LX200 TRACKING FAILED

taurus81

I have had great success with the Plus operating my iOptron IEQ30 Pro but not so with a Meade LX200. The mount control panel tracking shows a red indicator. How can I get it to track? The mount can be manually moved using the direction buttons. In the telescope settings the LX200 acf/gps is selected, the longitude, latitude, RA and DEC display are correct. I selected the Tracking button oping to turn it green give this msg: Enable Tracking failed.

PMTeam@ZWO

hello
1 Whether your mount is in the park state, try to cancel the state first
2 Is your mount pointed to Meridain or below the horizon? In both cases, the mount will automatically turn off tracking

taurus81

I am sorry for not replying sooner.
Answers to your two questions:
1 I do not park the mount since it is portable, stored in the garage when not in use.

The LX200 is in a fork mount which is positioned on a wedge, on a tripod sitting on a Scope Buggy. After wheeling the scope outside here are the steps I took:

roughly point the mount to NCP and then level the tripod
power the mount which does an initialization and Smart Mount RH movement of 2h40m
put the scope in the Home position per Meade's instruction (manually set RA to 00h, use hand controller to set Dec at 90 degrees)
use the ASI Air polar align program, to polar align. No problem with plate solving and mount rotation.
After PA I select an object to goto but the mount does not move. There are no messages stating that a problem might exist. During this time the tracking LED is still red. It has been red since connecting the ASI AIR to the mount.

Also, does it matter when to power the ASI Air (before or after powering the mount).

PMTeam@ZWO

taurus81 Hi, What is the Mount model drivers you selected on the Mount Page? You could try several other Mount drivers include [LX200].

taurus81

My scope is a Meade LX200 GPS so I selected the LX200 ACF/GPS driver. Per your suggestion I tried the other four LX200 mount drivers and none of them worked. There is some communications between the Air and LX200 because it rotated the mount when doing a PA and I can manually slew the scope with the RA and DEC arrows. I did notice the tracking speed selection arrows do not allow selecting above 4x yet the mount hand controller is set to 8x.

PMTeam@ZWO

Is your cable correct? The following link has relevant information
https://bbs.astronomy-imaging-camera.com/d/15648-app-non-riconosce-montatura-meade-lx200-classic/2

taurus81

I believe the cable is correct because I am able to run the AIR to do GOTO and plate solve? The link you sent refers to use an adapter having a FTDI chip. I am using a Sabrent adapter which has that chip. Another reason I believe the cable is correct is because I can successfully use the AIR to Polar Align and GOTO/Plate Solve ( but not in this sequence) to locate and track objects even though the AIR app mount control shows a red light for tracking and gives the error msg when trying to turn the tracking on. If the cable was not the correct one would that be possible?

Here is what I have discovered:

In order for the AIR to work I must use the MEADE Autostar 2 to first do a polar align. Once aligned, the GOTO/Plate Solve will work to locate an object and also keep the scope tracking even though the tracking light is red.
Seems like the LX200 GPS mount drive motors do not start running until a PA is done using the Autostar 2. I listened to the mount for drive motor noise but they are quiet until after the Autostar 2 PA.
I wonder, if after doing an AIR PA, the AIR is not sending a signal to the mount drive motors to start running.