ScubaMike

Hi Matt,

Welcome to the forums

I needed a C-mount male to T-type male adapter. I needed a maximum thread depth of 3mm on the T-type male side.

Had spent some time looking around without success (I found them at one place but it was going to cost me £37 plus £10 P&P, and still not be sure if I would have the right adapter.

Rang Bernard @ Modern Astromony. Explained what I was connecting and what I thought I needed.

What a gent.

He confirmed the thread types on the two pieces of kit.

He thought he could help and said he'd look around and get back to me.

Sure enough, had a call later advising he could do it, but apologised that he had to charge for a 1mm t-type spacer. Total cost £28.

Me = happy bunny who will definately use Bernard again.

Top class personal service.

Sent an e-mail inquiring about Lunt Solar scopes.

The Website does not have any pricing, and advises you to "contact us to confirm the price".

Unfortunately over a week and no response.

Brilliant project, executed superbly.

Well done, I'm seriously jealous

I approached FLO requesting some information regarding my making a choice between a Moonlite & a Baader Steeltrack. It took the a whole 3 hours to respond. Sitting around, drinking coffee & eating biscuits no doubt!

Martin responded with detailed information, I mean, why can't he just answer my questions? all this additional information regarding expected delivery times, and options available to me, I mean... did I really need to have everything clarified in one e-mail?

Despite giving me all that additional reading, I decided I'd risk asking some more questions. This time Martin got a shuffle on, but it still took him 1 hour and 9 minutes to answer - Didn't know I was timing you, did you Martin?

Having trawled through the mass of information that Martin had lumbered me with, I decided to risk placing an order. It took a whole hour & 33 minutes for Martin to advise that they were out of stock of the low profile adapter I'd ordered. A further 15 minutes passed before I was given a delivery date of 4 weeks and he had the cheek to offer me a standard profile adapter (taken from another unit as they are not sold seperately), to tide me over until my order could be filled in full. I could return the temporary one they sent out after I got the one I'd ordered.

The order promptly arrived at my workplace (as requested) the next day, so I fired off a mail to Martin letting him know it didn't arrive until AFTER lunchtime. I voiced concerns about potentially marking the temporary tube, but was told not to worry.

The following week, Martin sent me *another* email to see how I was getting on with the focuser. I mean, will he leave me alone !!!

Needless to say (just in case anyone hasn't noticed) the above is very tongue in cheek and I am very pleased with my new Baader Steeltrack. The service was fabulous, and it's nice to know that FLO take the time to make sure their customers are entirely happy with their purchases.

So, in answer to the question in the title... They certainly got it right this time.

Tried installing the drivers for the SPC900 onto the desktop.

Still no joy, registax just won't allow the video to be loaded.

Installed AVIStacker, which recognised the video though.

Now I'm looking at the images that others are producing with even more respect.

Focus was miles off, while I could see some banding, I think that I was filling in the detail myself. The camera doesn't lie, the capture was really poor.

I'm blaming the seeing, as the focus seemed to come in & out. Don't think it was vibration as I walked away from the scope for most of the capture period, so vibrations would have been at a minimum.

On the plus side, the tracking wasn't too shabby, and will be further refined now that I can reposition my tripod with some degree of accuracy.

Roll on the next dark night so I can try again.

(any further suggestions on how to get Registax working gratefully received. Could it be the capture itself? what should I be saving the video as?)

PS I'm using SharpCap as the capture software.

That might be it Peter,

I capture using laptop, and transfer to desktop for processing.

I'll try installing the device drivers on the desktop to eliminate that one.

Had just started tracking down another stacking program, and had seen AVIstack, will give that one a go if I'm still hitting problems.

Thanks for the help.

Mike

Update:-

I removed registax & reinstalled it.

I then used VirtualDub to chop the video down to about 1000 frames (800Mb).

Registax then loaded the chopped video OK.

I then tried to load one of the original videos (3200 frames - had already been re-saved by VirtualDub), and registax locked up.

I then killed Registax through Task Manager and restarted, but no video would now load (not even the copped video that I loaded OK after reinstall).

Anyone else seen this behaviour ?

Can't be doing with reinstalling Registax everytime I want to use it.

Your frame rate of 25 seems rather high and it could be your capture PC/USB couldn't handle the data rate

If not captured, why does it play OK through VLC (media player)?

Does the video play alright in a media player?

Peter

Yes, plays fine through VLC.

Is there another program, used instead of Registax, that I could try to see if still a problem?

Thanks Peter & Justin,

File now loads OK thanks.

However, nothing can be seen.

There are 3400 frames, but all just showing as plain white.

I'm trying to follow the tutorial here (RegiStax- Free image processing software), but can't see any frames in registax

James,

Files are 2-3Gb in size, should I chop the video up a bit?

Files still have the avi extension.

Found I still had the original files on laptop, so copied over again.

Same issue, I get a "FILE CANNOT BE LOADED" error when I try to open any of the videos I took last night.

Sharpcap capture parameters:-

[Philips SPC 900NC PC Camera]

Resolution=640x480

Frame Rate (fps)=25.00

Colour Space / Compression=YUY2

Exposure=-4

Brightness=46

Contrast=40

Saturation=-47

Gamma=23

ColorEnable=255

BacklightCompensation=0

Gain=33

Am I doing something incredibly dumb?

I saved the AVIs, they play fine through VLC media player.

Only thing I have done is to rename the files to something more meaningful to me. Can't remember the original filenames, so can't rename back to check.

'Accidentally' connect your ali storage cases and tripod to the mains.

As tempting as this may sound, this namby-pamby government does not allow you to electocute the toerags that are nicking your possessions.

How about a remotely activated tazer gun? Linked to a tracking webcam for aiming purposes?

At least, even if they got away with your kit, you could get £250 from "You've been framed" for the video.

I can only add my agreement to the other comments here.

Less than half a day after joining, someone had already offered to loan me a modded webcam to see if I wanted to go down the imaging path.

Very helpful and friendly people.