My CG5 Hand Controller Bit the Dust: Time for a Custom Replacement!

Nexremote to the Rescue! Breathing New Life Into My Celestron CG5 Mount

Not long after getting my shiny new N-EQ6 Pro mount set up, I realized my trusty old Celestron CG5 GOTO mount had decided to call it quits. The hand controller was displaying a red screen with no characters, and the mount wasn’t responding to any commands. I took it apart, checked all the circuit boards inside the mount, but couldn’t find anything obviously wrong. My conclusion? The hand controller was likely the culprit.

So, I started hunting for a new hand controller online, but quickly hit a wall with the prices! I wasn’t 100% sure the hand controller was the only problem, and dropping almost €200 on a new GOTO hand controller felt pretty absurd. Time to find another solution, I thought…

Years ago, I’d bought Nexremote, a software that perfectly replicates the functionality of the original hand controller! Bingo! I thought. But here’s the catch: to make it work, you either need to connect your computer to the original hand controller (oops, problem!) or use a rather barbarically named accessory: the “Celestron Auxiliary Port Accessory Kit”!

Here in France, this “auxiliary port” accessory was, in my opinion, ridiculously overpriced. So, naturally, I looked online to our friends across the Atlantic. Normally, Celestron restricts direct export of its products, and most online astronomy shops respect that rule. But I found one a bit more ‘flexible’ than the others, and they shipped me the fabled accessory for less than €50, shipping included, and it arrived in under a week!

All that was left was to test the mount with this new virtual hand controller, fingers crossed it would work. And re-bingo! In my case, everything worked perfectly right out of the box. As a bonus, this accessory also allowed me to update the mount’s motor firmware. Here’s a little photo for bragging rights ;-)