Synscan

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 8:35 am

As per requested by meng lee, and a few other curious people, i have decided to post a little bit on the synscan upgrade.

I placed an order last month, managed to arrive on thursday. A pic of the contents is included. Everything comes well packed. A double box was being used. The box is divided into compartments. You can see the Ra motor cover, the hand controller and the motors. A manual and tools for installation is included. A packet of grease was also provided.

And yes, everything orion ships you an item, a copy of their latest catalouge is included as well. It makes u poorer as u start to browse thru the catalouge.

~MooEy~

Post by **rcj** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:03 am

how is the consistency of tracking? slewing? are the motors noisy like those in meade? how does it compare to the SS2K if you have used it before?

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:22 am

Installation wasn't that hard. You take out your older mt-1 motors, put the new steppers in, try to get a gd mesh and then tighten the screws. The screws are M5. The original screws on the vixen mt-1 are m6, so they dun fit each other. For the older SP mount, in the ra axis, u need a 6cm or maybe slightly longer screw. The screw provided is 4cm, which is meant for the SVP/GP series.

Below is a pic of the 3 screws, the black one is the M5 4cm provided by orion, middle one is the M5 6cm i bought myself, and the last one is the M6 6cm provided by vixen.

~MooEy~

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:27 am

After that, you connect all the cables, 4pin connector to the ra motor, one 13" long cable from the motor controller unit to the ra motor, and the 27" long cable from the ra motor to the dec motor. Hook up the hand controller and a 2a 12v power supply.

~MooEy~

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:29 am

After that u turn on the unit and enter ur lat/long, your time zone, date, and the current time. The controller will ask you if you want to do an alignment. I did a dry run indoor and everything seems fine.

~MooEy~

Pic will be included later

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:30 am

Friday night was somewhat clear after 11pm. I went out to try out the system.

Mission Failed

I tried doing a 3 star alignment. Choose sirrius, the mount pointed somewhere very far away. Same thing goes for every single other object that i tried. Checked every setting over and over. Couldn't get the problem resolved. Packed up for the night.

~MooEy~

kochu · Post by **kochu** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 9:41 am

Hi, MooEy,

Pls Download and Try out Synscan ver 3.21, if yours do not have it installed by default. It has direct PC connectivity through RS232 cable. Laptop can directly control mount through planetarium programs by-passing Hand Controller's most functions except direction keys and rate adjustment.

Probably it may have not been installed in your Synscan as the firmware was released only on Feb 4 th.

If you are looking for additional functionalities ,I suggest to get one EQDIR module from Doug Andersson and try out EQDIR program . Great program. I am using it since last year and find it really good for controlling the EQ6 Pro mount It is also likely that in the near future EQDIR developers will modify the program to do away with Doug's EQDIR module. Any way, it cost only 30 US$.

Kochu/18-2-08

mch3898 · Post by **mch3898** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:14 am

kochu wrote:Hi, MooEy,

If you are looking for additional functionalities ,I suggest to get one EQDIR module from Doug Andersson and try out EQDIR program . Great program. I am using it since last year and find it really good for controlling the EQ6 Pro mount It is also likely that in the near future EQDIR developers will modify the program to do away with Doug's EQDIR module. Any way, it cost only 30 US$.

Kochu/18-2-08

Hi,

Just to add on. I have also been playing around with EQDIR. It is a great program. I added on the wireless Logitech RumblePad (borrowed from my son's gaming console) and now I can control my Sirius EQ mount wirelessly. Very easy when doing alignment, especially when linked to a planetarium program. I use HNSKY. EQDIR can even do a spiral search for the alignment star. My mount's GOTO had since been quite easily set.

Heard from their website that a polar alignment feature will be next. But it has to do with a 6-star alignment. Forget about Polaris which we can never see in Singapore anyway.

In a sense, my Handcontroller is not much used. Anyone want a not-much-used Handcontroller for the EQ mount?

MooEy · Post by **MooEy** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 10:34 am

Went back home, luckily could find meng lee online, we went thru most of the settings and still found nothing wrong. Suspected could be either gearing ratio diff, or controller fault. I check with the setting circle the next day indoor and found no prob with the gearing ratios. Isolated problem down to controller.

I did the firmware update. Went up to 3.21. Another dry run indoor shows much better pointing. Could it be a corrupted firmware right from the start? Original firmware was 3.12, shouldn't have much prob.

Went out last night to try under the stars. Did a 2 star alignment. Everything works perfectly now. The goto would center onto most objects, but that's with a pretty wide tfov.

Might want to try out the eqdir, but lugging out a laptop is quite a killer.

~MooEy~

A pic of the completed mount. Some side comments, it fits on the SP mount, but you need to get the 6cm screws. The motor cover for RA would not fit the older SP mount, might be a perfect fit on the GP mount. Then again, would need to check that out. Gear ratio is the same between SP/GP/SVP so u should have no issue with it. On my SP mount, the RA motor is slightly tilted for a gd meshing.

kochu · Post by **kochu** » Mon Feb 18, 2008 1:58 pm

Hi,

I am using joystick and CDC . (No son to borrow wireless rumble pad!!!). Of course, wireless dongles are very useful when the PC is kept at a distance and to reduce the clutter of wires. I am also not using the HC ever since EQDIR appeared on the horizon. With properly marked position for tripod I do not even have to align every day. The alignment never get lost if the scope is parked to home position before shutting down the power.

Any how I am planning to check out Ver 3.21 with HC and see if it can give any qualitative improvement over EQDIR, which I doubt, may be atleast till the promised future enhancements by Synta .

Hi MooEy, Easiest way to trouble shoot your set up is to try out the mount with another borrowed HC.

Kochu/18-2-08
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SingAstro

Synscan

Synscan

Synscan

Re: Synscan

EQDIR