That sounds very bad Hopefully it's due to the fact that they are working fulltime on getting mounts out or ....
But still after all that and no response makes u wonder.
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidNg
I agree with Greg, SB responses to their clients are suboptimal, many questions directly related to their products at their website or emails (my experience) are unanswered or answered halfheartedly, more often by some nice enough users. I also feel their southern hemisphere buyers are neglected in their software development,testing and post sell services.
Unfortunately southern hemisphere customers must only account for a fraction of the market so there does tend to be a bias against us from most manufacturers.
Quote:
Originally Posted by allan gould
Exactly the same re their dome software. Totally ignored until I went online in a public forum and detailed their total lack of service and after sales care. Then they stepped up to the plate but only half heatedly. Ask Houghy about Automadome - he just loves it (NOT).
Sometimes putting a bit of pressure on helps as long as its not too much.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Logieberra
Greg, do us all a favour, go ahead and list your MX mount on the classifieds and be done with it.
My replacement worm block arrived last week, express shipping from the US. Superb service. Period.
I guess I am sounding like a whinger there, point taken and I was thinking of that before posting but on the other hand this forum is designed to be open and honest so those who are making decisions about gear get honest and truthful info that could influence their decision and hopefully end up with the best choice. I am sure SB will come through for me and I will announce that as well but I am sure there are plenty who appreciate the honest feedback which is often hard to find except the hard way! Knowing your support was excellent is part of that feedback. The fact you needed a new worm on a brand new mount is also part of the info.
Greg, what surprises me is that our personal experiences with SB are such polar opposites. Let's just agree to disagree. A truce?
"The fact you needed a new worm on a brand new mount is also part of the info". I'm happy to add to that info.
I was fortunate to purchase a lovely and lightly used MX from IIS member Pmrid. I understand that he received the mount around August 2011, being one of the first to hit Australian shores (MX mount no. 6). The mount is now 14 months old so she's not new.
After measuring PE with both Pempro2 and CCDSoft my raw PE was high 6's to 7's - pushing the limits of the guaranteed 'maximum seven (7) arcsecond peak-to-peak periodic error before periodic error correction. When periodic error correction is applied, the resulting peak-to-peak periodic error should be approximately one (1) arcsecond or less'.
SB decided to replace my worm block, free of charge, and provided a few other replacement bits and pieces (pulleys, belts etc). They shipped the 3lbs of metal + goodies half way around the world via UPS expedited shipping - not cheap - and they also paid for the return shipping of the old block back to Colorado. Impressive. Pics attached.
The replacement worm block produces a raw PE of +1.7/-1.8 (3.5 peak to peak). Details attached. Suffice to say I'm very pleased. With PEC applied my tracking will be limited by seeing only. Happy days.
The replacement worm arrived today. Its a beautifully machined piece of gear. It looks very promising.
Ooops, I realised SB had my old address from when I bought a Sky 6 years ago. I bought the PMX through OPT not direct from SB so I am part of the problem there not letting them know my newer address. They sent it to my old address.
I'll post the results once I change the worm over. My prediction is it will be very good.
Maybe this is something others might be interested in. My MX has uncorrected PE of just slightly over +/- 1 arcsec! My mount was one of the first sent to Australia. Guess I just got pretty lucky!
Maybe this is something others might be interested in. My MX has uncorrected PE of just slightly over +/- 1 arcsec! My mount was one of the first sent to Australia. Guess I just got pretty lucky!
Peter
What camera and scope were you using?
If you were using TEC140 and Moravian 8300 image scale is 1.14 pixels/arc sec and your PE is more like 3.6 arc secs which is like mine before it started spiking in one spot in the PE. Unless you were binned 2x2 but I am not sure about the Sky X but Precision PEC you only enter the 1x1 arc sec/pixel value.
Greg, I was binning at 2x2..... Yes, I will need to redo this at 1x1 to get a more precise curve for a correction, but I will need a very steady night!
Peter, I would use a 2x barlow if I was you. From memory, an image scale of around 1 is ideal.
Some useful info on PEC image scale from Ray Gralak, the Pempro guy:
What Image Scale is Best to use?
I am going to start out this section with something that I think we all learned early on with CCD Imaging and focusing. You cant focus at a 2x2 bin and then image at 1x1 binning. You can, although, focus at 1x1 binning and image at 2x2 binning. If you are going to image at 2x2 binning only, then you can focus at 2x2 binning. The rule is you must focus at the highest binning mode you plan on using.
I have found that PEMPro follows the same rule. Think of it as focusing the periodic error of your mount. If you only image at a 3.5 arc seconds per pixel for wide field work, then you can use that image scale to program your mount with PEMPro. But don't expect to throw on your 12 inch Meade at .55 arc second per pixel on your mount and still expect the same level of performance.
Use the smallest image scale you will use with your mount to program your mount. The better then sampling rate (i.e. smaller the image scale) the better PEMPro can analyze and correct your mount. Remember, ideal sampling is the seeing in your local area divided by 3.3. If your local seeing conditions averages 2.0 arc seconds, then you should aim for a image scale of ~.60 arc seconds per pixel. Anything more than that wont achieve much better performance.
Now, if you only image at 1.75 arc seconds per pixel, then use that to program your mount. I have programmed my mount with PEMPro at 3.5 arc seconds per pixel and it worked great with my wide field set-up. But when I measured my PE with a C9.25 SCT, I found the error to be to large for that image scale. So I re-programmed my mount with the C9.25 and decreased my PE error by 4X! Now the next time I do wide field imaging, my mount will be 'super-tuned' for the job, and that's just what we want.
The only reason why I suggest that, is that your IS of over 2.0 is similar to what I was using to acquire PEC data with Pempro. Here's what I wrote to Ray:
quote:
Also, my image scale is 2.715 is this a problem? Tak Sky90.
reply:
Yes, it could be with this mount. I would recommend using a 2x barlow to get a little more resolution.
Peter, I would use a 2x barlow if I was you. From memory, an image scale of around 1 is ideal.
Some useful info on PEC image scale from Ray Gralak, the Pempro guy:
What Image Scale is Best to use?
I am going to start out this section with something that I think we all learned early on with CCD Imaging and focusing. You cant focus at a 2x2 bin and then image at 1x1 binning. You can, although, focus at 1x1 binning and image at 2x2 binning. If you are going to image at 2x2 binning only, then you can focus at 2x2 binning. The rule is you must focus at the highest binning mode you plan on using.
I have found that PEMPro follows the same rule. Think of it as focusing the periodic error of your mount. If you only image at a 3.5 arc seconds per pixel for wide field work, then you can use that image scale to program your mount with PEMPro. But don't expect to throw on your 12 inch Meade at .55 arc second per pixel on your mount and still expect the same level of performance.
Use the smallest image scale you will use with your mount to program your mount. The better then sampling rate (i.e. smaller the image scale) the better PEMPro can analyze and correct your mount. Remember, ideal sampling is the seeing in your local area divided by 3.3. If your local seeing conditions averages 2.0 arc seconds, then you should aim for a image scale of ~.60 arc seconds per pixel. Anything more than that wont achieve much better performance.
Now, if you only image at 1.75 arc seconds per pixel, then use that to program your mount. I have programmed my mount with PEMPro at 3.5 arc seconds per pixel and it worked great with my wide field set-up. But when I measured my PE with a C9.25 SCT, I found the error to be to large for that image scale. So I re-programmed my mount with the C9.25 and decreased my PE error by 4X! Now the next time I do wide field imaging, my mount will be 'super-tuned' for the job, and that's just what we want.
Good post.
Very informative.
Focusing at 1x1 binning though can be a pain on many cameras that have slow downloads. I suppose you get it exact at higher binning and then switch to 1x1 for a small adjustment.
Logan, Many thanks for your post. That is really useful information clearly put.
I'm sure many of you know I'm just getting started with all these complexities. Just getting CCDSoft to work at all with my camera has been a huge hurdle overcome! Thus, I was pretty happy to get a repeatable result, even at 2x2 binning. I am now pretty curious about my results at 1x1 which will need to wait until better weather returns.
My unbinned image scale with my G2-8300 camera is 1.14 arsec/pixel. This seems pretty close to the ideal of "1." Hopefully that will be good enough.....getting a barlow into this system would be a giant pain!
My uncorrected PE binning 1x1, 26 min data. Image scale 1.14 arcsec/pixel.
I get a better result in correction by not selecting west, but I'm not very happy with what I'm seeing. Is it realistic to think the mount could correct this better? It's smoother but the excursions seem nearly as large as the original measurement, and there are so many small peaks and troughs due to the pinion.
You need to click that last step - periodic curve for PMX to generate a proper PEC. That's just the data being fitted to the graph scale. Next step is the curve that is used for sending corrections. It should look like a gentle sine wave. With Precision PEC and PEMPRO it gives you several choices for the type of algorithm used to generate the final curve. Not sure Sky X does that. Probably uses the best/usual one by default.
You need to click on pointing west or not based on where the scope was pointing when you recorded the data. Have it back to front and the resulting curve pulls when it should push.
If your PEC worsens your tracking you have it in reverse most likely. So you would change that pointing west button.
Greg, I did generate a curve from the PE data I put up in the first photo, and yes it does look like a gentle sine wave as you describe, though perhaps not so gentle due to the pinion gear error. I did save it to the mount first with "west" selected (which made things 2x as worse, then with "west" unselected. That is the 2nd curve I posted. I don't think it is too swift.
Ernie, yes I have clicked "clear" though in one of the photos you can still see the raw tracking data in the background.
Reading what you wrote though perhaps I've made a mistake. What I did is simply collect tracking data with CCDSoft. After I generated the curve I selected the west box, or unselected it. This just appears to invert the curve. I saved each of these versions in turn to the mount and measured the improvement, or lack of improvement by collecting new data using CCDSoft. I saved each of these new curves with a different name so that I could compare afterwards, though it was immediately obvious that one was far worse. It's just that one is not seemingly far better! Have I messed up something?
I'm thinking that perhaps I should use my ST-i camera together with a 2x barlow which might get me in the neighborhood of .8 arcsec/pixel. But maybe I'm chasing something that can't be corrected in this manner, namely the pinion; those changes seem so relentless and fast. I don't know enough about this to know. Whilst my uncorrected PE seems really good it seems chuck full of peaks and valleys. I have not seen enough other curves to know if this is very different from other MX mounts.
Peter, your PE looks to be very small, similar to mine. I think seeing is going to make it hard to train your PEC. I am not sure what your average seeing is where you are? Mine here is around 2 to 3 arc seconds at the moment. This is about the same as the PE.
I am thinking of taking my setup some where with a more stable sky to train the PEC. I am imaging at 2541mm so the smother the atmosphere the better.
Have you seen the new version of Sky X 10.2? It has a lot more camera function, you should be able to train your PEC within Sky X without having to use CCDSoft.
I am hoping that the latest build now works for PEC. My PEC curve is sine wave but very stepped. It did not look like that when I generated it but after uploading to PMX and bringing it back later it looked different like it got altered in that process. It also does not improve tracking or worsen it. It doesn't seem to do anything.
I have installed the latest build and perhaps this has been taken care of. I can post my curve once I redo it in a week and a bit.
Hopefully it's due to the fact that they are working fulltime on getting mounts out or .... 
