Hello,

I recently bought a used 1600 with AE from the original owner.  It is raining here in California, so I have not been able to use it to image yet, but have been testing it in the garage.  Using APCC-Pro, I hooked it up and played with it.  I don't get any errors, and the AE tab is available and the encoders are enabled.  I noticed that there is a Green LED showing on the RA AE cover, but the DEC AE cover led is orange.  Is this normal, or is something set up incorrectly?

The read heads for the encoders are standard Renishaw parts (packaged by Astro-Physics to fit your mount).  You can go to the Renishaw web site and download the documentation for them.  I did that at one point, but it was many years ago, so I don't have a direct link handy.

The color coding on the read heads is an indication of signal strength.  There are 4 possible colors.  In order of strongest to weakest signal, they are blue, green, orange and red.  If you run the mount's axes all the way around, you'll probably see that the color changes periodically as the read head passes over different parts of the encoder wheel.

I installed the encoders on my mount myself.  After the initial install, I got lots of orange, and a few red, spots on each encoder.  I was able to make some simple adjustments on each read head and got all green and blue indications.  I've not had to adjust them since, even though I transport this mount fairly often.

If you get an orange status for lots of positions of the axis, it might be worth contacting George at Astro-Physics for assistance with adjusting them.  It is quite easy (it took me about 10 minutes to adjust both read heads when I installed mine).  If you get mostly green and blue indications when you run the axis all the way around, with just a couple blips of orange, it might not be worth playing with it.  The read heads will still work just fine with an orange indicator.  If you get red indications when you run the mount all the way around, that would be something that should be adjusted.

-Wade

Thanks for the info Wade!  I will run the mount through it's full range and watch the color of the LED's.

Thanks Roland.  I tested it across the full range of motion.  The RA stays green the whole time.  I will try to adjust the DEC as it is always orange with a couple of spots turning red.

I did some adjusting of the LED Cover on the Dec.  Sliding it around would not make it turn green.  However, I noticed that when I pulled up on it, it would turn green.  So I took some thin brass shim stock and put it between the cover and the mount.  This let me tighten the cover screws and the LED stayed green at all DEC angles.

Hi Bill.

Nothing really to take a picture of, since I trimmed the shim back to the edge of the cover.  I had some .004 brass shim stock and cut about a 1/4" square piece and slipped it under the cover near each screw.