After using an EQ5 mount for a couple of years with the original Synta motors, I begun to think about using a pair of DS series motors and Autostar to be able to transform this simply mount on a robotic one. I have read many pages about this upgrade from Steve Bedair, Hans Peter Wallner and Christopher Erickson. Finally after some failed homemade adaptors, I've found the adaptor kit selled by goto4all on a message on the RoboScopes group.
After a couple of messages with Walter Petrick,on last December 2002, I've received the kit and I've installed it in 10 minutes!. This night I've take the first light with the new mount and it was completely successfully.
After some test, I've found the target object always on the eyepiece. Well, this is a good qualitative test, but how about a quantitative approach?. I have used a 700mm fl refractor and a webcam to register the start and end position on a series of gotos:
Here I show the results. I have translated all the pairs (start-end), so the start stars where on the same point of the frame. As you can see, the bigger mistake is about eight arcmin (Betelgeuse to Aldebaran). This is a very good precision for a low price system like this!. As you can see on the image, the tracking is very bad by now. I have determined that a very stiff mount (grease have solidify partially) and an unbalanced set up could be the problem. Look at these pages for future improvements.