Gina

The mini PC and cable has arrived I have the cable run from router to the astro laptop in the scope room - length is plenty I think that with my new garden I shall be able to run the cable overground so won't need to bury it. In which case I can make do with one cable and won't need a spare.

Cat 6 cable and mini PC box are due to arrive today. "What about all your efforts with the Raspberry Pi?" I hear you say - well... I've been assessing the comms situation and reluctantly come to the conclusion that using an RPi running INDI server will be too slow for data transfer using the ASI1600MM-Cool camera. I would need to transfer 32MB of data in a few seconds to avoid losing too much time to data transfer as my exposure times seem to be 30s or 60s and sometimes as low as 10s. 32MB = 256Mb so I would want a data transfer rate of over 100mb/s ideally. Best the RPi can do is 100mb/s Ethernet and that doesn't mean that actual data rate, I have discovered. Another possibility might be to run KStars/Ekos locally and save images to micro SD card then take the next day to transfer the data to the indoor desktop Linux Mint machine ready for processing. I might look into some of these possibilities later but ATM I would prefer to spend my time capturing images (weather permitting) and processing data. Plus getting to grips with PixInsight. As I said above, there seems to be a couple of things that need sorting out in the ZWO driver (or might be a limit in Ekos) before it will do what the Windows driver will do in conjunction with SharpCap and APT so I'm sticking with Windows for a little while. Once INDI works properly with ZWO stuff I can install Linux on the mini PC and with a Cat 6 Gigabit Ethernet link to my Linux Mint desktop should be well away. I apologise to all those hanging on my every word regarding the RPi but ATM I'm afraid I have failed to get it all working I may have more on this later but for the moment I'm concentrating on other things.

Yes, I've had rodent problems with cables in the past (mice and rats) but they don't seem to like eating MDPE. I agree about the ends.

Ah! I see! That makes the BoLv Z8700 Mini PC Beelink Z8700 MINI BOX / Win 10 64 bit OS pretty good value then at £159

Here's the result from stacking 198 60s Ha subs using BPP in PixInsight.

Decided to get the 20m version of yours Chris as I want to make sure it reaches - be a bit daft if a couple of feet short.

Yes, I have crimper etc. so could indeed try it - thanks Or just get a 20m outdoor grade cable as mine is only indoor rated.

Looks like it doesn't cost much eg. 30m waterproof outdoor cable

Ah - is it... I have a gert big reel of CAT5 but could buy CAT6 if it's faster and would make a difference. Thanks Hugh

Used Blink in PI to look through my data and discarded duff frames. I'm left with 199 Ha subs of the Heart and Soul and now running BPP in PI. Following advice in the PI book, I looked at the bias and dark frames too. The bias frames look fine but the darks appear to saturate. Anyway, I'll see what BPP produces. Another puzzling thing was that PI objected to using a master flat created with the OIII filter for the Ha lights so I might have to produce flats for each filter if it looks as if the master flat hasn't been used. Job for tomorrow or whenever the rain stops!

I see. Thank you Chris Since I shall be digging up the grass between house and observatory, I could lay CAT5E cable in MDPE water pipe in the ground under the weed membrane and gravel. What bit rate do you think I could get out of that? It would be about 15m long.

19m left transferring files from laptop HD to SD card - it's a slow job with just USB2.

Another problem with the WiFi is that it has a habit of dropping off - I'm at the range limit even with a laptop.

Looking at figures :- The session last night produced 18GB of data which I'm now moving to SD card taking an estimated 26m then I will have to go back out and bring the card indoors and move the files onto the HD of the desktop. Using Gigabit LAN I should be able to transfer about 120MB/s = 2GB/m so 18GB should take 9m to transfer across. Or is getting a real 1 Gigabit data transfer with gigabit LAN being optimistic?

ATM my working method is the move data from the HD on my astro laptop onto a 64GB SD card and then move the data from there to my Linux Mint desktop for processing with PI. Transferring files over WiFi would take ages, one reason I'm thinking of using a 1 Gigabit HomePlug LAN - I'm hoping data transfer that way will be much quicker than WiFi. Anyway, I'm currently moving files and when done I'll process in PI.

Moving files around to make room for the latest data. I want to see if I can at least get something to post - I'll be gradually working backwards in capture time and seeing what data is any good.

Darks capturing proceeding I'm hoping that if I can sort out PixInsight, I can post an image of the Heart and Soul in Ha in the DSO imaging forum. It's about time I posted something again!

Next I'll put the lens cap on and collect some darks and biases for -30°C as I haven't got these at this temperature.

On checking the subs I seem to have 211 reasonable Ha subs of the Heart and Soul Nebulae from last night. 60s, gain 500, temperature -30°C.

Cygnus Loop has now gone out of sight so I've swapped over the the Heart and Soul and taking 60s Ha subs.

Beautiful

Now capturing Ha subs with same parameters. Image is rather weak - I think the sky is failing.

... and waiting ......

Clear tonight so I've decided to image the Cygnus Loop again as the earlier data was poor. Run of 200 30s OIII subs to start with as the system was set up for OIII. Quite cold tonight so -30°C set-point is no problem. I did some tests at longer exposures and these caused white-out of parts of the nebula. Using a gain setting of 500 (50dB) but wondering if a lower gain and longer exposure would be better - still experimenting with best settings for this new camera.

I have a NETGEAR PLW1000-100UKS 1000 Mbps Powerline Ethernet WiFi Adapter (1 Gigabit Ethernet Port) so I might go for wired with super-fast gigabit Ethernet for data transfer.