meade lx200gps battery replacement
As it turns out, when starting up a Meade LX200GPS telescope (circa 2003), and it displays a few rows of “taking GPS fix”, this means that the internal battery is dead.
As it turns out, there is a small button battery CR2032 inside and it helps keep track of satellite data to make the GPS fix usually very quick.
As it turns out, it is always a good idea to photograph your repair job. Here we start with an image of which cables were in which sockets. And the next one without the cables.
And as it turns out, the Torx bit set you see in the image… is too large. The screws were Torx T6 size and I had none of those bits… Had to make a run into town and Home Depot to find a set that fit.
It took a little bit to get the circuit boardup and then out of the body of the telescope:
A couple of the connectors had to come off to make it.
The image showing the battery is a little out of focus but it is on the bottom of the board, to the left of the blue capacitor. Tested it.. 0.0vdc… to be expected after 13 years?
Popped in a new one (after testing it first), and put everything back together, hopefully the way I found it.
Now we just have to wait for the next clear morning to try it out.