Abnormal behaviour lead to some mechanical failure.
Posted: Sun May 07, 2023 7:46 pm
I am pretty sure something broke and I will need a warranty repair. But I wanted to document it here in case others go through the same issues.
I was using the mobile Unity the whole time and this is what happened after the initial power on:
- Mount was physically home, but when I pressed the Home button, it got a few degrees out of center, so I corrected it and pressed Set Home.
- Power off, mount the telescope and power on, the mount immediately slewed full speed to W and stopped when the telescope hit the tripod, I powered it off as quickly as I could.
- Removed the telescope and powered on again. No sudden moves, so I pressed Home and nothing happened, so I manually slewed back to its home position and pressed Set Home.
- But when I presses Home to verify it was set correctly, it slewed 180 and stopped upside down.
- After that, not matter what I did, it would slew W just fine, but it will only slew E up to the 180 point (upside down center), never pass that.
- So I kept trying moving back and forth, resetting Home and power cycling, but at one point I think it went W too far, something like 270 degrees from what would be the home position, and there was a cracking noise.
- After that there are some weird grinding noise every time I slew, some times the it moves a little bit and then stops.
- I hocked it up to a Windows PC and Unity shows status Motor Drive failed.
Aside from the obvious fact that I need to get it repaired, I have a couple of questions:
Why would the mount all of a sudden decide the Home positions was upside down?
And why would it refuse to go E past that point after that?
All this happened while using firmware version 1.17.
Oh and one more thing, the Unity app on Android gets closed every time I click on Park. Is that a known issue?
I was using the mobile Unity the whole time and this is what happened after the initial power on:
- Mount was physically home, but when I pressed the Home button, it got a few degrees out of center, so I corrected it and pressed Set Home.
- Power off, mount the telescope and power on, the mount immediately slewed full speed to W and stopped when the telescope hit the tripod, I powered it off as quickly as I could.
- Removed the telescope and powered on again. No sudden moves, so I pressed Home and nothing happened, so I manually slewed back to its home position and pressed Set Home.
- But when I presses Home to verify it was set correctly, it slewed 180 and stopped upside down.
- After that, not matter what I did, it would slew W just fine, but it will only slew E up to the 180 point (upside down center), never pass that.
- So I kept trying moving back and forth, resetting Home and power cycling, but at one point I think it went W too far, something like 270 degrees from what would be the home position, and there was a cracking noise.
- After that there are some weird grinding noise every time I slew, some times the it moves a little bit and then stops.
- I hocked it up to a Windows PC and Unity shows status Motor Drive failed.
Aside from the obvious fact that I need to get it repaired, I have a couple of questions:
Why would the mount all of a sudden decide the Home positions was upside down?
And why would it refuse to go E past that point after that?
All this happened while using firmware version 1.17.
Oh and one more thing, the Unity app on Android gets closed every time I click on Park. Is that a known issue?