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Re: Gemini Motor Mounting Damage?
On Mon, Oct 7, 2024 at 03:55 PM, James Richards wrote:
The first thing to check is that your Gemini settings are still correct. For example, HC mode should be Photo or All-Speeds, otherwise no guiding will happen. Then, check that you have the correct mount type selected, and after that, that the tracking speed is set to Sidereal. These are all things that will cause guiding (and/or tracking) not to work, while slews and gotos will continue to work fine. If no luck, take off the RA motor off the mount and turn on Gemini, Cold start it. See if the motor starts to slowly rotate.
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Regards,
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? -Paul
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Re: Gemini Motor Mounting Damage?
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James,
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Limits!? Also look for hidden damage.? The servo motor fasteners often damage the gearbox threads and the backing plates of the original G11/GM8 mounts were heat riveted and tended to break or get loose with age and impacts like this which allows the internal gears to behave badly even though you can't see anything.? One of the many used G11 mounts I have owned had this hidden issue and a new gearbox fixed it.??
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Also if you retained the servo motors and just added a new Gemini 2 controller and HC as I did another potential issue is that some high hour mounts are showing their age with worn commutators and the motors can need replacing.? But this is less likely given that you had a mount strike.??
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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware? ? ?Astrospheric - South Pasadena? |
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Re: DIGITAL DRIVE SYSTEM
On Sun, Oct 6, 2024 at 12:20 PM, wforacer.rm wrote:
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You just have not been around long enough. The Losmandy #492 Digital Drive is not a spin off or copy. They were the original Losmandy #492 non-GOTO Digital Drive controller systems and used a gear reduction stepper motor and still come "standard" on G11s and GM8s mounts since they were first released over 30 years ago.? Celestron marketed and sold Losmandy G11 mounts and controllers as the Celestron CG11 mounts.? The CG11 and G9 mounts were produced by Losmandy and were virtually identical other than the silk screened labels.??
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But Hollywood Machine / Losmandy being a small quality oriented shop could not make the mounts fast enough or cheap enough for Celestron.? So Celestron's solution was to make their own borrowing freely from the G11 mount design.? The CI700 was Celestron's first attempt to bring mount production in-house and make a cheaper and faster to produce mount.? Celestron succeeded in the worst way, they made the CI700 cheaper and faster to produce but the CI700 was also a crude, inelegant, inflexible design with problems.? So after a short run the CI700 was replaced with Celestron's next iteration of cheaper, faster to produce mounts.? To lose the bad taste the CI700 left in people's mouths the mount was reborn as the CGE mount.? The CGE mounts were a better crude, inelegant, inflexible design and fraught with electrical issues around which entire small businesses were built to resolve.? This led to another Celestron mount the ...? ?
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As you can see Scott Losmandy had it right the first time and the careful elegant core mechanical design of the G11 and GM8 mounts has not needed to be changed since it was first designed.? Some small internal details have been altered over time but every G11 and GM8 can be retrofitted and updated to the current production specs. Also development of the G11 and GM8 is ongoing and new improvements keep rolling out of the shop in Burbank.? ? ? ? ? ?
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Chip Louie Chief Daydreamer Imagination Hardware? ? ?Astrospheric - South Pasadena? |
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Re: Gemini Motor Mounting Damage?
Hi James, did you try to run PHD2 guide calibration? That should tell you if the mount is responding to guide commands, and how well.
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Regards,
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? -Paul
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On Mon, Oct 7, 2024 at 01:10 PM, James Richards wrote:
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Re: Looking for cable source - Try Cat8 cables
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýThe twisting of Ethernet patch cables differs from what Gemini needs. There could be spurious encoder ticks induced by PWM pulses if motor wires and encoder wires are paired. Not sure about cat8 cabling, but flat motor cables are O.K.¸é±ð²Ô¨¦ Am 06.10.24 um 20:36 schrieb
wforacer.rm via groups.io:
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Re: Looking for cable source - Try Cat8 cables
I recently fixed my 2nd Gemini1. The flat motor cables were intermittent. I made some cat5e cables 2.5' long and it seemed to work but I let it run on my bench for an hour and noticed the PWM signal (pin#5) on the RA drive IC give some really long pulses (simply put oscope in envelope mode) and the motor jerk for a brief moment. I had laying around a 15' long cat 6 cable and zero issue with 9 hours of bench running. After researching, I found cat8 cables are shielded pairs and cost the same (~$6 for a pair of 3' cables on Aliexpress), so I am using them w/o issue. |
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Re: GeminiTelescope Solar System catalog seems to be empty
¿ªÔÆÌåÓýI¡¯m using a G1 right now¡ Does that catalog get pulled from a G1? ? D. ? From: [email protected] <[email protected]> On Behalf Of Paul Kanevsky
Sent: 03 October 2024 13:45 To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Gemini_users_io] GeminiTelescope Solar System catalog seems to be empty ? On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 07:17 AM, David C. Partridge wrote:
David, the same problem with Gemini not being connected. The driver loads all the catalogs only once, the first time you go into the manage catalogs page. If you're not connected to Gemini, it will not load the Solar System catalog, as Gemini-2 L6 is required to use it. If you connect to Gemini L6 later in that same session, the catalogs are already loaded and will not be reloaded, so Solar System will still be missing. ? The solution is to start Gemini.NET, connect to Gemini L6, and only then go to Manage Catalogs screen. Solar System objects should work then. ? Regards, ? ? ? -Paul |
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Re: GeminiTelescope Solar System catalog seems to be empty
On Thu, Oct 3, 2024 at 07:17 AM, David C. Partridge wrote:
David, the same problem with Gemini not being connected. The driver loads all the catalogs only once, the first time you go into the manage catalogs page. If you're not connected to Gemini, it will not load the Solar System catalog, as Gemini-2 L6 is required to use it. If you connect to Gemini L6 later in that same session, the catalogs are already loaded and will not be reloaded, so Solar System will still be missing.
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The solution is to start Gemini.NET, connect to Gemini L6, and only then go to Manage Catalogs screen. Solar System objects should work then.
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Regards,
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GeminiTelescope can't change location fields
I just installed 1.1.28 and went into Setup to change the location (I have move to a new house).
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The fields for latitude and longitude would let me position the cursor in them but I couldn't change the values?
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What am I missing (no the telescope's not connected).
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** UPDATE Never mind - when I connected the 'scope I was able to adjust them
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David
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Re: Problem with my Gemini 1
Hi John, if you've tried resetting Gemini to all defaults, taking out and leaving out and then replacing the 3v battery, the next step would be to contact one of the repairers that is closest to you:
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Regards,
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On Sun, Sep 29, 2024 at 05:04 PM, John wrote:
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Paul Kanevsky
Chip Louie
wforacer.rm
David C. Partridge
John