gajjer

Wow. Thanks for that. Yep. Done that! Oooooh I'd like to see that one. Quite fancy one of those. Not done a RPi case - I'm an ESP8266/32-CAM kind of chap myself. Home monitoring mainly. I too have an Ender 3 and my only criticism would be the way the ribbon cable comes out of the print head. I made an aluminium support for it. It looked like it was just a matter of time before fatigue got the better of it. As you say, Fusion 360 is a very lovely free icing on a very lovely cake. I have surprised myself at the things I have done. Also, it's not always the price factor. Now I am retired, I like to keep myself mentally active and it certainly does that. I know that feeling too. Quite a while ago my son bought a Prussa and there were lots of issues with it and he gave it to me. I printed a bust of Nefertiti and it sat doing nothing after that. But it was a pain to use. The Ender 3 seems to have cracked most of the problems and most times I can just start it off printing with no intervention/setup. Initially there was a flurry of printing stupid things, then to earn brownie points there were the cookie cutters and Xmas decorations. Then a quiet patch. Then printing boxes for ESP8266 projects. Then some astro stuff and I am finding that though there are quiet patches, ideas come to me, I go onto Thangs and I'm off down another rabbit hole! BTW I wrecked a bed using PETG - just couldn't get the bits off. There's an irony in that since many people find it difficult getting stuff to stick to the bed! I now use this one YOOPAI Double Side Textured PEI Sheet 235x235mm, Ender 3 Magnetic Build Plate Spring Steel Bed For Creality Ender 3/ Ender 3 Pro/Ender 3 V2/ Ender 3 S1/ Ender 3 Neo/Voxelab Aquila 3D Printer : Amazon.co.uk: Business, Industry & Science. Plus I also use a bit of PritStik from time to time. I have made many things on my lathe and mini mill and I'm really pleased with them, but some things I just thought it was going to be so much hassle I didn't entertain the idea of making it. Now my first shot is to go to Thangs followed by an adventure in Fusion 360 and for me it is an adventure. cheers gaj

Sorry I didn't post a picture ( I got called for dinner and food comes first!! ) That was pretty much my thinking. It's 'fit for purpose' so why not. I had no idea what the spacing should be and this is quick and dirty. cheers gaj

I bought a 3D printer a few months ago and I love it to bits. Previously I would have made stuff on my little Chinese lathe, but now I print it - well the stuff that lens itself to printing. I wanted to modify a Skywatcher finder scope to take my QHY camera, so I have an extra guider. I found a design on Thangs but although the thread was ok for the scope, the thread for the camera was not. So I resorted to designing my own. I'm not a mech eng but I find that Fusion 360 is a really simple program to use and I've managed to design several oddments for the boss. Making the thread was a little bit more difficult than I had hoped but there are plenty of videos online. I don't know what the thread size is on the Skywatcher but it is around 50mm dia and a 0.8mm pitch. I printed something off just to check the thread using a dia of 50mm. It was too big as I expected but this is where the 3D printer is comes into it's own. A quick change to 49.5mm and I was able to print off another with virtually no effort at all. On the lathe I would have been cursing and wondering if it was worth it. That too was also too big, but finally with 49.3mm dia I hit the sweet spot. Now I just printed that out using standard quality 0.2 layer height, so I could probably get better, but it doesn't need to take much stress - so good enough. I'll revisit one day no doubt. Having done that I added a tube to accept the camera and printed a 6mm hole through it for a screw to secure the camera. Job done and I have to say a sense of achievement. File is attached if anyone is interested. cheers Gaj adapter_49.3_tube.stl

When we do astrophotography we do something similar, in that we capture an image of the night sky - but not necessarily a live view. Am I right in thinking that you want to clean this up of satellites etc and display that on a monitor screen. It's not really clear to me what you are trying to do. You talk of a 'screen' in the tube. Do you mean a display? And do you really want the embedded computer in the tube too? So are you trying to capture an image, process it and show the result on a display, all in the telescope tube? cheers gaj

Well actually I was talking of the SpaceX Dragon Crew-8 craft rather than the people.

Thanks for that. It seems that the ISS and Dragon crew 8 must be close together or coupled at the moment.

Just having a quick look at Stellarium and I see SpaceX crew 8 does a visible pass at 19:30 till about 19:37. Can anyone tell me how I can confirm that before I post it on a local FB forum? cheers gaj

Glad you got that sorted. It's also an indication that your polar alignment isn't too good and that the frame is moving slightly with each successive capture. You'll see it on the stacking stats in Deep Sky Stacker as changes in dx dy and angle. Perhaps worth spending some time aligning before you start. PHD makes it quite easy. cheers gaj

Hot pixels? Have you used darks in the stack?

Found this link that might be useful when considering wind power. Wind Turbine Size Vs. Power | Sciencing A relevant section states A quick way of calculating the power in wind, in watts per square meter, is to multiply the cube of the wind speed in meters per second by 0.625. If the wind speed is in miles per hour, you multiply the cube by 0.056. Hope that helps cheers gaj

To be honest I'd be very surprised if that turbine generates 600W. I couldn't see anything about size, but it didn't look very big to me. I think if you have a leaky obsy then you would need to put a lot of energy into it to keep it 'warm' on a blowy day. You are just venting warm air - at best. I would follow the advice of Stuart1971 if I were you. Better to heat a small well contained area. If you do buy the turbine I would be very interested how you get on with it. cheers gaj

Can you send a photo of what your setup looks like. Something is really odd here. Perhaps a close up of how your lens connects to the body of the scope too. cheers gaj

You probably need a spacer/extension piece between the eyepiece and the body of the scope. Try setting up in the day. Point at a chimney or aerial a few hundred yards away. You should be able to get focus. Then when you look at the moon or Venus, you shouldn't be that far off focus. The extension tube may need to be 5cm long. Hope that helps gaj

The wavelength of a 2.4GHz WiFi signal is 12.5cm. The wavelength of green light is around 550nm. The pixel size for a digital camera will be around 5um. The sensor size has to be bigger than the wavelength you are trying to detect. So it works for light but not for radio waves and WiFi is at the top end of the radio frequency spectrum. You also have to consider that focusing radio waves is done differently to focusing light. Hope that helps. gaj

Actually, just searched and couldn't find it. However, it does seem to be available on BBC Select, which looks like you have to pay for. Not seen it, but it looks interesting. gaj