Problem night

[Ken_nneth]

What a night. Finally got an evening with clear skies, set my new scope (TS-Optics 70 mm f/5 Quadruplet) on the mount (iOptron CEM60) attached all the cables and balanced close to perfection. Powered up my new mini PC and started SGP. Ran an autofocus (Sesto Senso) and polar aligned (PoleMaster). Did a couple of plate solves to check scope/camera settings, all good. Decided to slew to Deneb to adjust my guide scope and it all went crazy. The mount slew to somewhere in the north instead of south as I had expected. A lot of plate solving, on and off, resetting, try and try again but no matter what I did the result was always the same. Changed to N.I.N.A., plate solved slewed, and the same result. After 5-6 hours I decided to give up and took everything down. This morning with a clear mind, although tired, I checked the mount. Turned it on grabbed the hand controller and my eye glanced to the bottom of the display and saw the date, 2013.10.04. It seems the battery was really almost dead and all my original setting were gone. So if unexplainable thing happen check hardware as well as software.
Kenneth

[JayTee]

Sorry that happened. It has plagued all of us at some point. Hopefully you only need to learn it once.

Cheers

[Juno16]

Wow Kenneth! What a frustrating night!

Glad that you found the issue and it was such an easy fix, but wow!

Thanks for sharing. Maybe your experience will help one of us one day.

[bobharmony]

This is one of those things we all experience in one way or another - battery dead, or bahtinov mask left on for the entire imaging run, or forgetting to uncap the scope after collecting darks. Hopefully someone will read this and check theirs out, and you won't be plagued by this gremlin again!

Bob

[STEVE333]

Kenneth - You are a bulldog! 5 or 6 hours! I'm impressed. I've done the same thing but gave up after only about 1/2 hour in frustration. I've also imaged with the Bahtinov Mask left on. Once I forgot to put on the counter weight for a new mount! I must have completely forgotten to balance the mount! Forgotten to plug in the Dew Heaters, ....

Welcome to the club

Steve

[Greenman]

Ah, I share this feeling. I spent several hours trying to get CFM working in Windows 11, only to find that the handset was not corrupted. Yep, my battery was too low, in the end I plugged the mount into a power supply and lo and behold - all was fine.