Did some quick testing fitting of the various pieces.
Eyeballed the fascia of each motor against the mount body. It looks like the smaller motor unit, with the "PORT B" jacks, is the Declination motor. It looks like it would work fine in terms of position and orientation but will require a mounting plate. But then, that's true for the official Vixen Dec motor.
Removed the official Vixen Right Ascension motor from the mount and slid the new one in it's place. Fascia's correct. Alignment looks good. Tongue fits in the mount. What's unclear however is how this would be permanently affixed to the Vixen body. The screw hole on the tongue, if it must be used, does not align with an pre-drilled holes. That one is a head-scratcher. Maybe another mounting plate is required... Or a shim?
Tried fitting the brass gears to the Vixen posts. They are the correct size. But there's a bit of flaring on the Dec shaft. It would require some filing...
Decided to try powering up the system. Plugged in the AC-DC adapter to the mains. Hrm. Green LED on the brick. On a whim, connected the hand controller to right-most A port on the RA motor, connected the Dec motor to the RA motor via the left-most A port, and plugged in the power cord. I didn't notice it before but a LED illuminated on the RA box. Red. OK!
Powered on, via the RA motor. It whirred and beeped and the hand controller lit up. Whoa. Hand controller LCD is backlit in a pleasing red. Also the keys are backlit in red. Meanwhile the LED on the RA motor went green. Uh huh. Red is standby; green is on. Bad vs. good. But not astronomer friendly...
The hand controller display is 8 lines by about 40 characters! Huge! Lots of info! Celestron and Meade and Orion should pay attention... Sheesh. After the splash screen, RA and Dec values appeared, slew rate, the date and the time.
Hit the MENU button. Went to Set up GOTOSTAR. Set up Local Time. Set DST off. Chose Toronto from the Set up site listing of cities. Checked the hemisphere setting: already north. Played with the LCD contrast. Was happy to see the Set Backlight allowed for separate control of the LCD and the keypad. Smart. Exited the menu with the BACK button. Huh.
Chose Align then Easy one star align which said to start at the park position and then suggested Aldebaran. I accepted the star. The motors slewed at high speed. I watched the inside of the Dec fascia as the gear spun. Dec stopped first then RA. It suggested to centre. I nudged the motors with the up, down, left, and right arrow keys. Hit ENTER. The main display reappeared and I could tell the system was tracking. How about that. It works.
Explored the Select and slew menu. It shows Planets, Deep sky objects, Comets, Asteroids, Stars, User objects, and Enter R.A. DEC. Told it to slew to Jupiter. Off it went. Then asteroid 0004, Vesta. It shifted slightly.
Saw what looked like a slew rate on the display. 64X. But noted no RATE button on the keypad. Started hitting the digit keys randomly and noticed the slew rate value changed: 1X, 2X, 8X (on the 3 key), and so on up to 512X (on the 8), and MAX (with 9).
Looks like it is pretty robust.
Noticed the backlighting shut off after a period of inactivity.
Found a starburst button on the keypad. At first I couldn't tell what it did. Later I found it triggers a bright white LED on the top edge of the controller. Ooh. Meant to be used as a torch. But that could be turned on by mistake...
Issued the park command. It reminded me to power off.
That was fun. Overall it looks to be quite good.
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The thing is noisy!
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No major typos. Although the main menu shows Electrion focuser. Oops.
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Disconnected everything. Reconnected. Deliberately cabled it up in a different way. Powered it up. Everything worked fine. I bet it doesn't matter where or how you connect the hand controller. It can probably go in the second B port on the Dec motor...
On restarting, I noted the date and time was correct in the controller. Huh. Perhaps it has an onboard battery! Very nice. Why doesn't Celestron do this?!
Took a look in the Stars menu. It has Double stars. Woo hoo!
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The display shows the following on boot:
GOTOSTAR
Ver. 060714 Eng
(c) NANJING IDEA SCIENCE
& TECHNOLOGY CO. LTD.
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