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Dealing with the wires and tangles


bomberbaz

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So my problem is I run my scope and camera via wires through conservatory window, out through garden to the setup around 8M away. 

At the moment I simply let the wires trail on the floor and wrap them around the finder scope mount near top of the scope. This inevitably leads to tangling and I have to keep going out and make sure the rotation of scope is not going to pull one out of its socket or cause some other problem/damage.

Should have pointed out there are fences surrounding the garden but I was wondering if anyone has some sort of pole bracket kind of thing to keep the wires free.

Basically what does anyone do or suggest to combat this please

Steve

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Hello Steve,

Your set up is slightly different to mine but I can see what you are trying to achieve with remote viewing and this is something I spent a lot of time on.  As I say we have different scopes but this may give you some ideas.  Basically, I have two sockets on the back of my house near the scope that I can connect to.  The sockets have 4 BNC connections, PC control for my Mallincam, RJ45 for my hand controller and two RJ10s for the motorized focusers on my two scopes.  All the cables from the sockets run under the decking right around the side of the house and in through the wall to my office.  I then connect everything I need on shorter cables to keep it all nice and tidy.  

The 4 cameras:

1 - PTZ that I use to watch the telescope for cable snag,

2 - Mallincam on C11 

3 - SCB-2000, Micro or SCB-4000 on my ED80 as a finder scope

4 - SCB-2000 with wide angle lens on the scope for cloud watch and to see the red laser pointer used for remote alignment 

All 4 cameras feed into a 4 channel DVR.  This has one output to a monitor and the other goes into my Dazzle video grabber which then feeds into the PC via USB.  The DVR works perfect as I can click from camera to camera or show all 4 at once and it is one simple feed to the PC.

The images below give you a rough idea and the video shows perfectly how it all looks when up and running.  With regards to the cabling I can't really advise as I have a different scope but the key for me is the scope watch camera as every time you slew to a new target you can just click on that camera and watch what's happening.  If it's tangling just stop the slew and nip out to sort it.

Sockets

post-28683-0-25156300-1433016728_thumb.j

Cameras

post-28683-0-15874300-1433016771_thumb.j

Control Room

post-28683-0-23316100-1433016824_thumb.j

In Action

Hope this helps 

Regards

Karl

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Steve, I simply use electrical tape about every metre on my wiring loom, and to keep it from dangling and tangling, watch this little video I made on how I run the cables from the camera etc to the mount and off to the house. It may give you some ideas:

https://flic.kr/p/rdWWg9

Actually this has sparked an idea which I may yet use. I like the simple idea of just taping together once I have finalised the cable setup. I am still mulling over the last connector although its likely to be a repeater usb 10M cable.

I am now thinking a pole fixed into the ground that goes above the scope and provides a swivelling support for the cable. If i position this due North ( I do surprisingly little viewing in this direction) it could solve tangle problems. I could cobble one up simply and cheaply. 

(see attaching, very poorly drawn diagram, black lines are scope and proposed cable pole, red cable)  :grin:

What dya think?

post-26735-0-27110500-1433059333.jpg

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Yes, it could work, as long as there is enough slack to cover the scope moving to any part of the sky.

What would be a good safety idea would be to hang the cables from the support by elastic so if it does even snag up it will have a bit of give rather than just pull tight.

post-32182-0-28026700-1433072898.jpg

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Are you sure your not trying to hang someone  :evil:

Be interested to see if this works in practice (thought of something on the same lines) but it needed to swivel 360 degree's and keep out of the way of the scope(s). It would help if SKYW and others used "slip rings" for power with a relay/distribution point on the mount head so at least the power leads would be kept out of the way - there is 12v  output at the mount head (passed thru handset cable) but the amps are a bit low.

I had thought of hanging the DVR from the mount and using wireless Ethernet - that got me down to just one revolving power wire if I drove the mount using bluetooth - ah well something for the future.

In the end its whatever you find that suits you. :grin:

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Instead of Electrical tape ,as per Dragon Man great set up ,maybe velcro cable ties then they are reusable and you can add/remove cables as required.

I have a shed load of cable ties which are easily removed so i will use them but its a good simple idea to tie together (Thanks Ken).

I need to finalise the set up but I will throw a few pics up once everything is in place and working. I feel I have my astro mojo back after a short absence.  :smiley:   

steve

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