malc-c

An HEQ5 draws around 2 amps when slewing both axis, and around 1amp when tracking. From my RC modelling days, most D cells were around 1800mA - 2400mA, so that would mean they would last around 2 hours tracking (less if you slewed a lot) before the voltage drop would cause the mount to fail.

That would work.... 😉 The point I was trying to make way back was that in an ideal world developers that port an application to be cross platform should IMO encompass whatever standards that OS use to give full functionality. Now if the developers of INDI made a fully compliant windows version that indeed would make life a lot easier, especially for the developers of Kstars etc.... @StevieDvd One day you can pop round, we'll image the observatory PC so I can go back to windows in needed, and then you can wipe it and get it up and running under Linux / INDI and show me how easy this is

But your missing the point. In order to run the free software I have to purchase a raspberry pi to complete the puzzle, and then run INDI on that. Granted it's a fix....but then so would be having the windows version of Kstars / Ekos ASCOM compliant

Mixed feelings...pleased for you that the courts ruled in your favour and that you should now receive your deposit back and won't be out of pocket, sad that it came to this and he now has a CCJ against his name. What I don't agree with is that if you looked at his website you wouldn't suspect that this sort of thing is happening. Personally I think that is so wrong as more and more unsuspecting customers could be placing orders and deposits and may have to do the same as KY. I've also noticed (and I can't recall if I've mentioned this before) that credit cards are not accepted as a method of payment. If it were then at least people could seek redress through their credit card company rather than having to go through the courts.... @KY Cygni it would be good closure if you could provide one further update when you finally receive what's owed as it serves as time line for anyone else having to go down the same route.

Not familiar with your mount, but it sounds like a gear mesh issue. Might be worth opening the case to check the gearing. Does the mount have the ability to adjust the backlash? -

Repairable toasters... yes I do remember the time, everything was mechanical back then. I can remember my late mother laughing when adverts boasted about computer controlled toasters... "computers, just to make toast ! - whatever next?!" When someone contacts me regarding a problem with a motor board it is made clear that I'm not a business, I offer no warranty or guarantee that I can fix the board, and clearly state that this is just an extension of a hobby. It does frustrate me that relationship with fellow SGL members can be strained when after sending me a little cash to cover parts, time and return post by special delivery, and when the repaired board is received back the owner isn't happy as its not working. It's not nice having to cover ones backside by having to take pictures and video of a 100% working repair, and the packed item to cover yourself. However, now that it's been ascertained that the likely cause of the damage was due to the post office I feel somewhat relieved, but these experiences do make me question why I bother.... Anyway, as mentioned, the latest board is coming back again for me to have a look. All I can do is order and replace parts to see if that fixes the problem. Part of me feels like doing an unboxing, hooking it up to my supply and testing video prior to working on it. If the motors run fine and is fully functional then I would be at a complete loss as to why it misbehaves when the owner sets it up.... despite reassurances that more then one power supply has been used. At least the original fault, that of "no response" for the RA axis has been resolved, so technically this is a new and separate repair that is being done at my expense !

Pleased to say I've received further communications from the owner and having tried two different power supplies, and swapping the motors over, and flashing the firmware (which proved that the PICs were OK and working ) he is getting no communication errors reported by the handset. However one channel still has issues. The stepper will commence spooling up, but then stall ( but sounds as if its running) when running at full speed, only to restart spinning when spooling down. Swapping the motors proves the fault remains on that axis. It was noted though that the tubs the boards were packaged in were shattered despite being packed with foam sponges - so it would seem the parcel was treated with the Royal Mails standard of care !! The owner is considering claiming on the insurance (one reason why I insist on using special delivery), but in the meantime is going to return the kit back to me for inspection. If I find the board is faulty, and I can replace any damaged or missing components I'll do my best to get the board up and running once more....

Well I've not heard anything back form the owner of the blown board, and whilst I've shown that the original repair was successful, as a gesture of good will I have offered to undertake a second repair of the board at no charge (with the current silicon shortage the price and availability of the microcontrollers has meant a huge increase in prices). However I still feel that the issue the board keep blowing is down to something local to his mount, be that the use of a non standard EQDIR cable, power supply used, or the board is shorting on the casing in some way, and he needs to locate and identify that before using the repaired board if he accepts the offer of a second repair. Other than that I can't really offer anything more.

Simon, you're welcome. like a lot of things in life, the choice of PC hardware is a subjective one. You could find that the i7 listed will be fine for doing the processing you want, and will be more than capable of doing that for several years. It may not do it as quickly as a modern machine on a like for like process, but you'll still get the results in the end. In 2017 I upgraded my main PC. The old machine was an AMD FX 6300 (6 core 6 threads), with 16GB of DDR3 ram and a 7200 rpm hard drive that I had been using since circa 2012. It would take around 20 - 30 minutes to stack an image made form 40 subs / darks and a few flats so you could make a cuppa whilst it did the processing. But my main interest was in editing video, and when I got my 4K camcorder in 2017 the PC struggled with rendering even 1080P footage let alone 4K. So I bit the bullet, spent £700 on a new mainboard, case, PSU, a new AMD Ryzen 1500x (4 core 8 threads) that had just been released, with 16GB RRD4 ram, and a super fast Nvme main drive, with a Gigabyte RX550 OC gaming graphics card. Component wise most were at the cheaper end of the spectrum but not right at the bottom, but the spec was fine for my needs. It renders 4K video quickly, and running the same image stack in DSS took around 2 - 3 minutes.... clearly showing it was using all available processors. This is basically what you get for getting newer hardware... time ! Now I'm not likely to replace my TV or camcorder for an 8K setup, at least not in the lifetime of this PC. The board is perfectly upgradable and I could replace the processor with one of the newer generation Ryzen processors if I wanted to. But for now it's served me for the past 4 years, and I'm sure it will continue to do so for the next 4 years. Hope that helps. Oh and all the PC's listed are just base units, some may come with keyboard and mouse, but most won't. So you will need to budget another £20 or so for that, and upwards of £70 - £100 for a decent 1080P monitor as that won't be included in the price either

Until you provide some details of the amount of money you want to spend, what aspect of the night sky you want to image (planets or fainter galaxies and nebula), and if you want to have a mobile set up, or image from the back garden, it's impossible for anyone to make some suggestions. Also we all have individual preferences and opinions, so you will receive conflicting and confusing advice once you provide that information. For example, the poster above feels that navigating around the night sky without using goto systems is fun and all part of the hobby. It will help, but for some can be frustrating and appear to be a waste of time. Others will say a goto is a godsend as it saves time, and is an excellent tool to demonstrate where targets are so you can learn the night sky that way. Personally I've always struggled star hopping to find faint targets, so Goto has helped me learn where things are. I also want to be up and running quickly so goto is important to me, but I equally understand and respect learning how to manually find targets is importiant.

Part of the problem is that with rising prices of IT kit, even secondhand, £200 isn't going to get you a lot. Two year ago I needed a PC for the hobby room. It didn't need to be anything special, just to be able to run the reptile database, digitise old audio books, web browsing etc. A local shop offered refurbished PC's and I picked up an HP 8200 SFF for £60, an i5, 4GB DDR3 ram, inbuilt graphics, and a 500gb mechanical hard drive (later replaced with an SSD) with win10 installed. It does the job, but then the software I'm running isn't that demanding. But it's a 4th gen processor, it's using 2 generation old memory, and being SFF limits the upgrade options if I was to go down that route. These days a lot of software developers will often make use of newer architecture or protocols which are not supported on older processors, or as mentioned above, switch to using GPUs to take the load off the main processor, so this could be an issue in future. Now I'm not saying you need to spend £5K on a workstation or gaming PC to run processing software, but getting something that is more modern will have a longer lease of life and could save you money in the long run. That workstaion is certainly a capable machine, but my guess is that it will be in the same era as my i5 machine, or it may even be a generation earlier as it has no USB 3 support. It states it was previously used for CAD, but I bet that was using a dedicated GPU rather then the on-board graphics stated in the listing. I also feel the listing is incorrect... There are not that many boards of that generation that support 1TB of RAM.... !! - Bottom line is that it's going to be down to you what option you go for. That i7 fits your budget, it's a fair amount of power for the money, and if USB 3 isn't a requirement (you would need to see if the BIOS supports it and not just the hardware) then it will do very nicely. You could always add a small 500GB SSD and migrate the OS to it and then use the 1TB had drive for data storage, and if you need a dedicated graphics card, this being a standard size case will take full height cards. All of this can be added later.

Uhmmm... sad news. Having repaired the HEQ5 board as detailed in Saturdays post the kit was repacked and returned to the owner, which was received today. I was saddened and gobsmacked to receive a PM stating that the handset reported the original RA no response message had returned and the stepper motor sounded terrible.... I'm shocked as the repaired board worked fine as you can see form the video, and that was just one test. I spent best part of Saturday afternoon, power cycling the board and every time it worked faultlessly. I believe the owner is using the handset and hasn't used some form of EQDIR cable, so that would mean the only different component in the equation is the power supply. I use a Meanwell LVP 60-12 constant voltage supply. This provides 12v at up to 5 amps so is more that capable of providing the 2 amps these steppers use when both are slewing the mount. I have no idea what PSU is being used by the owner I can have another look at the board, but unless we can get to the bottom of what blew the board again, then I fear we could be going round in circles and clocking up huge payments in postal charges in the process, with no result at the end. Now I'm not saying this is the case here, but the reason I document each repair in this thread (and via PM), including a video of the board in operation is to cover myself against any accusation that I've ripped the owner off. The video is proof that prior to leaving me the board was fully functional. Also why would I want to rip anyone off? I'm not that kind of person and It would ruin my reputation on this forum, and my reputation means a lot to me. I've yet to hear back form the owner if they have discovered what damaged the board once again.... nor if he has checked the power supply... If he states the PSU is good, and that no other cable such as a USB/ Serial adapter rather than a proper EQDIR cable has been used then I'm at a loss as to how to proceed.

My setup is quite dated compared to a lot of peoples. I built the observatory 10 year ago, and most of the gear (mount, guidescope and cameras) were second hand then. Back then EQMOD was the only telescope control software that was used by many, and APT had just been developed. Back then it was fairly basic, with the main focus of controlling a couple of brands of DSLRs. The original PHD was the software used, although when PHD2 was developed we all switched to that. For target selection I used, and still use Cartes du Ciel. Sharpcap was (is) used for use with some old webcams for when I dabbled with luna and planetary imaging. The scope is PA and focused, although I still check focus at the start of each session using a mask. I Launch Cartes du Ciel and connect to the mount, which launches EQMOD. The mount is unparked and slewed to target. I'll then run PHD2, and APT. I'll do a single 3m exposure to check framing, and then let PHD start guiding. As the scope is permanent I use the same calibration setting from when the scope was set up. Once guiding I let the trace settle for a few minutes and then kick of a simple plan of around 360s exposures... That's my workflow. If you have tight clutches and there is no physical movement in the mount (ie excessive backlash) then its worth running PHD2's guide assist tool to get the pulses dialled in. Can you upload your log files for the night you had trouble. They are normally found in the PHD2 folder at C:\Users\[User name]\Documents\PHD2 so that we can take a look to see if anything else may be the cause

More so the gauge and design of the wire used....

An alternative is the HitecAstro USB controller for the SW DC focuser https://www.firstlightoptics.com/astronomy-cables-leads-accessories/hitecastro-dc-focus-controller.html If you already have a 12v supply near the mount, and a USB up, then this is one alternative

What by saying EQMOD is linux based when the prerequisites page makes no reference to such things.... that leads to confusion !

Running long supply wires will result in voltage drop, so yes if you extended the battery connector wires then you would need to run it from 12-18v if you are 5m or more away.

You know some people can't win... If I had left out any reference to Linux you would have jumped on me for suggesting Windows was the ONLY platform. !!! If you read the EQASCOM prerequisites http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/prerequisites.html it states "A PC running windows" - It makes no reference to frigging LINUX.... so why would I suggest otherwise. I get the feeling that you have something personal towards my postings and take some pride in always trying to "correct" things....

If removing the battery after each time the focuser is used so that it doesn't get drained is inconvenient then the simplest mod to make would be to fit a small switch into the case if room permits. An LED could be added to show the switch is on, and then once you've focussed turn the switch off to save battery.

No such thing as a dumb question Ed, Hopefully Jon's post above hasn't confused you... (did me , very in depth reply !) PHD2 doesn't control the mount directly. In an imaging set up the mount control is typically done via EQMOD or GSServer on windows, or Ekos on Linux. These applications receive the co-ordinates of the target from whatever planetarium application you use to position the scope on that target, and then it begins to track it at sidereal rate. Now in an ideal world there would be no backlash in a mounts drive system, and polar alignment would be precise with no errors, and the scope would be perfectly aligned with the mount without any cone error. But in reality these things creep in and can affect the end results when imaging. PHD basically monitors the effects of these errors and corrects for them by effectively giving the mount a small nudge in which ever direction is required to compensate for the error and keep the mount on as near perfectly track as possible. It does this by sending the small corrections to the application that controls the mount (eg EQMOD) which then applies the correction by sending instructions to speed up or slow down the tracking rate, or moves the DEC axis accordingly.

Yes the innards are basic, it's just a DC speed controller akin to the old model railway controllers, but with low power transistors I'm sure the 12v BT hub PSU would do the job, provided the DC is nice and smooth. It's really going to be a case of trial and error... I think the reason no one has done this is that it's another set of leads and a mains plug required for something that is only required for a few minutes use at the beginning of the session. The use of a PP3 battery keeps wiring down to the minimum, and as mentioned, once focus is set the handset can be removed, reducing drag and weigh.

Imaging is frustrating at times... on one occasion it all falls into place, guiding works great, subs come out perfect. You don't change anything and then the next session it all goes pear-shaped. But we have to put up with it I'm afraid. The complexities of what we are asking the software to do is often not straight forward and often things go wrong. I don't use NINA, but I presume you are using GSServer or EQMOD to handle control of the mount? - Each has pulse guiding settings, and in EQMODs case these need to be set between 0.5x and 0.9x. In PHD2 once calibration has been done the guide star should remain fixed and not drift. If it's drifting then this could be down to the clutches slipping (you did lock them after setting up ?). Do you have the log files for that session that can be posted here, that may help diagnose the issue. One thing to try is just open EQASCOM and connect to the mount, and then launch PHD2 and connect to the mount and guide camera, and see how the graph performs and if the guide star remains in place. You can launch NINA and then do a trial run to see if the guiding works and the resulting trial image has round stars rather than a zig-zag pattern. You should be able to do this form your back garden rather than having to travel out to a decent site. I

I presume you are referring to the DC motorised focuser that has a small black box with a speed knob and two in/out buttons that uses a PP3 9V battery? To me I can't see any reason to try and power that by a 12v supply, with some form of 9v regulation, mainly as normally focus is something you typically do once at the start of the session, or at most twice if temperature etc affects the image. You could in theory focus and then detach the cable entering the motor once focus has been set The problem is that the handset drains the battery if left in place, and often it will be flat by the time you come to use it in the next session. I simply remove the battery once I've set focus, and place it by the mount for the next session (my scope is in an observatory, but that wouldn't make much difference in this instance), and this gives me decent use form a single battery You may find that the hand controller can take 12v with out any regulation to 9v. The use of a PP3 is probably more down to a PP3 being the more convenient size of battery to fit the handset and one that is close to the 12v requirement of the DC motor, so it's running the motor under voltage. You may find that you loose some of the fine control as you are running the motor at 25% higher voltage.

Chances are you'll need some form of extension tube to achieve focus if you can remove the prism. I use the 9 x 50 SW straight through finder with a QHY5 and the only issue I had was I needed to remove the focus locking ring in order to bring the objective lens that MM closer. Other than that the finder / guider scope works well

Steve, I can't see that as being unfair... There have been many an occasion where I've seen screen shots of applications only to find that they are Mac OS only, or Linux only. And I dare say there are many windows only applications as well. Maybe the reasons are due to the complexity of writing drivers for a particular platform, and they felt that they would rather keep it one platform specific rather than port an incomplete cross-platform application. Can you imagine the stick Adobe would get if the Mac version of Premier lacked the ability to render the assembled video Maybe your comment about unpaid work is more the reason why ? Interesting discussion guys... and maybe at some point in the future we may see Kstars / Ekos natively support ASCOM... but for now I have to stay with CDC / EQASCOM / PHD2 / APT for my imaging needs