lukepower

Hi Bill, yes, the picture was taken on my Cassegrain with the ASA 4" reducer-corrector. I will go shortly to the observatory and see if moving the primary helps.

Alright, finally the mount is working as expected, together with Sequence (beta) I made the following image: As you see, I have quite some coma, I have to investigate this. If I remember correctly, this should come from the secondary, right?

Yes folks, I too love the sound of the direct drives, and yes, it is truly working WAY better than before. Even in its current unbalanced state (OK3Z is sitting 30cm out of the center of the tube) it is working

Hi there, today I got the mount back, yippey. And as I was too eager to try it, I re-mounted already everything back (well, I forgot to connect the focuser, but who cares) and fired up Autoslew. It has to be said that the balance is bad, really. Autoslew starts, powers up the motors without trouble, and it runs just fine. So yes, I am happy Thanks ASA for this really quick support procedure.

I could imagine to install Autoslew in a Virtual Machine (like vmWare or Virtualbox), so that you basically end up with two separate installations, like two computers. It should actually work, but I never tried it...

I have to make my compliments to ASA, within less than one week they were able to tackle down the problem, fix it, and soon ship it back to me Let's wait and see, I suspect the weather will turn evil as soon as the mount is back in the observatory

Hi Tim, welcome to the club I must admit that an easier way to perfectly balance the beast would be very appreciated

I just wanted to give you a small update about my problem. The guys at ASA are doing a great job, they checked the wiring and electronics and it looks like the PCB of the focuser (which I don't need) is gone, and also the integrated USB hub was defective. It seems that the errors came from there, as it was disrupting the voltage levels of the electronics.

Prefetch, the heavier my scope became, the more time it took to balance it And well, the tuning became easier with the autotune feature in Autoslew (even if I still work on it manually, as I feel the automatic settings are not always that good).

Hi Tim, well, kind of similar to my setup. Do you have the normal DDM85 or the heavy version DDM85XL? What I can say is that balancing is crucial and difficult at the same time (regrettably). Try to remove the imaging train and work once just with visual accessories, so that you have no asymmetry in the tube. Then try to center the center of gravity of the tube exactly on the axis of the mount. If you do it right (=damn good), the errors should resolve. It might help to reduce the acceleration values in Autoslew (somewhere under Servo or Motors, if I remember correctly). I had some problems with radial unbalanced weight (like the plate I mentioned, or my OK3Z focuser, sitting on one side of the tube). It might be really difficult to get a good balance, and more than that, the acceleration/deceleration also varies depending on the position of the weights. In my situation it helped to add some weights on-axis (strange)...

One more thing that comes to mind is the rigidity of the setup. I tried once to run everything with my bend pier not firmly tightened to the ground, and that caused (or allowed?) more vibrations. Tightening the screws helped alot.

Hi Tim, my first though would also be the balance. My setup is quite heavy (around 100kg), and my camera is also slightly asymmetric (well, the filter wheel is). Small changes can help alot, so try to get rid of everything moving the center of weight/gravity away from the mechanical center of the tube. In my case, I had a small mounting plate on one side of the scope. Removing it helped alot, even if it was not really visible in the balance tool. Two more things: The PID values can make a huge difference, and so do the acceleration/speed values which you can also set (lower) in Autoslew. May I ask what kind of OTA you have on your mount?

Hi Tim, what do you mean by "freezes up"? Does the mount stop running, or does Autoslew report it had lost the connection to the mount? Might be interesting to see if there are identical components in both of our setups, maybe the fault lies somewhere else (USB hub, power, mainboard...)...

Hi Waldemar, I am still waiting it to be shipped from Michael Knopf. As soon as it's mounted I'll post some pictures. Anyway, the basic idea is to be able to move the plate on the mount by turning a knob

Let's see, I am confident ASA will find and resolve the problem. Hopefully there is one, of course

Bamboo? Oh man, you reminded me that I have to adjust the altitude of my bend pier, damnit Should do it now without the scope+mount+counterweights (all in all about 270 more kg) on it pushing the wrong way...

Hi Waldemar, not really, ASA got the mount and confirmed that the PCB of the focuser controller burned away - however, the problems should not come from there they said. I never needed or used it anyway, btw. So, just waiting to see what happens...

HiMarkus, just to be sure, does Autoslew shows you the correct SideofPier in the lower left corner?

Prefetch, I wonder if 13,91V is ok or too much for the mount... Not that something burned away. However, I would expect that it would light up anyway

If I power it up the red LED turns on, and usually the computer finds some devices on the USB side of life... Hm, 13 Volts seems a bit high, but hell, I am no electrician... Polarity reversal would be very bad, so good idea to ask ASA

Hi Markus, maybe the mount thinks he's on the wrong side of the pier? Well, I occasionally see a similar situation when I do a pointing in the area near the meridian where I could go from either side of the pier. I kind of solved this by doing the pointing away from that area, or forcing it to stay on one side. Maybe this helps...

Hi Prefetch, Does the power supply is enough powerful (>10 AMps, 12V)? Does the polarity is correct? Would be a bad sign if those things are ok, then my guess would be that either the power supply cable to the mount is defect, or the electronics - which would be bad by itself in a new mount...

Gerald, I already unmounted everything and put it in the shipment boxes, so right now I'll just wait for ASA to send UPS to get them. I actually hoped that the burned PCB would bethe one for the DEC motors, at least it would all make sense easily. Well, let's wait and hope

Hi Gerald, well, no, I actually got an external controller for that (still not used, though). Gerald, do you know if I could somehow have a look at the controller card of the motors? I wonder if this defect propagated also to the remaining electronics and/or this defect interferes with the correct working of the remaining of the mount...

Let's see when ASA will get this stuff picked up, I am eagerly waiting for this. Of course, now the weather would be great, no clouds in sight for quite a few days