Longinthetooth

Thanks again for all the info and tips. Plugging usb into an rj45........ who would do such a thing! (Clears throat......)

malc-c "The 2.15v for EQ6-R (with USB port) would appear to be the one suitable."  - This says without usb post on the page you've linked to........  ?

Thanks StevieDvd - I've recently updated the handset firmware - the latest I could find was 4.39.21 and I used Synscan Firmware Loader Ver 3.5 to do that. Does the motor firmware need a loader too? 

Thanks for the info! I'm interested in the updating firmware mentioned above StevieDvd. I wondered if that would be possible/necessary. Is there clear instruction on the SW website for this?

HI folks - I have a Skywatcher AZEQ6GT about 5 years old. A couple of years ago the electronics had to be replaced and the new board came with a new faceplate too which featured a usb port. The faceplate bears the name AZEQ6 Pro which is a newer model of the mount. (See attached pic).

I thought "Great - that'll come in handy!" However two years on and I'm still none the wiser what the usb port is for and suppliers are still showing the faceplate without a usb. On the Skywatcher support site the current user manual for the mount does not show a usb on the face plate or mention it in the text. 

I tried connecting the mount usb to my Windows PC but it didn't show up in Device Manager. Maybe it needs a driver I thought - but again couldn't find anything specific on the SW website.

So can anyone who has cracked this issue point me in the right direction?

I haven't found anything here specifically about my query but I'm happy to be proved wrong!

Cheers

JB

Thanks for that ispookie666. The tp link kit in my link above is 48V in - but 5V, 9V or 12V out (selectable). Does that overcome the issue as you see it?

JB

Hi folks - and apologies if this question has come up before. I have an all sky camera with 2 cables, one usb3, and a power cable for a dew heater, running to a pc. I have both a ZWO 178c and an Altair Astro GPcam 3 178c and both have worked well with this set up - only one at a time of course! Now I need to move the setup to a darker site where the usb run would be far longer and where the nearest AC socket would be not more than 10 metres away. I am hoping I could use poe to overcome this problem.  

Would this be suitable for power and data to and from a USB3 camera and dew heater?

https://www.tp-link.com/uk/business-networking/accessory/tl-poe200/

This would give me the following: laptop to (powered) poe injector, poe injector to ASC housing (10m) cat 6 outdoor cable, inside housing - poe splitter - here I'd have to find or devise a short power cable to connect to the dew heater and another to change the ethernet out to a usb3 type B into the camera. Possibly something like this?

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Mobi-Lock-Ethernet-Network-Compatible/dp/B00NLL10P4

There would have to be another adapter to make type A into type B.

If this was possible I'd be able to resite the asc for the purchase of a few components only.

I'd be grateful for any advice.

Cheers

John B

Many thanks for the many suggestions given here. Plenty food for thought!

On 14/12/2020 at 18:36, stash_old said:

Then just buy a 2nd hand mini pc with w10 installed(and enough usb ports) and what Julian suggests using W10 not RPI or linux.

for example https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Fujitsu-Espirmo-Home-Office-Mini-PC-Core-i5-3rd-Gen-8GB-RAM-500GB-HDD-Win-10/284067942234?hash=item4223c4cf5a:g:LP0AAOSwBGJf0K0d

On 14/12/2020 at 18:40, Dr_Ju_ju said:

You don't have to use a Linux system, there are small board that can run Win 10, e.g. Rock Pi X – HackerBoards.com, and if capable of building a small PC then there are plenty of small form factor motherboards that can be used....

Interesting. I'd already bought a SFF Windows 10 PC to run the asc 24/7. I hadn't anticipated the light pollution from the car park would be so bad. I was hoping there would be a tried and tested cable solution so all the things that could go wrong (apart from the asc itself) were easily accessible. Having another pc on the roof is just another thing to go wrong!

Anyway - thanks for your suggestions.

JB

19 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

Instead of long USB runs, which as you've found out, can be very hit & miss, why not site a single board computer (Raspberry Pi, Odroid XU4, Rock64 etc.) in weather proof enclosure, adjacent to the camera, so that you would only need to either run just power, if using Wifi, or power and an ethernet cable, to the enclosure.

You can then remotely control\download the images etc.  

Hi Julian and thanks for your input. I was hoping to steer clear of Rpi since I haven't had any luck with Linux and that opens up a whole new area in which I have no expertise. I actually started out the asc project with Rpi in mind but just couldn't get it all to work together. The Windows 10 PC and AllSkEye software are working great I just need to solve the distance issue! 

Hi folks and best seasonal wishes!

I want to move my all sky camera to the roof of my house to avoid the bright lights of a car park next door. On the roof the camera would be above those lights so less affected. Currently the camera sits on the side of my astroshed. The camera is usb3 and needs 5.5v and there is a 2.5w dew heater in the case as well. Two cables then - a 4m usb3 and a 4m 12v power cable. They run inside the astrohut and are connected to a 12v DC supply and a W10 SFF PC. The camera is controlled using AllSkEye software. It works great although the usb3 is a little temperamental. It works flawlessly though when connected to a usb2 port. Shorter usb3 cables work fine. I would like, if possible, to keep the hardware I've got rather than start from scratch with Rpi for example.

I haven't measured exactly what the cable run would need to be if the unit was atop my chimney but it'll be in the region of 25 metres. The cables would have to run down the outside of the building so need to be reasonably "weatherproof". There is no power up there either.

Online research -

I've looked at active usb cables but have heard that's a bit hit or miss and I don't know how they would cope with the cold and wet here in Scotland!  Photos of the units don't look exterior quality to me but I could be wrong. (Wouldn't be the first time!)

Utilising cat 6 - usb and power over ethernet with something like this https://www.amazon.co.uk/Extender-165ft-4-Port-Ethernet-Cat5e/dp/B07VN3FBW3/ref=sr_1_7?dchild=1&keywords=usb+over+ethernet&qid=1607897984&sr=8-7   It looks to me as though the receiving box needs a power supply and there is none at roof or even near roof level. 

Usb2 or 3 active optical cable. These cost, it seems, hundreds of pounds so not my first choice.

I'm really not very familiar with what technology would be required. I'd be interested to know how others have overcome the problem of usb, outside, at these distances?

Regards

John B

Wow! Vlaiv! It does sound more complicated than I thought!

Hi folks - having installed an All Sky camera I'm now able to easily generate star trails and I love the way they bring out star colours.  This resulted in me thinking "I wonder which blue star made that trail?" This swiftly  became "I wonder if there is software which would help me identify the stars making the trails". I tried googling the title of this post but was unable to find strictly relevant suggestions. I use Stellarium to inform my observing targets and it can simulate a view with the celestial north pole in the centre but I don't think it adds star trails?  Perhaps there is an alternative that would do this? Or maybe it's a feature which could be added to existing software?

Beautiful! Image background looks good and plenty detail in the DSOs.

Nice one!

Nice one Bob! This is a mosaic? How many pics? Stitched together in which software?

JB

32 minutes ago, wimvb said:

One other test you can do: put the first and last unregistered subs on top of each other and inspect. Is there star drift in the same direction as the streaks in the final image? If so, then it's definitely walking noise. Dithering will help get rid of it.

Good idea Wim. Thanks for that.

9 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

That looks OK but how does it stretch?

Olly

Sorry Olly. Could you enlarge on that for me?

20 hours ago, CraigT82 said:

Yeah I always us the auto alignment point function (multi-scale), does a good job and saves time not clicking away on the image!

I wonder if it is field curvature then... as all of the moon is at infinity then all of it should be in focus -theoretically speaking.

Could also be a tilted sensor? With these big sensors it's more important to get it really square to the focal plane.

Mmmmm.... I'll need to research those possible issues Craig. In this hobby you just seem to overcome one hurdle when the next one appears! Luckily there's so much info here and on the web in general I suppose I'm likely to be able to find a way to check - so I'll google it! 

Thanks for your input.

17 hours ago, maw lod qan said:

Very nice images. I hope to change cameras soon, get away from my Canon, but it's not in the budget right now. 

It's very clear it does make a huge difference.

Hi there - thanks for the comment. I've been doing this hobby since 2011 (retirement!) and found that the only way, for me anyway, to make the progress I wanted was to have the right kit. That has meant a fair outlay and, of course, I could find any number of products which would improve my images if I was prepared to splash even more cash. I've seen a lot of good results, though, out of, on the face of it, unpromising equipment. 

I was using a Canon 700D astromodified previous to getting the ASI1600osc and found it was excellent but not cooled, and for deep sky I felt I wanted a cooled camera. That's the only reason really I bought one.

Cheers

JB

Thanks for the info Dave - I've just changed my package to the one you've pointed out above! I took up an online "special offer" which turned out to be not so special after all! Thanks for pointing that out.

JB

Hi Craig - I've only started using Autostakkert so I allowed it to auto place the alignment points. Individual frames are a bit blurry anyway so difficult to be sure but I think the softer edges are evident before stacking.

Neat idea and beautifully realised.

JB

Thanks for that Dave.

JB

I've been imaging deep sky objects with a 102 Altair Astro EDT refractor  for a couple of years now but on a whim I swapped that out for an old Meade 10" LX200 which I deforked some time ago but never got around to using seriously. It has such a small fov at f/10 that I've always had difficulty finding objects with first time goto. However, pointing it at the moon I was pleased to see how much detail I could get. These, then, are my first evening's attempts at lunar photography with the big scope. I'll have to mess around with a reducer (I have a .63 SCT one somewhere!) and a Barlow to see what fov I can get and how much more detail I can eke out.

I used ser files between 500 and 1500 frames, taken with ZWO 1600MC Pro, Sharpcap, stacked in Autostakkert 3 and tweaked in PS with help from Focus Magic. I used a x2 Barlow for the close up shots.

How many frames would be optimal for this sort of image?

I can see there's a issue with focus - not quite there in close ups and in the wide angle views not enough depth of field to get the whole moon in focus. What should I be doing to maximise the area in sharp focus? Is this one of the reasons why I see so many people doing mosaics?

Best

JB

Hi - FYI, a word of warning.

I bought this a while back to discover that it was exactly the same package/activation code as is available from many dubious sources online and that had caught me out before (twice). It's a "portable lite" version 13.0.1 x32. The same activation code can be found online if you look. In practical terms it works fine but the 32 bit version only addresses around 4GB of memory so runs out of memory accessing or processing big files (like astro pics for example). I did ask about the version number and 32/64bit before I bought (from Online Gadget) and they were good enough to fully refund when I explained my dissatisfaction.

Even old "legal" PS versions go for hundreds of £. Reluctantly I've given up trying to do PS "on a budget" and subscribed to the 2020 version with Adobe. It's around £16 a month and, of course, works flawlessly. The old adage "if it looks too good to be true...." holds here.

Best

JB

On 02/02/2020 at 01:27, Atreta said:

IIRC it should work fine. I used to use it under windows 7 and photoshop cc. Fits liberator will install the plugin automatically.

I can't find detailed instructions on how to install the Fits Liberator PS plugin. The webpage below leaves a lot to the imagination! Would you outline what you did to get the plug in "plugged in" please?

https://www.spacetelescope.org/projects/fits_liberator/download_v301/

Thanks for your contributions.

JB