ and up to 18V for the LX200.
I got mine from Jaycar and modified the output socket to a standard car socket; driven from a 12V 20Ah rechargeable gives 100% performance every time

[AlexN]

Even though my mount is not a HEQ5, I think its also worth noting that I've had no issues what so ever running from a rechargeable 12v 17Ah portable jump starter.

[marki]

I use a lab power supply (0 - 30V, 20A) but only at 12V and my mount does what its supposed to do. Interesting thoughts about the current draw Karl. I have watched mine to see what the mount draws (supply has display for both voltage and current) but have never seen it top about 1 amp even as the motors start to slew (not sure if this is the norm though). I do use 18V with the meade as that has 24V motors and is a lot happier then when I use it at 12V.

Mark

[Karls48 (Karl)]

Mark, to see those current spikes you will need storage CRO. They last only milliseconds, too short to measure with multimeter or normal oscilloscope.

[pjphilli (Peter)]

Hi Rob, Karl and Others
I have installed latest Version 3.23 software. This version is to correct some software faults including a lockup problem when the alignment procedure is skipped to go directly to object selection. I have now done some tests to see whether this has made any difference to my problem viz: mount not connecting on start-up, ("not connected ..." message received) and/or slewing to weird directions on startup.
To test I started up, went through procedures of alignment, object selection, parking, turn off, leaving at least 30 seconds between successive
start ups to ensure that the mount electronics were started from a dormant condition. As well, between start-ups, I disconnected the paddle leads reversed them, shook the lead around, disconnected and reconnected power.
In all of the above tests the mount performed faultlessly, connected correctly every time, aligned and pointed to objects correctly.
So this looks encouraging but I will not be convinced until I have completed several nights of successful mount performance (perhaps Murphy is playing games with me!).
Perhaps others who have had start up problems could try Version 3.23 and report your results on this thread. Cheers Peter

[danielsun]

That's great news so far pjphilli.
I will do the same and upgrade my EQ6pro and I hope that it fixes mine because I really don't want to go through the hassle of sending my mount back.

Let's hope it holds up.

Cheers Daniel.

[marki]

Originally Posted by Karls48

Mark, to see those current spikes you will need storage CRO. They last only milliseconds, too short to measure with multimeter or normal oscilloscope.

Fair enough Karl, I dont have anything so highly technical but I do have a milling machine which is where my HEQ5 Pro will be going if it starts behaving like the gents have described below. I'll make screwdriver handles out of the bugger .

Mark

[RobF (Rob)]

Originally Posted by pjphilli

Hi Rob, Karl and Others
I have installed latest Version 3.23 software. This version is to correct some software faults including a lockup problem when the alignment procedure is skipped to go directly to object selection. I have now done some tests to see whether this has made any difference to my problem viz: mount not connecting on start-up, ("not connected ..." message received) and/or slewing to weird directions on startup.
To test I started up, went through procedures of alignment, object selection, parking, turn off, leaving at least 30 seconds between successive
start ups to ensure that the mount electronics were started from a dormant condition. As well, between start-ups, I disconnected the paddle leads reversed them, shook the lead around, disconnected and reconnected power.
In all of the above tests the mount performed faultlessly, connected correctly every time, aligned and pointed to objects correctly.
So this looks encouraging but I will not be convinced until I have completed several nights of successful mount performance (perhaps Murphy is playing games with me!).
Perhaps others who have had start up problems could try Version 3.23 and report your results on this thread. Cheers Peter

I upgraded to 3.23 and still had some out of control episodes - pretty sure they didn't stop until I reversed the lead and wedged the hand-controller end. One long (4hr) session after that was perfect, but haven't had opportunity to get out again. Hoping the Brissy clouds clear for Friday/Sat though.

Pleasing to see Alex running EQ6 off same size battery I'm using - I gather these things can be somewhat variable in quality/longevity though.

Also interested to hear if 3.23 helped anyone else. Certainly glad I kept my old PC (with serial port)

[pjphilli (Peter)]

Hi Rob - Ah, and I thought I might have found the silver bullet!
Hi Daniel - Please let us know your results. I too am reluctant to send my mount back as when it is working it is a ripper!
Cheers Peter

[Tandum (Robin)]

I run mine off a car battery and I've tried making new cables.
I still get the run away problem sometimes. FIIK?
My eq6 is awaiting pickup.