First severe problem

[tdaiber]

Hi all,

last night was supposed to be clear all along so I set up the mount and complete gear and left ouside to wait until I returned later that night. Unfortunately there was some little rain shower and the temps dropped to freezing but not much under 0°C. I had already everything powered up for the whole time and did not notice any problem, all devices seemed to be up and running. There was no noticable snow, ice, whatever on the setup except for the telescope cover.
I have a small Mele PC sitting on the telescope to which I logged in from my iPad using Remote Desktop. The mount was pointing to the NCP (more or less of course.) I did not check the coordinate reading though. After the last use I had it packed in its case to show to friends. The last use had been on the same spot here at home.
Then I started ThreePointPolarAlignment in Nina, which I had used before successfully. The mount began slewing to the East and a bit away from +90° but did not seem to want to stop before the scope would hit the tripod. Unfortunately in that moment the Mele was not responding to my Stop commands so I hit the mounts Power switch to stop the mount. From that moment on the mount does only slew to the West direction. North and South are working properly, no chance to move it eastwards.
The mount does not park or Home, Unity only displays Park and not Unpark, even if the mount is freshly started.
Connecting via Unity App on Smartphone or on PC, using USB, gives all the same result.
This night I put the mount into the garage, now in the living room, doesn't help.
According to the RA/Dec reading in Unity the mount does track as well as stop and resume tracking.
Hitting Set park position and confirming gives the Error Failed to move mount to park position. Same when I clicked Park before this.
Hitting Home there is a high sound for 1 or 2 seconds, probably the motor but that's it.
Choosing a Slew position gives the same result, no error, keeps tracking.

Tonight I had the mount powered by the PPBA with Pegasus original cable for the mount and Pegasus 10 A power supply. Swapping to mounts own power supply does not help.

Any idea?
Thanks a lot.
Greetings Torsten

[Jockey]

This is an uninformed wild guess, but - maybe a belt came off with the abrupt cutting of the power ?

In this way the motor can run, with sound, but no movement of the axis.

Good luck in any case.

[tdaiber]

Thanks, but no. The mount does track and also move in the West direction. It won’t reverse direction, so the belt can’t be the problem.

Clear skies
Torsten

[carles]

Hi,

you should try turning it on, then Sideral, then "reset home" , from there try to recover mount's position. It happened to me in the past as well...
then when you got the mount aligned with the marks , reset home again and you should be good to go.

after, perhaps you should limit a bit more the limits on the mount (in Unity PC ) so that doesn't happen again

regards

Carles

[tdaiber]

Carles,

you made my day It's up and running again. With USB connection to PC right after connection I hit Sidereal and then Reset Home. After that it moved again into the East direction, whew
I needed another iteration of Reset Home to reach the NCP, but now all is fine again.
But I don't think, limits would have helped me as the scope was pointing somewhere near Zenith and the mount was slewing on. When I hit the power button it still pointed up in the sky.
Anyway, I will pay close attention and hope, this will not occur again. And if, hopefully I remember the solution

Clear skies
Torsten

[Jockey]

Bravo !!

That is a relief

I am making a note of Carles info - very helpful, thanks.

Cheers
Tim