How to build your own scope sleeper for a LX200

Hi All,
You can build a very simple device which effectively halts all motor operations on a LX200, a so called sleeper mode.
You can leave the scope for a few hours and have it stop tracking, come back later, resume tracking by pluging the device out of the scope and you'll still have prefect allignment.

Why would you want to do this I hear you ask, well, you save on battery usage and motor wear.
Imagine its late night/early morning, and you want to have a look at Venus/Jupiter etc in daytime, this is where it would be very usefull.

I can see it working if you have the scope on a wedge (polar mode), but I 'm not sure ity would work in Altaz mode, as you'd need to "halt" the dec drive also, I'll give it a go and see how it works.
This is from a post I pickud up at the LX200 yahoo forum.
BTW, I'm not going to be responsible if you somehow blow your scopes electronics


If you'd like to make one, it would cost about 65 cents
(us$0.65) for a telephne RJ11 plug, and a bit of wire.
(a four-wire telephone line cord could be chopped to serve,
since they're "6 wide with 4 pins"... such as the serial
cord for the LX200gps).

All it is/does is constantly assert a "guide East" signal
into the CCD autoguider socket.

Which is a fancy way of saying "tie pins 2 and 3 together"
at the six-pin CCD socket. (Looking into the socket,
counting from the left as pin 1).

You would have to have your Guiding Rate set to 100%
for this to work perfectly.

Plug it in, and the scope should effectively stop tracking.

Does the "Classic" not have a "Park" option?
This "Park" function is on the LX90 anyway, not sure about the newer LX200s.

Michael,
There is no park command on the classic version of the scope, except for the 16inch version, which mine isn't, I didnt feel like spend $17000 on the scope at the time!

I have a simple program which can park the scope via a computer,
Remember the "classic" version (aka pre 2001) has permanent ROMS, i.e. you cannot update the database or add functionality.
Thats where the autostar has the advantage.

Of course a simple way to halt the drives while leaving the scope turned on is to switch it to LAND mode, and switch it back to polar/altaz mode later when you need it.
Sometimes its the obvious things you miss.