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[roblegion]

Hi Tom,
Thanks for fast service and delivery.
Everything seems to have gone well, except,
1) During manual slew, motors spin up to decent speed then beep and stop. seems to be a little better at lower slew rates, so have to start, stop and start again. But they only slew for a second at full rate.

2) what should eqmod read in the mount window (top left) as mine reads HEQ5/EQ6, have I configured wrongly? .

3) If I set "home" position and then do a manual slew, selecting park to home goes to a totally different position from where I started?.

Thanks in anticipation.

Rob.

[TCWORLD]

Hi Rob,

EQMOD will always show HEQ5/EQ6 as that is the default setting in EQMOD. But you can ignore that as it will read the configuration from the AstroEQ EEPROM and use that instead.

Have you run the configuration utility and put in the gear ratios for your mount, and set the Go-To speed to a suitable value?

Could you remind me the mount/motors that you have?

It sounds like the motors are stalling. It may be the current limit is too low (or sometimes to high), or that the speed you are going is faster than the motors can cope with.

[roblegion]

WOW Tom, thanks for such a fast response,
using an EQ5, NEMA14's, 15 tooth to 40 tooth.
Have set ratio's to 1.8 step, 2.666666666:1 motor ratio, 144:1 gear ratio.
When I do a manual slew( with start stop probs as mentioned) and the tell mount to go home, its almost there but about 5 degrees out in both axis.
I have tried adjusting the goto speeds 800 is a no no, 400 and lower the problem is still there.

Regards

Rob.

[TCWORLD]

If you use the slew buttons in EQMOD (The N,E,S,W), you can try running the mount at different speeds and see where it stops running.

I presume the uStep mode is set as 1/32. Your mount is set up the same as the EQ5-Custom-Pulley configuration file so you can use that to double check.

Are the motors cold or hot to the touch? (scientific I know )

[roblegion]

Thanks Tom, when I first set up, the motors were hot (bloody hot ) I turned the pots down and now they are actually cold, but either setting made no difference to the spin up/stop problem.
Also weird thing is when I ask it go go home they spin up without stalling and run what I would call normally until they reach NEAR home??? the problem only seems to be when I press (and hold by the way) any of the slew buttons

Rob

[TCWORLD]

Hmm. I'll have a think on it.

One thing to check, are both axes spinning the correct way? You may need to reverse one or both of them in the config utility if they are (might make it appear as if they are stopping in the wrong place).

The other thing to try is this:
https://github.com/TCWORLD/AstroEQ/raw/c49f3f1f742bf37b5d1d667b4c56628762d80e9b/Downloads/AstroEQ-ConfigUtility.zip

It's the previous version of the config utility and firmware. I wonder if I broke something in the firmware I released in June.

[roblegion]

Cheers Tom, will have a good play tomorrow, and let you know.

Rob.

[roblegion]

Hi Tom,
Not a very scientific reply I'm afraid, downloaded the earlier uploader and had a tweak with the pots,everything running fine now (in fact the Nema 14's are running quiet, fast and even cool/cold).
I found that on sending the mount to "home" the motors were noisy as hell, but a little tweak on the pots got them running quietly.
Another weird thing is, I checked the voltage from the ref point to ground, but all I could read was about 11.6vdc, but hey as I say all is up and running and connected to Stellarium after a few probs, cos I can't get on with CDC (too tceh for me, and I can't visualise what I'm seeing on screen)

Thanks for the great work and all the best for your future.

Rob.

[TCWORLD]

Yeah, I think there must be an issue with the new firmware. I'll remove the new download from the server and put back the old one.

If you are measuring 11.6V, my guess is you are measuring from Vref to Vmot (+12V) instead of GND. This would mean you have about 0.4V at Vref which makes sense.

Glad it is up and running for you.