Gina

Shower passed over and dome dried so the dew heater is working well ? Exposure 60s, gain 100, temperature -20°C.

Oops - it's started raining.

Next door have switched their floodlight on but it's not as bad as before because I have the ASC angled to block most of the light. There is a bit of clear sky and there seems to be a star and it's well focused. This is an exposure of 60s, gain 0, camera temperature of -20°C. Water cooling on and Peltier TEC running at 12v which I think is about optimum.

Wheeeee.... A bit of clear sky - complete with contrail!

Electronics connected and ASC working over WiFi. Exposure 1ms, gain 0. Camera cooling is working and current temperature is -10°C.

Taken the rig out and erected it, clamping the mast to the bracket on the observatory north wall. Next is to sort out the electronics.

Here's the full image view and a partly zoomed in one to show how small that zoomed in area was.

With the ASC assembled I tested the focussing again and it's still working. I was able to fine focus on the far hill and get a sharper image. It's certainly a lot better than I got manually. This is with everything still indoors and looking out to the south.

Connected up and tested. Then concentrated on the rest of the assembly of the casing and mounting on the mast tube. As seems usual with this project it was 3 steps forward and 2 steps back! The top outer casing parted at the angle between the cylinder and the cone - fixed that temporarily with silicone sealant. The 3" dome has developed a small crack from the edge to about a cm up. Whether that will allow any damp in remains to be seen. I'll probably erect the mast and ASC this afternoon if it's not raining or worse and I should soon know if I have leakage from the colour changing silica gel. Plenty of rain, sleet and hail in the forecast for the next week!!!

Been testing the remote focussing. Set the ASC pointing out of the south window, chose ROI covering the far range of hills and tried the focus controls. They work well and seem about right for the resolution - I can see the difference a few Fine steps makes. The focus is achieved with the rack roughly in the middle of its range. The size of the fine steps at the focus ring is a fraction of a degree - that's how sensitive the focussing is and shows why manual focussing is inadequate. Next to connect up the dew heater and camera cooling.

We had lots of heavy hail showers here today.

Very interesting indeed - a great read and a great solution - love it

Focus motor fixed - just a bad connection.

Have the ASC half assembled and stepper motor connected to the driver module but the motor isn't turning. I though I'd tested it but evidently not. Have to replace it. Not a great problem - only two screws and four soldered joints. Might leave it until tomorrow now - been a busy day. Solid cloud tonight anyway and no sign of any clear nights ?

This is the compiling and installing sequence.

Done that. Hopefully the fine focus is now fine enough. Fine is 5 steps and coarse is 50 steps. The Camera Cooling and Dew Heater controls also work fine so I think I'm now ready to assemble the ASC. Whether I can get it installed outdoors depends on how the rest goes and the weather - been having lots of heavy hail showers.

Remote focussing now working but it's too coarse so I'll change the number of steps involved in the driver.

Unplugged A4988 and applied power - line went to 3.3v. Plugged in another module and line again at 3.3v. So A4988 faulty. Now to test again.

Testing the focussing, I have a hardware fault. Coarse and Fine work but not the Direction. It's either the RPi or the A4988 driver module as the voltage on the Dir pin changes from 0.02v to 0.4v with the buttons. So it's changing but not to 3.3v. I'll try unplugging the driver module and test again with DMM.

That worked and I'm getting my custom controls. Now for a cuppa before I connect up the hardware and test the focussing etc. Also, it would be a good idea to back it up while I'm getting my cuppa.

Hmm... worked with the IP address. Now to recompile the C++ files.

Shut down RPi, put card in Mint and replaced the rpi_brd.h and rpi_brd.cpp files with my own, renaming the originals just in case. Ejected card and replaced it in RPi and powered up. Now I'm getting "No route to host"!! I haven't touched anything to do with the WiFi.

That all worked ? Then tried indiserver -m 100 -vv indi_asi_ccd indi_rpifocus indi_rpibrd In the Terminal to RPi and from Mint menu - ran KStars and Ekos and started INDI getting the Astroberry controls as expected in addition to the camera. Next job is to replace a couple of the Astroberry source files with my own versions (edited from the originals to suit my hardware).

I'll just go ahead and install the Astroberry Drivers as shown on the Astroberry github page. sudo apt-get install cmake indi-full libindi-dev cd astroberry-diy mkdir build && cd build cmake -DWITH_WIRINGPI=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr .. make sudo make install

Oh no I don't!! Radek has already removed the unwanted drivers from his repository. Except that I don't require his Focuser as I will install my own. Doesn't hurt to leave it. Less editing means less chance of errors!!