Stephane,
Congratulations on your new EQ6-R !!!
Great mount and will serve you well for many many years
As an out of the box mount , it will be perfectly fine for unguided ( short exposure) and guided long exposure Astrophotography ,but later on down the track your seeking tighter guiding you “may have to” check backlash and tweak a few things. My first EQ6-R didn’t need any tweaking but my 2nd EQ6-R purchased 12 months later did , it had a bit of backlash on both Dec and Ra which was fixed in 30 mins ( thanks to a video from Cuiv the lazy geek)
As they are mass produced mounts , there maybe a few that slip through the cracks without a good quality control check prior to sign off , packing and shipping.Also remember mounts in this 20kg category can vary in price from $2,500 to $15,000.
That’s not to say they are bad mounts , they are damn good mounts for the quality performance and price , but stringent QC is not on the top of the list priorities coming out of Taiwan ( as with most mass produced items exported from these regions )
Anyway , good luck ,enjoy your new mount and most importantly enjoy the journey into Astrophotography
Best
Martin
I would settle for a clear night to image ANYTHING...
Mark, my thoughts exactly. I am getting depressed just looking at the weather forecast. I still have a few things on order to arrive, but the telescope is coming tomorrow apparently. Very exciting!
Quote:
Originally Posted by leon
Nice Stephane, Orion would be great, but whatever it will be is exciting for the first time, enjoy.
Leon
Thanks Leon, I saw Trevor Jones (Astrobackyard on Youtube) has a great Photoshop trick to softly blend two photos at different exposure lengths so as to get good detail and not blow out the core. Looks reasonably easy to replicate, so I will try that!
Quote:
Originally Posted by Startrek
Stephane,
Congratulations on your new EQ6-R !!!
Great mount and will serve you well for many many years
As an out of the box mount , it will be perfectly fine for unguided ( short exposure) and guided long exposure Astrophotography ,but later on down the track your seeking tighter guiding you “may have to” check backlash and tweak a few things. My first EQ6-R didn’t need any tweaking but my 2nd EQ6-R purchased 12 months later did , it had a bit of backlash on both Dec and Ra which was fixed in 30 mins ( thanks to a video from Cuiv the lazy geek)
As they are mass produced mounts , there maybe a few that slip through the cracks without a good quality control check prior to sign off , packing and shipping.Also remember mounts in this 20kg category can vary in price from $2,500 to $15,000.
That’s not to say they are bad mounts , they are damn good mounts for the quality performance and price , but stringent QC is not on the top of the list priorities coming out of Taiwan ( as with most mass produced items exported from these regions )
Anyway , good luck ,enjoy your new mount and most importantly enjoy the journey into Astrophotography
Best
Martin
Thanks Martin, your advice has been invaluable. Last night I downloaded EQMOD, connected the mount to the computer using the eqmod cable you recommended and went through your PDF procedure to then slew to targets using Stellarium. It was fun getting that all to work even with no telescope on the mount. I still took care to balance the mount by using the extension counter weight bar, but without using the weights so as not to put any strain on the gears. Frustration was minimal thanks to a well-explained document. Thanks again.
The BT200 f/5 comes tomorrow. I recently purchased a Baader MPCC MkIII coma corrector and ASI120 guide cam. Just waiting for the guidescope and L-Extreme filter to arrive through the post. I know the filter and CC weren't necessary so early on, but I just couldn't resist.
I watched that video from Cuiv some time ago. Needless to say, unless I'm encountering terrible backlash, I will not be playing with those screws, especially so early on. Good to know though that tweaking can improve performance down the track.
Stephane
That’s great news getting your mount connected and bench tested with EQMOD and Stellarium
I spent 2 weeks during rainy weather during August 2020 bench testing EQMOD with the new Ascom supported Stellarium using both my EQ6-R mounts ( the original version and the later USB version )
Wrote the procedures after exhaustive testing to make sure both mounts worked flawlessly under bench testing indoors and live testing outside
It’s really great hearing it all worked smoothly for you , thanks for the feedback
Attached photos of bench testing EQMOD and Stellarium in my home office back in August 2020
A big thank you goes to Gion Kunz in the US , who developed the Ascom support for Stellarium back in late 2019. If it wasn’t for his dedication and hard work we would all still be using Stellariumscope (as the control driver) which worked but was unstable and is unsupported.
Stephane
That’s great news getting your mount connected and bench tested with EQMOD and Stellarium
I spent 2 weeks during rainy weather during August 2020 bench testing EQMOD with the new Ascom supported Stellarium using both my EQ6-R mounts ( the original version and the later USB version )
Wrote the procedures after exhaustive testing to make sure both mounts worked flawlessly under bench testing indoors and live testing outside
It’s really great hearing it all worked smoothly for you , thanks for the feedback
Attached photos of bench testing EQMOD and Stellarium in my home office back in August 2020
A big thank you goes to Gion Kunz in the US , who developed the Ascom support for Stellarium back in late 2019. If it wasn’t for his dedication and hard work we would all still be using Stellariumscope (as the control driver) which worked but was unstable and is unsupported.
Cheers
Martin
It was interesting plugging in all those values and then searching the forums to see what they do and why they need to be set that way. The only thing that didn't work for me was the baud rate of 115,200. I remembered to set the COM port to the same baud rate, but it just could not communicate with the mount in time and I kept getting a timeout error, even with timeout and retries set to maximum. However, once I put it back to the standard 9,600, it communicated perfectly with the mount and slewed at maximum speed comfortably. I wonder if that baud rate will still work okay with a telescope on the mount. We'll see...
I actually had the same issue.
Old computer connected at 115k but when I switched to my new desktop be darned if I could get it to connect at 115k !!
Set it to 9600 and all seems ok
Baud rates pertain to the type of connection to the mount from the laptop
I have both versions of EQ6-R ( original version ) which only has the RJ45 hand controller port ( no additional USB2B port ). For an EQ Direct connection from laptop to this mount I use a Shoestring Astronomy EQ Direct cable which has the internal FTDI chipset on the USB end therefore requires the baud rate set at 9600 to handshake to mount
My later version ( USB2B ) EQ6-R mount, I chose to use the USB2B port ( rather than the handcontroller port ) so I use a 5m long standard USB2A to USB2B cable and because Skywatcher mounts uses a Prolific chipset I set my baud rate to 115200
If your using the handcontroller ports on your Skywatcher EQ6-R mount to connect direct to your laptop using a EQ direct cable ( either Shoestring or Lynx Astro ) then you have to use a baud rate of 9600
I tried reversing baud rates on both of my different mounts and it wouldn’t connect
So ....
EQ Direct cable ( FTDI chipset ) baud rate 9600
USB2A to USB2B Direct cable ( Relies on Prolific chipset in mount ) baud rate 115200
but whatever it will be is exciting for the first time, enjoy. 
Exciting times ahead. Orion is up for sure so M42/Horse Head, Pleiades, Rosette, Cone, Magellanic clouds, Plenty to see.
