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Power Down Wherever You Want – (a power loss will not lose your position)
Although we offer various park positions for your convenience, you can simply power off and the mount will remember
where it is pointed. The position is saved to the control box memory. Assuming that your keypad is set to “AutoConnect:
YES”, this is quite useful if you have a brief power outage during an imaging session since it will resume tracking
immediately. However, if your keypad is set to “AutoConnect: NO”, the mount must be initialized right away to avoid a
timing error which has the potential to track into a counterweight up position before initializing and cause the rst GoTo
slew to take the scope into the pier!
1. Set Auto-connect to “YES”. Main Menu → “2=Setup” → “3=Keypad Options”. Toggle “1” to set “YES” (the other
choices are “NO” and “EXT”).
2. When you have nished your observing session, simply turn the power off. Please do not power down the mount with
the counterweights higher than the telescope...it is not a recommended position from which to restart.
3. When you restore the power, the Keypad will display the Main Menu and will begin tracking in R.A. again. It will have
remembered your location, date/time and will know where your scope is pointed (assuming that you have not moved
your telescope via clutches in the interim) and be ready to go to your rst object. This will also be true if you ex-
perience an abrupt power loss! The CPx will write its position and other information to memory via residual
capacitor power.
Parking the mount in an established position (Park 1, 2, 3, 4 or 0) avoids that timing error since the mount will
remain parked after power up until initialized. If you must park in a custom location, we recommend Park 0.
Parking and Power Considerations
12V DC powers the mount; however you can use a 110 to 12V DC power supply (5 amp minimum) whenever 110V is
available. If you have a heavy load, you may consider up to 16V. We recommend that you do not leave your mount
plugged into 110V current when you are not observing. It is better to remove the power plug and all connections to
other electronic equipment that is plugged into a power source, i.e. serial cables connected to your computer, so that if
your observatory is struck by lightning or a severe power surge occurs, your drive electronics will not be damaged. We
recommend that you take the same precautions with your drive electronics that you would take with any ne electronic
equipment.
The Park function in the Keypad will stop the R.A. tracking – the mount goes into a non-driven quiescent mode. All power
is removed from the servomotors, but the micro-controller does not sleep and is waiting for a command to start moving
again. Normally, this would be a software signal from the Keypad or planetarium program, but it is possible that a surge
or glitch in the power can mimic a command to start moving. If you don’t turn off the power, you may nd your scope
jammed up against the mount or the ceiling of your observatory the next morning. We suggest the following routine. Park
the scope and wait for the motors to stop moving. Pull the plug on the battery or disconnect from the power supply. Never
walk away from the scope during the parking slew and then forget to remove power.
If you have a permanent observatory with remote operation and are using a 12-volt power supply, we suggest that you
turn the power off with some kind of switch. We strongly recommend that this switch cut BOTH sides of the line to prevent
any possibility of damage from a nearby lightning strike. If even one wire is connected to the 110-volt line, there is the
possibility of a ground loop picking up electrical energy and feeding it into the servo drive. The 12-volt input is ltered
and can take quite a bit of energy; however lightning can generate enormous currents in a length of wire that can cause
damage.
Calibrate Menu
You can also access a calibration menu from the Setup Menu, as follows, if you accidentally move the mount and
telescope, without removing power, and must re-calibrate. Normally, this procedure would not be used in the middle of an
observing session.
Park 0 (Park in Place)
Northern Hemisphere and Southern Hemisphere
Park 0 is used to put the mount into a parked state at your current position. “Park” is more than just a position. It is a
state-of-being in which the motors are de-energized. The mount will remain in a parked state when it is powered up
the next time. It will await initialization from the control program, whether it be the Keypad or a computer program.
If the mount is not parked before power down, it may begin tracking when next powered up.
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