3857 replies to this topic

[stelaras1]

Trurl & elakrab thank you both for your replies

 

yet another newbi question

when altitude wheel is moving the shaft also spins

is this normal? 

Edited by stelaras1, 19 September 2019 - 04:43 PM.

[SpaceOddities]

Trurl & elakrab thank you both for your replies

 

yet another newbi question

when altitude wheel is moving the shaft also spins

is this normal? 

Yep, that's how the AZ-GTi works. You can really instal a guider there like many people do with the Star Adventurer.

[maxsid]

I am confused.. which wheel? What shaft? Where to put the guider?

Thanks!

 

Yep, that's how the AZ-GTi works. You can really instal a guider there like many people do with the Star Adventurer.

[maxsid]

PA is used to align the mount not the scope.

If the scope used for PA is misaligned with the mount axis - PA alignment will be off. No way the software could correct for this.

By eye-balling the misalignment could be kept down to 30 sec or so which is good enough especially if one autoguides.

Just MHO.

 

You see this is my thought too. I'm not sure how this can be done unless the dec axis is perfectly in line with the correct mount zero point. Since the azgti has no marked center point it's just a guessing game as to what is actually centered. The consensus is that the software handles that so...

[stelaras1]

I am confused.. which wheel? What shaft? Where to put the guider?

Thanks!

maxsid

 

this is the first day i have it

i was referring to altitude clutch wheel, and i'm using a shaft to enable EQ Mode, but i was afraid it might tighten the shatt alot (to M12 bolt) cause the altitude wheel and the saddle were not moving at first, after several tries it worked :/

 

For the guider i'm not really sure where Sputnik is referring

[Lognic04]

Hi,

I recently bought the mount and was annoyed that all the EQMOD cable tutorials were unnecessarily complicated. So here i have a single picture which tells you everything you need to know. It's definitely not worth the expensive FLO cable, if you are able to do basic soldering!

[maxsid]

Ha-ha-ha... I just made this cable a week ago. It was super easy but at first I was scared by over-complicated tutorials..

 

 

Hi,

I recently bought the mount and was annoyed that all the EQMOD cable tutorials were unnecessarily complicated. So here i have a single picture which tells you everything you need to know. It's definitely not worth the expensive FLO cable, if you are able to do basic soldering!

 

[Euripides]

After resolving the mounting issue I've starting testing the setup.

 

Power Up : Go

Movement : Go

Alignment : Go

Tracking: No Go

 

The mount successfully points for example Jupiter (also verified center manually) it just stops. No movement, no sound, nothing. 

 

Tried with SynScan & SynScan Pro from my iPad.

[mxcoppell]

Did you check in SynScan if the tracking is enabled?


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[Euripides]

Yeap, confirmed. Sidereal is selected. (Forgot to mention that)
 

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

 

EDIT

 

Updated also to the latest available version. No luck either...

Edited by Euripides, 21 September 2019 - 05:41 PM.

[Astrodave]

Clutches locked I assume?

[Euripides]

Clutches locked I assume?

Correct


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[stelaras1]

Hello guys,

 

do you know what is used for? the mark with the arrow from the extension tube of the tripod

Attached Thumbnails

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[kel123]

Hello guys,

do you know what is used for? the mark with the arrow from the extension tube of the tripod

It shows you where to align any of the thumb screws

[Astrodave]

It’s just a dimple to put the nylon screw into in order to lock it down. 

[stelaras1]

Hi,

I recently bought the mount and was annoyed that all the EQMOD cable tutorials were unnecessarily complicated. So here i have a single picture which tells you everything you need to know. It's definitely not worth the expensive FLO cable, if you are able to do basic soldering!

 

Ha-ha-ha... I just made this cable a week ago. It was super easy but at first I was scared by over-complicated tutorials..

 

Lognic04 and maxsid i think i need to make one

 

except the rj11 and a usb connector can you give some more hints we need to take into account and the type of the cable that you used?

Edited by stelaras1, 23 September 2019 - 07:37 AM.

[Lognic04]

Lognic04 and maxsid i think i need to make one

 

except the rj11 and a usb connector can you give some more hints we need to take into account and the type of the cable that you used?

Hopefully these pics should help. The coloured wires going into the USB to serial correspond to the RJ11 jack colours if you look at the two closeups.

[jeffry7]

Hi Folks,

 

Maybe this is helpful. Maybe the wrong place to post.

 

A couple of nights ago I set up to take a set of stills of the moon. I mounted my camera on the AZ-GTi attached to a cheap 400mm telescope with a 2x t-mount extender. (So 800mm focal length.) I leveled the mount and then simply pointed it at the moon. I selected the moon from the SyncScan app and then did point and track. I then took stills for the next 3/4s of an hour.

 

It occurred to me that it would be interesting to see how much the moon drifted in the pictures I took. So I put together a script to call a program from a Panorama tools that is used to align images. (If you are familiar with Hugin, this is part of the command line back end.) This tool publishes statistics on how much you have to move one image to align over another image. It is part of a larger package that aligns images for stacking or stitching into panoramics.

 

The end result is that the worst offset was 0.6 pixels. I mean there was one picture that had to be moved 0.6 pixels in order to align properly. (At least in one axis.) At my focal length and pixel size, this amounts to 0.66 arcseconds. I don't know how good this is compared to other mounts, but it is plenty good enough for me and my moon pics!

 

Anyway, I don't know if this is useful or interesting, but I thought I would share.

[Michal Juul]

Hopefully these pics should help. The coloured wires going into the USB to serial correspond to the RJ11 jack colours if you look at the two closeups.

Do you have a link to the USB Type A Breakout Board?

[strudelj]

Hi all,

great thread, I have been scrolling through this thread to find answer to my problem, but I might have scrolled over it.

I have Az-GTi setup in alt-az mode with Skymax 127 MAK. I have been trying/testing it for EAA and some easy astrophotography and I have quite a lot of problems finding out how to use it with Cartes du Ciel and plate solving. For plate solving I have first installed Astrotortilla, but the I also installed All Sky Plate Solver. I have set the All Sky Plate Solver to use fit plates that were installed with Astrotortillia.

I use Olympus OM-D E-M5 II mirrorless camera which gives me around 0.5 by 0.5 degrees of FOV.

In my wildest dreams (I knew beforehand that they are wild dreams) I have imagined that I will mount the telescope so that it points toward north, then connect with PC Syncscan app, turn it toward the sky, plate solve, sync, turn the telescope to other point in the sky, plate solve and sync and then turn to some other part of the sky and plate solve and sync. This would give me a sort of 3 star alignment with (unprecedented) accuracy. This of course does not work. If I point the first position and click point and track, it does not track good enough to make a 10 second exposure without trails. And if I have trail on the image, plate solving does not work.

So fiddling enough time I can make a 1 star alignment so that I can get tracking good enough for 10s exposure so I can plate solve. If I try to plate solve with All Sky Plate Solver I do get a solution, but the nothing happens. I get no sync, no movement toward the correct target. Even more I cannot move the telescope with PC Syncscan app. It seems that All Sky Plate Solver floods the communication with some messages that do nothing. So I tried to solve with Astrotortilla, which works most of the time. Sync and moving to correct target works sometimes, but not always. It seem that it works, when error is bigger than 1 degree, when error is around 0.5 degree, nothing happens although the plate solving reports position and pointing error.

Furthermore, if I finally do a sort of star hopping on the PC screen to correct target, when I want to synchronize the Cartes du Ciel to actual target, sometimes it corrects the FOV marker to the correct position, sometimes it just stays where it is. Again it seems the this happens if the error is below 1 degree. I tried to change the JNow and J2000, with no particular success.
I tried to test everything systematically, but this is farthest I come.

I would ask you all if you can give some advices or links about:
a) Best software setup and methodology/protocol
b) Some ideas how I should start solving the problems I have when setting up a EAA session.

 

I have managed to do one successful session on Dumbell nebula, bellow is an image stacked using 40x25s frames. So it is obviously doable, but it takes a lot of fiddling to get alignment for 25 s exposures and good GOTO functionality.

 

[trurl]

I have Az-GTi setup in alt-az mode...

I think you will need to use eq mode to make any progress with astrophotography.

[skylooker9]

Hi,

I have read through this topic’s 68 pages the best I can but sorry if I have missed the answer to my question. When I switch my Skywatcher AZ GTi on (which I recently bought second hand, and was re-assured it worked perfectly) I get the usual single flashing LED indicating the internal Wi-Fi is on. But when I look for the SSID in the format SynScan_xxxx under the Wi-Fi listings on my Android phone all I see is an SSID in the format ESP_xxxxxx that never changes to anything else. To explain, this SSID should only be displayed for a few seconds before the main SynScan_xxxx SSID appears and you cannot control the mount if you connect to the ESP_xxxxxx SSID.

 

In an attempt to solve the problem I have reset the Wi-Fi configuration to factory default by powering it on for well over 4 hours (overnight) using a 12V 1A mains adaptor without anything connected (physically or using Wi-Fi). I have also attempted to connect to the mount using an iPhone, iPad and a Windows PC, all of which only detected the ESP_xxxxxx SSID. To avoid possible interference from other Wi-Fi networks I have also conducted all attempted connections in the open where I have checked there are no detectable Wi-Fi signals. Can anyone offer any advice? Hopefully I’m just forgetting to do something. Thanks in advance for any help.  

[Geordie@55°N]

After resolving the mounting issue I've starting testing the setup.

 

Power Up : Go

Movement : Go

Alignment : Go

Tracking: No Go

 

The mount successfully points for example Jupiter (also verified center manually) it just stops. No movement, no sound, nothing. 

 

Tried with SynScan & SynScan Pro from my iPad.

Hi Euripides,

 

Your problem seems quite unique, as the ipad has control of the scope in all directions, when I first tried my GTI I thought nothing was moving / tracking because it was totally silent while tracking but it was moving, note! am total newbie at Astronomy and Telescopes.

 

1, If I have this right you selected Jupiter from the list, and then pressed " GO TO " the OTA  moved and pointed to Jupiter? but did not track?

2, And if you go to the Information page in Syn-scan app the ( Azimuth/ Altitude Apparent) readout at the bottom of the list will be fixed ? ( no running numbers)  

[Alexdz57]

 

Hi,

I have read through this topic’s 68 pages the best I can but sorry if I have missed the answer to my question. When I switch my Skywatcher AZ GTi on (which I recently bought second hand, and was re-assured it worked perfectly) I get the usual single flashing LED indicating the internal Wi-Fi is on. But when I look for the SSID in the format SynScan_xxxx under the Wi-Fi listings on my Android phone all I see is an SSID in the format ESP_xxxxxx that never changes to anything else. To explain, this SSID should only be displayed for a few seconds before the main SynScan_xxxx SSID appears and you cannot control the mount if you connect to the ESP_xxxxxx SSID.

 

In an attempt to solve the problem I have reset the Wi-Fi configuration to factory default by powering it on for well over 4 hours (overnight) using a 12V 1A mains adaptor without anything connected (physically or using Wi-Fi). I have also attempted to connect to the mount using an iPhone, iPad and a Windows PC, all of which only detected the ESP_xxxxxx SSID. To avoid possible interference from other Wi-Fi networks I have also conducted all attempted connections in the open where I have checked there are no detectable Wi-Fi signals. Can anyone offer any advice? Hopefully I’m just forgetting to do something. Thanks in advance for any help.  

 

Have you tried with another device? I've tried using mine with 2 android tablets and 3 phones. A few of them work great, one of them works with some juggling on/off of components (HTC M8), and one simply doesn't work at all (HTC 10). I don't know if the problem is with the mount or android but you might want to try another device if you have one available.

[skylooker9]

Hi Alexdz57,
Thanks for your advice. I have tried a couple of iOS devices (the iPhone and iPad) and the Windows PC but might try a different make of Android handset as I have only tried Samsung phones so far. Unfortunatley I think its lookibg like I might have to source a wifi adaptor to update the firmware.