shirva

Can confirm my second project with the lattepanda has been a success. 😁 Chuffed to bits, Flashed my az gti to the az/eq firmware Installed,, CdC, Ascom, eqmod onto my Windows 10 laptop. Plugged az gti eq mod cable from FLO into laptop and azgti, configured to cdc and eqmod,, azgti now controlled via cdc.. Disconnected the laptop,, plugged the lattepanda in its place,, had to reconfigure comm port,, working via lattepanda now,, Last bit of the project,, install tight vnc on laptop,, put in panda ip address,, Laptop,, lattepanda are connected to my smartphone hot-spot. I now have wireless remote desktop control of the panda,, eq gti / eq panda is born,, 😁

I'm waiting on cable coming from FLO for the azgti,, I will be fitting it to the lattepanda,, I'm using the basic starter one 32bit, 32gb hard drive, 2gb of ram. It will be set up for eqmod and controlled via cdc,,, the set it will be done via remote desktop by tight vnc. I use my phone hot spot to network the lattepanda to my laptop,, but I can't have both my WiFi and hot spot running at same time,, hence the azgti cable, I have tested the project on my heq5, ed80 with hitecastro dc focuser, backyard eos, sharpcap Pro, CdC, asi studio,, unfortunately clouds so can't try stacking,, but everything else tested out OK,, file transfer from Canon 600d to byeos viewer has lag,, but not horrendous,, this is the basic panda,, and there are big brothers to this baby panda,, its the test piece to see if it was viable cheaply,, panda with case and pre installed window 10 cost me £150,, , you could go for the zwo asiair Pro at £333, if you went for the delta panda,, it would certainly do the job,, beauty of the panda is its windows based

Totally up for the idea, thingyverse I have tried a few items,, 😁 and its been hit and a miss,, I've made my own glow in dark pla cable clips for my heq5,, would be a lot of sense to have a place we could trust to get decent astronomy printed files and pictures of them

could try looking at this site.. https://www.theblackvault.com/casefiles/

I downloaded it to the lattepanda,, should really call it the ASTROPANDA now 😁. It looked pretty good,, been clouded out so no testing,, but I will certainly use it,,

Looking forward to it getting to the colour camera's

Hi stash,, was knackered writing all that,, Yes the case is expensive, £31 on ebay from Sweden,, at least it's metal,, I'm in communication wae lattepanda and keeping them abreast of my findings,, I deliberately got the lowest spec panda on the market,, I could have got the alpha,, but then we would all expect it to do the business,, this is the benchmark,, and it works,, and stash is obviously correct stacking will either be slow or non existing,,, but if you look at the bigger picture,, this is the test piece,, folk can say hey I don't need live stacking and basic set up will do me,, I get to use all my Windows astronomy software,, I' don't need a second laptop for outdoors at the mount, it's workable,, I'm unsure on price of the zwo asiair Pro,, but even if you paid the same amount for a better model of panda,, you should in theory have a more adaptable set up on Windows,, than zwo operating system,, I'm with stash in this,, its based around the raspberry pi 4 4gb, and good chance its Linux based,, Lattepanda had no idea the panda could be used in amateur astronomy,, so hopefully can have some input with them and give them ideas,, of course there isn't any money in it,, just n open door for us to talk about what would be useful,, they are a small young company who started from kickstarter,, so initially costs will be high,, but this can change hopefully if it get popular in astronomy. And of course I will save up for the alpha,, I'm convinced it's a winner

Been getting help from old stash, setting up raspberry pi4 4gb for astronomy,, he had the patience of a Saint, We got there in the end, I used the astroberry operating system put together by radek,, Linux just isn't my thing lol, The astroberry system has software such as k stars/ekos, cdc/ccdciel, oacapture, hnsky an few more,, I tried combinations of the software and found it wasn't what I wanted,, the concept of remote desktop, from a small,, single board computer did interest me for a portable grab n go kit,, I could sit in my car and keep warm and control my kit via WiFi on a laptop Came across the lattepanda,, not much bigger than the raspberry pi 4 4gb, but it's operating system is windows 10. I could have went for the flagship Alpha model,, but the idea was to try the entry level panda and see what could be achieved with it, I bought mine with Windows 10 installed from the pi hut,, £118 and was delivered within two days to Scotland,, The WiFi ariel is not fitted to the board,, but just a push in fit,, not easy when you have hands like shovels. Power was supplied via a phone charger b type plug, it takes full size hdmi cable, and I fitted a Bluetooth dingle to use mini keyboard /touch pad to set it up. This was very easy to do, soon on to downloading Software I wanted to use, CdC, went in no problem, Ascom didn't,, I net frame work was missing,, on the panda windows,, type in,,, enable windows features,, then when next screen appears, tick,, framework box and continue,, windows will search and update the system,, Ascom installed fine after that. Eqmod installed no problem, installed hitecastro dc focuser, easy again,, backyard eos Pro and sharpcap Pro installed OK. This all went pretty easily,, testing,, Got it working my heq5, focuser,, initially tested backyard eos and my Canon 600d,, set up focus control ect. Installed tight vnc and yet Again easily done,, I now had it connected remotely to my laptop via my smartphone hot-spot. Absolutely loving it,, so much easier than setting up the raspberry pi. Next up was testing my zwo asi178 mc on sharpcap Pro,, camera not recognised,, soon pinpointed that the zwo driver was not installed,, downloaded this and the Ascom driver just to be shure I had it,, I also got the asi studio suggested the other day. Tried this out camera connected no problem and worked on remote desktop Sharpcap recognised the camera as well,, working great on remote desktop I installed tight vnc on to my linx 10" Windows tablet,, put in the panda IP address,, I now had a TV plugged into the panda at the mount, a Toshiba laptop and a tablet on remote desktop and both had control over the panda,, absolutely brilliant,, the vnc is also available on android and other os, This would be great for outreach. I've only installed software that I want to use,, internal memory I still have 12 gb free. My next plan is to incorporate this system to my azgti,, problem I found having set up the panda to my laptop via my phone hot-spot,, I could not connect to the azgti mount, it was either,, WiFi or hot spot on the phone,, I tried this using the raspberry pi.. Had a think about it and, I believe the easy solution to my problem is fitting the azgti cable,, I've ordered from FLO, attach this to the panda,, install azgti Ascom driver, then I should be able to control mount with ccdc,,.. Will find out if I'm right in a few days,, should then have a portable kit I can control via remote desktop in my warm car in the winter. Davy

Never ending, busy doing upgrades for next dark sky season,, don't do solar,, so I'm starting early to get a head start

Analogue days were great fun,. I've been doing a bit of work with old stash on the raspberry pi 4 and had it set up for remote desktop,, and I bought a second one for testing and the thing that interested me was rigging up one of my watec with a wide angle lens and see if I could get it to work via raspberry pi,, ez cap 116 can be used with Linux I read somewhere,, if it did,, nice remote desktop project

Think there were three of us using cctv dvr units, still have all my kit,, only ever sold a az mount and st102, 😁

The set up I used was not used used for meteor capture,, more a wide field live view set up,, but with the 1.5tb hard drive,, it could be left on,, and multiple cameras used,, this was my multi camera array, consisting of Samsung scb2000, Phil dyer camera and watec 902H cameras, using, wide and zoom lens configuration

Hi Helen, I take it that you have genuine ez cap usb grabber,,,, Chinese copies years ago were terrible for noise, I have the 116 models I think,, few 902H watec myself,, couple of hot pixels on mine,, great cameras,, one of the most sensitive back in the day, I used sharpcap with my analogue kit, I used a cctv 8 channel dvr for mine,, 1.5tb hard drive,, and modded it to suit my astronomy,, the captures from the cameras were saved to the hard drive so could run all night,, you can have a monitor plugged in to dvr and see all live camera feeds on screen or a single camera,, the av coaxial feed to monitor I put in a thee way splitter,, and a feed I sent to my USB video grabber this allows you to capture on sharpcap and adjust settings before saving to computer hard drive.. Yip I took it to extremes One other thing,, if it's phase lines across screen,,, it could be a noisy transformer,, that drove me crazy years ago trying to solve 😁 change power supply and retest

Nice one,, will get that downloaded tomorrow 👍

Hi,, got one if these a while back now and done a lot if 3d printing of the bits,, I did the same as yours and used a cctv lens on the front,, on the rear I put a jewelers loop to be able to view the images from the night sight,, was OK,,, I got a lot of help from von noggindragon to keep me right,, I wanted to fit mine on to a camera,, dslr to be specific,, what I found was that,, if l had a fixed focal length,, I could only see objects clearly at a set distance,, to make it viable for use an adjustable focuser needs to be added or some other work around needed,, I ended up putting a Canon fd lens on mine,, spent a lot of hours designing and printing on the project so far. Only one early design photo I can find just now Rear end for less or camera,, think jewelers loop is in there as well

Fantastic idea from the guys at FLO and of course FLO for making it happen. Congratulations folks, looking forward to see how this progresses,, great news for amateur astronomy. Well done Sgl.. Davy,, video astronomy forum

Lol,, done a lot of work with the scb 2000, Some of the things I done with mine Removed factory fitted IR filter,, let's in more of the light spectrum we need for astronomy First cooling mod I done was to fit a 40mm cooling fan to the outer case,, moved this on a bit more by fitting a 40mm fan behind the lens board,, suck the hot air from this board,, works better than blowing air on it. Fitted 18mm fans to the sides of the casing as well,, all fans sucking hot air from camera,, brings internal temp down to ambient temp,, camera temp dropped 12 degree's in 20min test. And dropped zero frames using sharp cap. Utc controller,, Flip mirror and 6mm lens Best set up I had was running camera to a cctv dvr,, 4 channel,, I added more cameras with lenses ect.,,, the output to a monitor,, I also put a t piece into this monitor feed and connected a USB video grabber and had a feed going into my laptop,, was great on a multi camera array

Great write up,, even better reading about folk trying different approaches to the hobby. Nice scope set up,,

A great bit of kit I found for using the scb,, is a flip mirror adapter,, if you use a 6.mm eye piece it roughly gives you same view as the Sammy 1/3rd sensor.. Stick in a 25mm eyepiece to get you roughly set up then move to the 6.5mm eyepiece,, this was a game changer for me,, saves a lot of time

Eeva or video astronomy has changed a lot over the years,, going from analogue to digital cameras,, even techniques have changed moving along with advancement in software. Really depends on what you want to see. Live or near live views is one way to go,, other's stack images. To get better results. Video astronomy was not like astrophotography where aperture was king,, lot of us use small fast scopes like the skywatcher evostar ed80 with the dedicated focal reducer / this gives us a nice widefield of view,, but no set rules with video or eeva,, use what you have and enjoy. Analogue cameras seem to be coming back into fashion,, lucky I've held on to mine lol. The Samsung scb has been a good servant to us video astronomers with a few mods and if you can get one cheap from ebay you can do OK with it. I like the sensitivity of the watec and have a couple of 902h cameras, and they still hold there money lol. Zwo is probably the most widely used camera,, in my honest opinion,, and good back up,, and with the new asiair Pro version now getting delivered should be a great asset to us.. It uses the raspberry pi4 board and should make cable management better,, this was a bug bear using analogue kit years ago,, but if you had an Observatory was no big deal. Stellarmate is an other alternative to the zwo asiair Pro. But at present,, I like using my Canon live view dslr with backyard eos and astrotoaster software.

Another good addition to the the scb is the utc,,, ( up the coaxial controller) Allows you to control the menu from a remote,, brilliant bit of kit for the price,, saves you shaking the scope while changing integration times ect https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F253411512738

You can also wire up a female power https://rover.ebay.com/rover/0/0/0?mpre=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.ebay.co.uk%2Fulk%2Fitm%2F112511902257 Used these for years on the Samsung scb. Would get a decent power supply or even better a jump pack,, a lot of the cheap power adapters causes phase lines in your capture. Would recommend removing the factory fit i/r filter,, you can buy an astronomy grade one to replace it but I found I preferred to use it without. Fan mod is also good as it can take camera to ambient temp and helps with dropping frames Davy

Great image Steve,,

Some photos of the mods

The Samsung scb2000 has been a favourite analogue camera of mine for years and with some mods can be a cracking camera,, I modded mine a fair bit and done a lot of testing to get best results and took it to extremes . Removing the factory fitted it filter is a must to get the right spectrum of light on the sensor,, First mod I done was to fit a 40mm X 40mm fan to the outer casing ,, it ships be fitted to suck the hot air out the camera,, I done lots of temp testing and this worked best. I figured another 40mm fan behind the sensor board internally blowing out again and two 18mm fans in the side's,, this brings the camera internal temp to ambient.. Tried cold finger approach and was a lot of hassle and want worth the bother,, the data from sharpcap was enough to convince me fan mod was good enough,, fans off sharpcap showed a lot of dropped frames over a 15 min capture,, fans on and no dropped frames,, I hooked mine up to a CCTV DVR and recorded to it's hard drive,, I split the signal from DVR to monitor and fed it to a usb dongle in laptop,, also added UTC controller,, great system.. probably still give a lot of camera's a run for there money