So, tonight I fired up my new WD 20 for the first time. My thinking was to first connect the power supply and hand controller and turn the mount on in the house in order to familiarize myself with the hand controller. I wanted to do this before I hooked up the computer and started working through those connection issues. I have the mount plugged into a Jackery 500 battery through its Cigarette lighter port. As per the manual, the hand controller is plugged into the ST4 port using the provided USB C cable. Upon powering up, the red power light turns on. The status light is not illuminated. the hand controller turns on and looks for and finds the On Step. I am able to page through the menus, I have switched the configuration to Alt Azim and rebooted the system, and confirmed that Alt azimuth configuration is maintained. I then went to tracking to make sure it is on. But when I attempt to manually slew the mount using the direction buttons nothing moves. Increased the guide speed, but no difference. I am sure this is Newbie error on my part and I would appreciate any suggests as to what I am overlooking. One question I have is whether or not the SHC is wireless or wired? that could be a problem if it is wireless and I have it plugged in. Second question is whether there’s is something I need to do with the computer for the firmware before I can use with just the hand controller. Appreciate any help/suggestions. Regards. JMD
Solved a that problem. Same as with John D. Just needed to input the coordinates, time etc…
Next question. I have the mount in alt Az configuration with the saddle re oriented so that it is perpendicular to the mount, per the instructions. Which side of the mount do I point north:-).?
Thanks! This is a slick little mount for sure.
JMD
Hi,
For not slewing you mentioned, please check if you enabled tracking before manual slew it, and you may also try to increase slewing speed to “Max” by press F2 button, as default 20X speed may be too slow to be noticed moving.
If you’d like to use Alt/Az mode, another need to noted is that default home position of Alt/Az will be pointing to horizon at North, with alt = 0 degree, you may need to loosen the bolt of saddle and rotate it 90 degree for compatible with this.
And please also check if your time/location has been updated/sync before start tracking/slewing, otherwise limits protection may triggered.
If your issues still existed, please provide more info to our support team by submit a ticket via official website.
WarpAstron Support
Hi,
This could be helpful for understanding the home position in Alt/Az mode.
Once saddle rotated 90 degrees by remove the 4 bolts and adjusted to new position. The home position (perform a return home via hand controller or press home button on front panel) will be refer to picture below.
Your OTA is pointing to the alt = 0 degree at the North horizon.
WarpAstron Support
Thanks! Exactly what I needed!
JMD
So i have encountered another apparent issue. I have had my mount out tonight. It is set up in alt/az mode following the instructions in the Manuel. I had my Tak Sky 90 with a 2 inch diagonal and my Pan 35 mm eyepiece. Power was provided through a Jackery 500 battery. Tripod and Mount were fairly well leveled. Saddled had been rotated as described above and scope was pointing north at alt Zero as described above. It was 6:30 EST and I did my first goto to Jupiter which was at about 30 degrees above the horizon in the east. The scope slewed a bit past Jupiter’s position, but was easily corrected with the hand controller. Once Jupiter was centered in the eyepiece, I observed it for about 15 minutes. during this time the planet stayed dead center. So far so good. My next goto was to Aldebaran. This time the star was in the eyepiece but not centered. I attempted to use the hand controller to center it, and the mount suddenly stopped tracking and the Pause symbol was showing on the hand controller. Long story short, I spend the rest of the night trying to trouble shoot and what I found was that for some reason I cannot slew past east in the azimuth axis, either through goto or manual slewing. Is there some sort of Azimuth limit switch that needs to be disabled? The result seemed to be reproducible.
Thanks!
JMD
Hi,
Please check and try to modify the overhead limit, if limit triggered due to overhead limit.
As default overhead limit is 88 degrees, which will block the scope pointing to overhead. If you see a pause icon shown on the hand controller, it could be a result that limit trigger or something else stopped by mount.
And please check the time/location updated and correct, and you can also share the time and your location when the issue happened, we can double check the position of pointing by simulate it in sky map.
WarpAstron Support
Hi, My lat is 39 degrees 32’ Long is 76 degrees 20’. UTC was set to 5 for the time zone. The time I was out was from 6:30 pm to 10:30 PM EST. No Daylight savings. I will try adjusting the limits, but I do not think that is the issue. My last experiment was to Home the mount and then Manually move the Azimuth axis. Manual Tracking paused at the same general area whether I moved clock wise or counter clockwise. In this case, Alt axis was not moved. No obvious things like wires etc… were impeding motion.
Thanks!
JMD
Update. I pulled the mount inside and fired things up. I have set time, location, UTC, and started tracking. Starting from home position my motion for manual slewing is limited to ~AZ 96 degrees clock wise and ~AZ 263 degrees in the clock wise direction. I have not updated the firmware and the version that the mount came with is 3.03b. So this seems a lot like the limits that would be set for the RA axis in GEM configuration are in play. There does not seem to be anything mechanically inhibiting the mount motion.
Thanks for your help as I troubleshoot this out.
JMD
Hi,
Thanks for sharing, now we can identify that it’s the EC HA Limit cause the motion stop. As default factory set for RA HA limits is 95 degrees - West and 95 degrees - East. It could still enabled during Alt Az mode.
For avoid it impact the Alt/Az mode, you can use PC Mount tool to connect the mount and Disable EC Guard HA Limit feature, as it mainly designed for GEM mode. This could solve your issue.
We will optimize this in future firmware update, to automatically disable EC HA Limit in Alt-Az mode.
Thanks.
WarpAstron Support Team
disabling the EC HA has fixed that issue from what I can see in the house. I will take the mount out again tonight to see how the goto, alignment and Syncing work under the stars. Thank you for your quick and helpful responses.
JMD
Update. After disabling the EC HA, I spent another night outside. I no longer hit limit switches, but still had problems with the mount. The mount would do an initial slew to a target, ok, but when I would go to other targets, the mount would start to oscillate back and forth, at first a little bit, then more pronounced and then stop. Reading through the WA posts on the new Firmware release, I saw that the collision brake system(not the exact name I know) was pretty sensitive to slew speed, especially in the cold. That sensitivity can be adjusted, but i have just disabled it, since my setup has no risk of collision. Everything works well inside. Going out tonight to test under the stars yet. Will let you know how it goes. cheers!! JMD
Success! Spent the last 2 hours bouncing around the sky in alt Az mode. Just goto, adjust, sync. Current setup has ~4.7 degree FOV, so I am taking it easy with the pointing:-) but targets in the area of a recent sync more or less hit the center of the FOV. I used both the hand controller and the Android App without problem. I have gotten pretty efficient with the hand controller so I think I am favoring it for centering things in the eyepiece. But the OnStep app is certainly easier on the eyes:-). Warming up while Orion clears the trees. Tracking Pleiades at the moment. Will see if it is still in the eyepiece when I go out. So far I only see a bit of drift at 110x when watching Saturn after ~20 minutes, which is excellent from my experience with other tracking alt Az mounts. Turning off the EC HA and the emergency braking routine seem to have eliminated the issues I was having before. I am certain I could turn on the Emergency Breaking routine and dial back the sensitivity and I would not get the oscillations I was seeing. I just do not need it in the alt Az mode with my setup. I will certainly turn it back on when I use the mount in GEM mode. Very happy camper! JMD