Newer EQ6-R Pro

[Baskevo]

Hey guys,

I just received my new EQ6-R Pro yesterday! I setup last night and, of course, had a rough experience lol Clouds were rolling in and out and I could not figure out how to set it up with the laptop! I am posting this here with the hopes that someone will throw out some advice before I start setting up for the night and I can save a lot of time

The problem is there isn't a lot of posts yet on the newer EQ6-R Pro with the USB ports (1 on the mount, 1 on the hand controller), and the only thing I've seen recommended to use with the EQ6-R Pro is EQMod, which sucks!! That program is the most confusing, slowest software in astrophotography. I could not get the mount to track, either... it kept saying "RA and DEC reached limits, stop tracking"

So I downloaded the other program actually recommended by Skywatcher in the manual, Skywatcher SynScan Pro. It is a little better, with a much cleaner user interface and you can actually use the GoTo functions (which I could not figure out in EQMod). I haven't tried tracking with the new program yet, hopefully I will be able to tonight.

Maybe I am just spoiled coming from a Celestron mount, which has CPWI and worked flawlessly (as far as connecting goes). Am I missing something here? Is there a better program and should it be this difficult to connect to my laptop with a SynScan mount?

Lastly, is there a way to increase the slew speed when using the controls for the mount in APT? When using the SynScan Pro app, I am selecting SynscanTelescope Mobile under the ASCOM selection list... Is that correct?

Any tips or tricks you guys have for using the skywatcher EQ6-R Pro, I am all ears! Any advice on automating the mount to control from the laptop? Thanks in advance and clear skies!

[John Fitzgerald]

I ditched the hand control and app, and started using my Nexus DSC to control the Atlas AZ/EQ-G in alt-az mode. It hasn't been tested with the Nexus DSC in GEM mode, to my knowledge. It requires a USB to TTL (RJ45) serial cable to interface, plus the latest firmware.

[yobbo89]

I can't help ya, I think eqmod is the best! Haha

[Baskevo]

Grrrrr I'm so frustrated!!!! How can you possibly think EQMod is the best?? Am I missing something here? Can you even use the GoTo function in EQMod?

I finally got it connected, and then I try to slew to a target, and it faces the complete opposite direction... Then, I try to slew back to the home position, and it would not move in R.A.

I decided to switch to Synscan Pro, which was way easier and connected easily. un-FREAKIN-fortunately, the lady came over before I could get out to turn the dew heaters on, and so my entire rig was soaked... I spent an hour trying to figure out why I'm seeing massive halos and my focusing frames looked super weird... Took off the camera, and there's dew all over my filters...

The price we pay for killer photos... I miss my AVX :/ Hopefully that feeling will go away once I start tracking... (IF I start tracking)

[Baskevo]

I'm starting to regret my purchase. My guiding hasn't improved at all from the AVX mount:

I set up PEC training and am tracking at 0.75x sidereal. I was able to get through calibration without any errors, which is new for me coming from the AVX, but as you can see my RMS error is almost identical to the AVX. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing something? Or is this just as good as it gets for me with my bortle 8?

[Micke187]

i suggest you skip PEC when you are guiding. because those two will fight over the controll and 99% of the time you will get worse tracking. And is the guidescope really on-focus? looks abit blurry. And also change the guidespeed a little lower to 0.5 x it might just be little to high.

[Baskevo]

i suggest you skip PEC when you are guiding. because those two will fight over the controll and 99% of the time you will get worse tracking. And is the guidescope really on-focus? looks abit blurry. And also change the guidespeed a little lower to 0.5 x it might just be little to high.

Thanks for the tips, Micke... I will try out your suggestions tomorrow. I might try a different guide scope too, because the one I have is a pain to get focused.

[yobbo89]

I'm starting to regret my purchase. My guiding hasn't improved at all from the AVX mount:

Screen Shot 2020-01-23 at 4.56.51 AM.png

I set up PEC training and am tracking at 0.75x sidereal. I was able to get through calibration without any errors, which is new for me coming from the AVX, but as you can see my RMS error is almost identical to the AVX. Can anyone tell me if I'm missing something? Or is this just as good as it gets for me with my bortle 8?

don't jump to conclusions !, your bortle zone ie lp isn't going to affect guiding much , the turbulent atmosphere will and this plays a huge part on good and poor tracking.

having too short and too long of an exposure can give problems with guiding, too short will give you oscillation,too long will give you slow corrections.
incorrect balance causes problems.

too much of an aggressive correction setting can cause rapid guiding. to be honest phd's recommended settings can't be matched with manual fine tuning when looking for the best guiding. it's a good starting point but you should be able to do better and every night is different.

the sidereal guide rate plays an important part as well.

The choice of the star to guide on, my phd keeps picking double stars and it will swap over to each star every few seconds.....

The last one to consider is poor worm adjustment from the manufacturer, it is not hard to adjust when learning from a good tutorial online, wiggling the ra and dec axis buy hand with the gear attached gives you a good indication of the fit. typically i find most of my store brought mounts to be too loose and for a reason i guess it is to accommodate different regional temperatures to give some clearance and temperature affects mechanics.

my beat up eq6 hits 0.8'' and i consider that poor guiding.have hope.

you just need to go up and down the list and keep repeating and if that doesn't work pick another night with better seeing.

[yobbo89]

ps can you send a image of your graph with x:100 and y:+/-4 and try to use the bullseye/target graph as well.

generally looking at the guiding you can see if it's over correcting or not smooth enough when zooming in on the guide graph. how was your polar alignment too ?

[Baskevo]

So I figured out EQMod, and it seems to be working. Although, my damn weight shaft fell out, and my weight won't stay on the shaft unless I tighten it as much as humanly possible. It makes me nervous... So that was frustrating. I was able to guide for like 30 seconds after readjusting focus, ignoring PEC, and setting sidereal to 0.5x, and my RMS error stayed below 0.8, which is much better, but that was not for very long. But usually it started out at like 1.4", so hopefully this is a good sign. Once these damn clouds clear I can give it another shot, and will post more results. Thanks for the help everyone

Oh! I also finally ordered by side-by-side dovetails, should be here tomorrow I am hoping that will help a ton. If I had to guess, I would say that my guide scope is the main reason for a lot of the frustration. Also, the damn power supply for my camera is kind of short and hard to manage, and it may be snagging my setup. I am hoping that with the side-by-side, a lot of my issues will be solved.

[TheButcher]

Hi Baskevo,

I felt exactly the same way you did when I first got the Eq6-R Pro. I was so frustrated and trying to find info out. Read this thread I started viewtopic.php?f=48&t=6396

From that thread I wrote:
"I finally got everything working last night with the mount. At first I tried with the Hand controller and also the direct EQMod way. Now the first night I had a whole bag of issues and had my head scratching. So I thought I messed up with the installation of the drivers and then com ports were changing ect… So the next day I thought it was best to wipe my laptop clean with a fresh install. I usually wipe it clean once or twice a year (only takes a few hours). So with the new clean Win 10 PC, I attempted to connect again and then it dawned on me (I kept hearing a USB connect and disconnect sound every 5-10 seconds). I didn't hear it before because I had my sound muted.

So it turned out that my brand new cool looking red USB cable was defective and that was causing my issue the whole time. So next attempt I went out and tried to use the Hand Controller at first. I was able to let Sequence Generator Pro see it and (I could control the mount with the software based direction arrows that pops up with SGP). The only problem after was that I could not get the Mount the move when Plate Solving.

So I brought the mount back in and decided to go through EQMod and I got to say I am more then happy now. Especially since I don't have to do star alignment anymore. Rather I let EQMod go through SGP's plate solving. I do not need the remote really, but I still leave it plugged in. I am not running a planetarium program like Stelarlium. Rather just using Sequnce Generator Pro and PHD for Guiding.

So this is how my routine works now. I polar align with Sharpcap, then I turn the mount on and do a 1 star alignment just to find a bright star so I can use my Bahtinov Mask to focus with. After I Focus the scope and guide scope, I set the Hand Controller to PC DIrect mode and put the controller back in its cradle and forget about it. I then Plug in the USB directly to the Mount's USB B port and Open up Sequence Generator Pro And Connect PHD2. When the EQMod screen pops up. I hit the button on the bottom that says park to Home Position, So I hit that and let it go to the home position (which is having the mount set back to both index points, just like the AVX) You have to make your own since the markings are hard to do since, it only has 1 arrow on RA, but I used the Bolts to judge where the center was for. For now I just used painters tape and marked it.

From there I just punch in my target on the Framing and Mosaic Wizard And Sequenc Generator takes care of the rest. So last night I finally imaged. The only problem I had was the Meridian Flip. SGP did the flip, but after the flip EQMod did not recognize it or communicate with SGP properly. I will post a new thread for help on that, but I know through the mount, it has something like Disable Merdian flip, force ect… So I just got to find the correct setting."

Now about the Side real rate. What I did was uninstalled PHD2 and reinstalled it. I opened up Eqmod and adjusted both the sidereal Ra and Dec to .7x. I then started PHD2 for the first time and it went through the wizard. It then tells you that PHD2 will get the sidereal rate from the mount. And it did after that I have been guiding for 10min subs perfectly. I could probably go to 15 as well. But at fist I could not get PHD2 synced with the mount.

EQmod is the way to go at least for me at first I did not want to and tried with the Skywatcher Ascom and had issues.

[Baskevo]

Thanks for sharing that Butcher! I was able to get EQMod working, it just was not as user friendly as CPWI was, and I was a bit confused by it. I do it the exact same way as you though! Polar align with Sharpcap, Use plate solve as an alignment tool and focusing star, and then I plate solve my target It has been working great so far!

Although, I think I have a defective mount. The counterweight shaft fell out of the mount. I think a screw or something fell off inside the mount too, because when I turn it I hear something rattling around... I can't find anything like that online, and skywatcher had not seen it before either.

Here is a link to what I'm talking about: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nbrkk76DsvyUechM7

Skywatcher sent this: "It looks like the you tried threading the extension that comes with the mount but the actual counter weight bar is stuck inside the mount.

You may need to try and thread the bar into the rest of the counter weight bar to have the rest of it drop from the mount."

But that is not what happened. I didn't even touch the extension, which is still inside the packaging. There is nothing inside of the opening where the shaft goes... So I'm waiting to hear back from them. I will be pissed if they need me to send it back...

It doesn't appear to have an affect on the performance though... Tonight, despite the extreme cloud cover, I have an RMS error of around 0.8 in each axis, which is way better than my AVX was.

[TheButcher]

Thanks for sharing that Butcher! I was able to get EQMod working, it just was not as user friendly as CPWI was, and I was a bit confused by it. I do it the exact same way as you though! Polar align with Sharpcap, Use plate solve as an alignment tool and focusing star, and then I plate solve my target It has been working great so far!

Although, I think I have a defective mount. The counterweight shaft fell out of the mount. I think a screw or something fell off inside the mount too, because when I turn it I hear something rattling around... I can't find anything like that online, and skywatcher had not seen it before either.

Here is a link to what I'm talking about: https://photos.app.goo.gl/Nbrkk76DsvyUechM7

Skywatcher sent this: "It looks like the you tried threading the extension that comes with the mount but the actual counter weight bar is stuck inside the mount.

You may need to try and thread the bar into the rest of the counter weight bar to have the rest of it drop from the mount."

But that is not what happened. I didn't even touch the extension, which is still inside the packaging. There is nothing inside of the opening where the shaft goes... So I'm waiting to hear back from them. I will be pissed if they need me to send it back...

It doesn't appear to have an affect on the performance though... Tonight, despite the extreme cloud cover, I have an RMS error of around 0.8 in each axis, which is way better than my AVX was.

Not for nothing, I am not sure if you know this. But I was thrown off with that extra shaft. Could it be that you are trying to add the extension shaft?

If so, then the primary weight shaft would be inside it, unscrew the black knob and let the one the retracts fall out. If it is up there without the end cap screwed on, then it is difficult sometimes to let it drop down, and possible through manufacturing that it is just up there a little tightly. Try screwing the Medta end cap that "Makes sure the weight does not fall off". into the hole where the Black knob is. If it still won't give it some taps and try to get it to fall down, like your hicuping a baby.

That photo is the picture of the extension weight counter, Which I do not need to use yet. since my weight on the mount works with 1 weight all the way down to the end.

Here is my mount with just the retractable rod weight, I did not use the extension. And about that noise on the DEC, Mine does not do that but if you are not using the main weight rod that retracts, then maybe that is making the noise??
https://www.flickr.com/photos/163055712 ... ed-public/

EDIT: I just read your post again about how they said that it was stuck too. And if you didn't use the extension then the rod just fell off. YOu could unscrew the polor scope and look inside if not then I would deal with HPS where you got it. They will help you intervene with Skywatcher.

Let me know how it goes.

[TheButcher]

Another thought. Try using the extension bar with the one that fell out and see how high it goes up and try screwing it in. It should go up much further.

[Baskevo]

GAH!!!! I am pissed!!!! So Frustrating...

Skywatcher wants me to send my mount back to be prepared... Which means another freakin month without a mount. Literally every single item I have purchased, I have to send back. I am so over it.

[TheButcher]

I took a picture with the polar scope cap off and you can see the cap that goes on the end of the retractable Pole. That must be the thing that is loose on the top of your DEC.



Closer look of the top of the weight rod

[TheButcher]

GAH!!!! I am pissed!!!! So Frustrating...

Skywatcher wants me to send my mount back to be prepared... Which means another freakin month without a mount. Literally every single item I have purchased, I have to send back. I am so over it.

YOu could probably just take the DEC off with those allen screws and look for the cap (If that is it) and push the pole back up and screw that cap on? If that don't work then put back together and then send it off?

[Baskevo]

I fixed it!! There's a placeholder screw at the top of the shaft, on the inside of the mount, which fell off and was rolling around under the saddle plate. I was so excited when I found it, I DROPPED it inside of the mount, and I could not get it out... I basically took off all of the protection plates and then I found it! I screwed the shaft back into the place holder, and now it doesn't fall out and there is no rattle

High point scientific offered to let me send my mount in to exchange it for a new one, and that I would have it probably next week... Should I do that, so I don't have to worry about this happening again and I can have a mount that hasn't been opened?

[TheButcher]

Nice, I would say yes, you never know why it was out in the first place and what else could be off.

[Baskevo]

Thanks for your help butcher! I think I will do that...

Check it out though!! This is about 15 minutes of guiding, at the zenith & meridian:

I'm currently taking beautiful 7 minute subs It's gonna suck not having my mount for a week or two... :/