8 replies to this topic

[astroman121]

Hi everyone. I have had my LX600 for 7 years. Following a 12 month lul in my astronomy activity (health issues), I fired it up again last month, with the intention of resuming my hobbie whenever our English weather would allow. As my equipment is permanently mounted inside a dedicated home Observatory, it was well protected. My only problem is getting the telescope to obtain a GPS fix. I also have a Globalsat USB GPS dongle (NMEA),which also fails to detect GPS satelites. Is anyone aware of the reason why I cannot get a GPS fix?? I know my Globalsat USB GPS dongle is working, but it is not detecting the satelites.
Clear skies
Astroman121

Edited by astroman121, 06 August 2022 - 12:17 PM.

[OzAndrewJ]

Gday Astroman121

You can use my PEC editor

http://members.optus...om.au/johansea/

to connect to your mount and it has a screen that will read out the GPS data.

That will show if it can "see" any satellites

If it does get the time then date slowly, it just means it cant see enough satellites

in order to fix.

There is also a coin battery in the base of the scope that keeps the almanac

alive between fixes.

It might take 15 minutes to get the first fix, but after that, fixes should be quicker.

 

Andrew Johansen Melbourne Australia

[astroman121]

Many thanks Andrew. I am already a long time fan of your App. I will check out the GPS data later today.
Clear Skies.
Astroman

[astroman121]

Replaced the internal battery. I put  an AVO on the old battery and got 3.3 volts, so I am not overly hopeful.

[astroman121]

Replaced the internal battery. I put  an AVO on the old battery and got 3.3 volts, so I am not overly hopeful.

After replacing the LX600 internal battery, buying two GPS receiver dongles, a complete windows 10
operating system re-installation, and using an older (previously reliable Laptop PC) I still can't get any
satellites. I am forced to conclude either USA has switched off GPS satellite system above UK,  or a Ham Operator is swamping the bandwidth. I give up.

[michael8554]

The 600GPS doesn't need to be connected to a PC for the GPS to work.

 

So why reinstall W10 ?

 

What did connecting to MyScope reveal ?

Edited by michael8554, Yesterday, 07:27 AM.

[t-ara-fan]

I was hiking today and according to my phone the GPS still works. You might have local interference. Is your observatory a dome or roll off? The latter might block a lot of sky, really slowing down getting a fix.

The software OzAndrewJ refers to is awesome by the way.

If the GPS has been powered off for a while, it must download a general almanac then the precise ephemerides for ALL the satellites. It took many hours for the GPS in my LX200GPS to get a fix after years of inactivity.

A 7 year old scope will have the rollover bug. Location is still accurate, time and date is wrong.

My saga is here https://www.cloudyni...i/?fromsearch=1

Edited by t-ara-fan, Today, 02:33 AM.

[bdoyle]

I have used a similar GPS dongle with EQMOD ( for SynScan mounts). If the dongle is near a usb hub it will never find any sats. Really caused grief when I bundled up the cable.

Brian 

[OzAndrewJ]

Gday Astroman121

Missed this earlier

buying two GPS receiver dongles

Did you buy "Meade" GPS units????,

If so, i cant imagine both are faulty,

 

To BDoyle

I have used a similar GPS dongle with EQMOD

The mount cannot read a std dongle.

You can get a "StarGPS" dongle, which is preprogrammed to detect several types of scopes

but a simple GPS dongle wont do anything.

 

So again, if you connect my app and start the GPS using it, do you see data

( as if not, the mount should have declared a GPS unit fault???? )

 

Andrew Johansen Melbourne Australia