Hey, thanks people for the responses to my incidents. I have individual responses to each.
turboscrew wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 4:00 am
The symptoms brought dew into my mind.
Thanks for the suggestion. So my observatory (where both of these incidents have occurred) is in the California high desert. These both happened under pretty dry conditions. I think the max humidity was about 30%; temperatures were from 22 to 27 C. See my summary below.
Lady Fraktor wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 5:20 am
Possibly a loose connection in the mount or cable. I would check the cables as well.
Have you tried using the hand controller to see if it is presenting a Error 16 or 17 message?
So I am a bit confused. The hand controller was always used - the PC RS232 port is on the hand control. Its where the RS232 buffers/level shifters interface the PC to the AVX internal communication channel. But no, I did note see a "No Response" (error 16 or 17) indication from the hand control. What I see is the little spinner in the upper right of the HC display continues to spin after I release the slew button. Normally this only spins when the motors are slewing the mount. So the HC looks like it is trying to (or thinks that) the motor is driving. Your comment did have me research a little more info - see the summary below.
SkyHiker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:02 pm
SkyHiker wrote: ↑Thu Sep 17, 2020 2:29 am
Have you swapped the DEC and RA motor cables?
Ah there is no
RA cable on the AVX, sorry I forgot. Tweet the
DEC cable for problems, or crimp a new one and see if that fixes it.
Yeah. Well I could disassemble the whole mount and physically swap the motors. By that time I think the AVX would have recovered. See the summary below
SUMMARY:
I probably should have been more emphatic about the PC connection issue. ...
Twice I have forgotten and inadvertently left the
HC RS232 port on the AVX connected to the PC with active apps connected to the AVX when I powered down the AVX. I (again inadvertently) left the setup in this state for an hour or so. Each time this active connection was left on the un-powered AVX, a motor did not operate upon powering up the AVX again. Once it was the
DEC motor and once the
RA motor that was silent and did not run for the rest of the evening session. The only times the motor have not worked on this AVX was when I inadvertently left this connection in place. This was a 100% correlation in both directions (admittedly only a sample of two). What I don't have is a validated root cause for this correlation. Obviously I will endeavor to not make this connection again unintentionally. But I don't want to have to wait the 20+ or so hours to have the quiescent motor become active again.
When these incidents did occur, I cleaned off and re-seated cables both internal and external; checked power (17 AH battery - 12.95 volts); cycled power; performed factory reset. None of these had any impact. If I waited 20+ hours, the problem resolved.
I was looking at the NexStar Resource site and see some interesting information about
HC communication to the two motor controllers (and among other things like AUX Ports, RTC, GPS, etc). These all share the same communication channel and that the Hand Control RS232 port essentially is this same channel with RS232 buffers on the front end. So my inadvertent active connection to the
HC RS232 port upon AVX power up may be disrupting initial communications to the Motor Controllers. I will contact this site to see if they have any more information or insight.
So What I really want is a process that allows me to remove the long wait time to have the motor operate again. The site suggests that a non-working
MC may be in "boot mode". Reloading the AVX FW in some cases is needed to solve the "boot mode" condition. This was in the "No Response" (error 16 or 17) article. While this is not my issue, I want to ask them if this seems like a potential approach to doing an immediate fix to my issue without having to wait the extended time.
If I get encouraging information or if I am able to do more testing (ether root cause or immediate recovery), I will get back to this thread to update it. (It may be awhile
)
Jim Thommes
Jim's Astrophotography
David Levy Maksutov Newtonian, Celestron Edge 9.25, FSQ-106N Refractor (on loan), WO ZenithStar 66 APO Refractor, WO Megrez II APO, Sigma 150 mm EOS Lens
Losmandy G11/Gemini, iOptron GEM45, Celestron Advanced VX, iOptron CEM70
ST8300M Camera, Atik 383L, Canon 350D (IR cut modified), ASI1600M, ASI294M, ASI260M
Observatory -
Desert Astronomy Association (Shelter Valley, CA)