kirkster501

My findings when I pull a cable from under SGP is that it locks up and freezes. Could be that it is waiting for something from ASCOM possibly from the driver. But all the same, quality software should have an error handler and/or at least flash something up saying it has not seen the HW for X seconds. A watchdog timer.

Have you raised this on the Discord section? I never see a "disconnected" in SGP either.

I think the only thing that would beat the Samyang 135mm is the much more expensive Sigma Art 105mm. Great picture to the OP!!!

Highly unlikely *they* will commercialise it. Define "they"...? "They" are all the people (including myself as I have been looking at the software repositories) who are/will making changes and adding features to NINA, not just Iseborn who is the leader and merges all the contributions and repos into the release schedule. NINA is community software so it is not "owned" in the way you think. I never knew there was this NINA thing until recently, and as a person who has developed SW myself never knew there was such a community model for astro imaging acquisition software. I think SGPs days are numbered now I have seen how good NINA is and how easy it is to use. Linux has worked in this way for decades and is what makes it so successful. True, there are paid for versions of Linux such as Redhat. However, that is only for the support side because you would not want to run your billion dollar business on software where you had to rely on support on a forum. Centos is the identical and community support version of Redhat. The parallel is that NINA will probably never bee a charged for, commercial product, analogous to Linux.

It works and links with CdC, I have tried it and NINA will import whatever you currently have clicked on in CdC. You can then send those coordinates to the framing tool in NINA and create a sequence out of it. It is very powerful. Not tried it with any other planetarium as yet.

Yes windows only. Yes clearly the world does need another one and that's why several of us are switching over to it and putting it through its paces. I'm on a learning curve with it and as soon as I have it sorted, SGP is on the backburner. Problem is there are no clear nights on the horizon......

That is exactly what I did and all I did. Connected NINA to Sitech and the little scope window popped up.

https://groups.io/g/Sitechservo/topic/update_from_0_94n_to_0_95g/73060986?p=

I am using 95H. I was testing it out last night. It works well. I have to get my head around a few things. I found I was not being prompted to rotate the camera last night, no matter how I rotated the image orientation that I wanted. I had to manually prompt autofocus as well, rather than it doing it like I told it to do in the sequence. I am 100% sure these are user error. This is my first 300s sub with NINA - and has it happens, my first ever sub with my new QHY268C. It moved the mount, platesolved and took the sub and started the guiding. So far so good.

Agreed. I give them credit for what they have done with SGP but it will never scale with just Ken and Jared on their own. NINA is a community piece of software i.e. hundreds of folks can contribute to it (I will myself since I am useful at Python and want to write an ISS tracker application) and it will overtake SGP soon rendering it obsolete. With this in mind the recent SGP change in license model, tipping more people over to NINA/Kstars/A.N.Other seems all the more bizarre to me. Yes indeed, the GUI layout and the inability to cancel a connect/error connecting request is very annoying in SGP. SGP's fault/error handling is pants. It still has some useful features though but NINA will catch up. A sad day, but I am drawing a line under SGP after my existing project is done and moving to NINA.

I also installed it yesterday and set it up and connected to my gear and performed dummy plate solves etc and all good so far. Glad to hear it's working well for you Billy. For me it seems a lot more stable than SGP which I have found annoying and buggy. I also noted the support seems very quick with NINA, unlike the almost none-existent support for SGP

Thread reboot as a result of SGP licensing changes and speed/stability issues. I had been gingerly toying with the idea of NINA but now I am going to have a download and experiment and will see if it is worth moving over to it.

Excellent, the Samyang 135m is a beaut and very nicely framed. Someone very kindly lent me a WO Redcat so I aim to do a wide field of it like yours with my QHY268C as a test

With Samyang 135mm and Moravian G2-8300 with RGB - 12 x 5 mins in each of the channels. Transparency was rubbish on Sunday 20th September when I captured this. Anyway, don't see this one come up much so thought I'd share.

Great idea. Thanks Dave!

I've made a few minor tweaks to the box and will post some updated pics later. I agree Alan with your important comment, you should not power your gear from someone else's battery box in case they have wired it in a none standard way - like I have. It should not matter if you are using it just yourself and your own cables that you made for your own box. Even with a large 110A battery like this, it is remarkable how fast you can run it down. Camera/focuser/mount/dew heater(s) and a laptop (charged from the mains at the beginning) and it will run it to below 12.2v in an all nighter. A second night and it will exhaust the battery and it will be down at 10.5V. Too much of that would wreck a standard lead acid car battery so it is important to use a marine/leisure battery. I make sure I charge it after every use.

Tell me about it mate....🙄. Looks like they are here to stay as well 🤬. I am missing blue from the fireworks galaxy. Got 12 hours or so on it so far and blue would complete it. On topic - looks like one must not disturb the parked mount - which is sometimes hard when changing cameras etc and upsetting the balance. So I just roughly push it back to what I think the parked position should be. So then it will be further out on the initial slew right next time under the stars? And when scope knows where it is upon a successful sync and it then next parks, the park will be accurate again because the scope knows where it is again in absolute terms? ^^does that make sense?

Hi guys. right, I have set it to the park position again. I read from the Sitech google group that an update from Sitech 95G to 95H wipes out the previous park positions. My scope park position with CdC connected is to the North East Horizon, pointed at my flat panel. It is no longer saying below horizon now that I have reconfigured it. I have been moving around the sky left, right and center meridian flipping and it all works. Press park and it parks to the exact position. Will see on the next clear night when i do a Sync from SGP if it messes it up. EDIT: I confirm that it does keep awareness of its absolute position following a power cycle of mount and computer. Just have to unpark and then slew to position in either CdC or SGP. No need for a blind solve once it has initially got its whereabouts sorted. Thanks for helping me with this guys and lending me your thoughts. Steve

Thanks Dave/Billy, I will look at it further and delete and reinstall. So you guys rarely do this step of initial manual slew and a blindsolve? A power down of mount/PC and Sitech should "remember" where the park position is wrt the sky? I have never done that if so..... Thanks, Steve

Thanks Dave. Yep when it plate solves it correctly says East/West. So when I then manually move the mount to the park position, why doesn't it then "remember" that it is was pointing East say and then when parked knows its absolute position with respect to the sky? Maybe it might help to describe my workflow. Power all the gear up. 1. I manually, with the arrows on the Sitech window, move the scope somewhere to the south. Anywhere, it does not matter. 2. I blind solve. It finds where it is and syncs correctly (the Sitech countdown window pops up). It says EAST/WEST etc. Cool. It knows this itself. 3. I then say centre on my required object, cool, bang in the middle of the FoV. All meridian flips work perfectly. 4. After the imaging run is finished *it used to park properly* on my old PC. The procedure above I did for three years and never any issue. 5. Since moving to my new PC when it parks it parks incorrectly and often pier strikes. ^^^^^Is this the correct way to be doing it? I have no idea, it is workflow I have drifted into and has worked for me. All latitude/longitude and clocks are set correctly. I agree, it must think it is wrong side of meridian but I just cannot see why - all the settings seem correct and my dummy day time session worked fine yesterday. But why then does it always show "below horizon limit" when starting out? That is clearly wrong. >>>>>>Can the Sitech remember where it is through a power cycle of the mount and switching off of the PC??? <<<<<. Maybe that it what is wrong, so when it is all switched back on again it does not know where it is and the first sync needed to reestablish its absolute position. If so how can I ever remove that "below horizon limit" This is no fault of the mount and is something I have set up wrong but I am struggling to see what. After a power on, can you ever just slew immediately to target from the park position? I have always done steps 1 and 2 first. Sorry for the War and Peace post guys and thank you for your thoughts. Steve

My mount is still going bonkers with its park position . I thought I fixed it yesterday. I did a dummy slew to the East, synced, and then parked and set the park position. So then I did lots of dummy slews around the sky, synced and parked and it parked properly every time. I do notice though it says all the time when parked "below horizon limits". Why???? I deleted all horizon PXP files etc resync the mount but same. Last time did some imaging with the smug feeling it was all fine. Did a plate solve, it synced fine and great subs all night. Until that plate solve it still shows "below horizon limits" and ignores my pressing "start" on the sitech window. Anyway, I got it going, and at 2AM went out and manually parked it and it went bonkers pointing down to the Southern hemisphere. At my wits end with it. I am going to reinstall it all. I am on Sitech 95H version. I was on 95G and upgraded to H in hope of fixing this. Maybe my workflow is not right?

I don't think people would mind having to pay annually if there were clear benefits. I get it that software is expensive to develop and support (we do it at my workplace and it costs a fortune). But I fail to see the perceived benefits in the case of SGP. If there were going to be killer, must-have features rolled out regularly which need to be paid for in terms of development time of course, then I'd be all for it. Same if there was a proper support system. But from what I can tell, there'll be neither, just some wishy-washy "priority support" mechanism, words that are meaningless. Every company that moves to this subscription model (i.e. all of them nowadays) struggles with selling the benefits of it. I see the difficulty SGP are in to be fair to them since they get no revenue from their existing base from new features they could develop (though I see very few new features in the last few years). But there have to be clear benefits going to the subscription model if it is to work for them.

Exactly that. APT is a super software and Ivo (I think the developers name is) is extremely responsive and helpful and takes suggestions very seriously. SGP does not have multi camera support that has been asked for for years. It is a paid for platform and they still haven't done it. If it was a tenner I'd accept that but I have now shelled out $170 and they want more on a annual basis now. Nope, not from me. There is not even a dark mode to save your eyes at night - you have to go into windows desktop themes and hack it that way. Their defensive code to avert lock-ups and hangs is dire. I'd gladly pay yearly if the support was better (and you got a proper support ticket number) and they developed these things we asked for. They haven't and I am not impressed. They are taking the Michael. I will carry on with it for now whilst I learn NINA.

You don't seem to be getting anything new for this subscription except for "priority support", that I can see. If the current support is anything to go by then I'll give the upgrade a miss since many issues I raised on the forum have gone unanswered. I am not especially impressed with SGP if I am honest. A lot of things go wrong with it and its error handling is poor with lock-ups and hangs. Also many development requests seem to have been ignored. I'll persevere with it on the current release for now but I have been toying with NINA and this change in SGP subscription makes me want to explore that option even more.

EDIT: Totally clouded over 😩 Last four nights it has done this in Nott's. EDIT2: A friend very kindly lent me his Redcat 51 to try out. Only had one opportunity to test it out and even then it clouded over and ruined it half way through Anyway, enough moaning and I am sure it will be fine one day - in six months maybe🙄