cbbella

I'm not sure how to check it under load, I'll have to Google that lol. just know how to check the voltage as I have done

4 minutes ago, Mandy D said:

The first things I would check is the quoted power output and wavelength. At 670 nm you are approaching the long wavelength limit (700 nm) of human vision. Compare a helium neon (HeNe) laser spot at 0.5 mW and 632.8 nm wavelength with a 670 nm diode at 3 mW. The HeNe will appear much brighter, due not just to improved sensitivity, but it usually produces a tighter collimated spot.

This all i can see of what is left of the label

Wavelength: ??? - 655nm

Output: < 1mw

Hi, I have a next generation laser collimator.  I have been trying to collimate it and eventually succeeded.

The trouble with it is that even with a brand new battery showing 3.26 volts the laser seems very dim even on its highest setting and is barely visible when shining it on a wall 10ft away across the room and when using the barlow method to collimate my scope its nigh on useless as it is so dim I cannot make out the donut on the primary mirror

The pictures I've attached were taken in the daytime and seem bright enough in the pics but we all know the camera is much more sensitive but in reality and with the naked eye I can only just see some colour from the laser. 

I've also attached two pics taken in a completely darkened room showing the barlow method and even in complete darkness its still very dim.

Another thing is that when I opened the laser to see what was going on with the screws when I was having trouble collimating it i found that there was a deformed spring inside that I have no idea where it should go.  Does anyone know why or what this spring is doing in there.  This is the first time its been opened since I purchased it brand new from an online astro shop a long time ago

thanks for that Michael but my problem isn't guiding related.  As i wrote in my 1st post the mount jumps about even when not guiding. In the phd2 video it is only looping exposures selected and in sharpcap with my main imaging camera you can see it moving about even though i haven't got phd2 open

regards

hi, does anyone know what could be wrong with my cem60ec mount. the last time i used it all was working fine.  now it jumps about. i've never changed any settings and i'm still using the same equipment - a skywatcher 200p with a qhy163m camera with filter wheel and 9x50 finderscope with a qhy5L-II guide camera attached.

in the phd2 video dated 2nd August i haven't even selected a star and you can see it jumping about in the star profile and when i put my qhy163m imaging camera on a star in sharpcap it does the same. everything is balanced and i've got excellent polar alignment using sharpcap.

ioptron support sent me a pdf on how to adjust the RA_Play_Fixing but there was very little movement in it. i've adjusted the play in RA and it is still the same, i've also re-calibrated the EC encoder.  i've emailed ioptron support and i'm waiting for a response from them but in the meantime i just wondered if anyone else has this problem

please view videos here, , they’re only short videos of 30-50 secs: https://1drv.ms/u/s!ArXyy_OLav56qHnZBMh43pHli30i?e=kuZ89K

regards

ok thanks

hi, i have a qhy163m camera and i'm about to buy a filter wheel from aliexpress.  could anyone advise me on the differences between these two please.

this one is £207 for the QHYCFW3s-SR 1.25x7 or the QHYCFW3-S-US 7x1.25  QHYCFW3M SR QHYCFW3M US Inch 36 Mm X 7 Ps Elektrische Filter Wiel Elektrische Telescoop Filter Wiel|Monocular/Binoculars| - AliExpress

and this one is £175 for the 7 Position 1.25inch   QHYCFW3 S 36mm 6 ps 1.25inch 7ps electric filter wheel electric telescope filter wheel|Monocular/Binoculars| - AliExpress

i'll be using it on a skywatcher 200p F5 ota.

as for filters i was thinking a Ha filter and also these as they're optimised for the asi1600 which i think has the same sensor as the qhy163m.  https://www.firstlightoptics.com/rgb-filters-filter-sets/zwo-125-lrgb-filter-set-optimised-for-asi1600.html

what are your thoughts please

12 hours ago, david_taurus83 said:

I updated all the boards on my CEM25 when I got it. All updates worked first time as per the manual. I have heard more issues with updating Synscan controllers though.

i've previously had a SW mount and never had a problem updating the synscan v4 handset

deffo won't be doing it again lol

***Solved***

it worked for me doing it this way

Phew, i managed to get it all updated to the latest 20190716 firmware.

so this is what happened, i updated my hc okay and then tried to update the mainboard with latest 20190716 firmware several times without success.  i then managed to load the previous firmware CEM60_Mainboard_20161101 but that left me with no ra or dec firmware installed as they were both showing unkown.

i power cycled the mount and restarted the software several times trying to load the ra or dec firmware but it wouldn't work so i decided to reload the 20161101 mainboard firmware and instead of power cycling the mount as per the instructions from ioptron i kept the software open and the mount powered on and i loaded the latest RA firmware and it worked.  i then tried the same with dec firmware but it wouldn't load so thats when i had to power cycle the mount again.  after doing that i successfully loaded the latest DEC firmware.  so now i had the latest hc, ra and dec firmware but with the older 20161101 Mainboard firmware installed

i then turned off the mount and closed the software and restarted it, then loaded the latest CEM60_MAINBOARD_20190716 firmware and hit the upgrade button and turned the mount on and watched the green progress bar.  about 5 seconds before it finished it gave me the dreaded mainboard connection error.  i thought it had wiped everything like it had done when i first started all this and that i would have go through the whole process again but lo and behold after a power cycle it had eventually loaded the latest firmware.  i am now one happy man

11 hours ago, Jkulin said:

All done check your PM's

thanks for those files.  i now have the CEM60_Mainboard_20161101.bin which i had previously installed before i started all this but now it won't install the RA or DEC files.  i keep getting the error shown in the video which keeps cycling through the error message until i turn the mount off

4 minutes ago, Jkulin said:

I have a number of CEM60 Firmwares as below: -

CEM60_RA_20170505.bin
CEM60_DEC_20161101.bin
CEM60_Mainboard_20161101.bin
CEM60_RA_20170505.bin

Let me know which one you want and I'll send it to you

if you could send them all to me please that would be great then i have them for future reference.  i only updated the mainboard and then got the error so i will try and load yours which is what was previously installed on my mount and hopefully i can get it working again

thanks

i've messaged ioptron support but won't get a reply until after the weekend,  i just thought i'd ask on here if anyone else had this happen to them and if they had a solution

a couple of days before i bought the mount i downloaded all the firmware in readiness to update it all when collected it from the seller and i eventually got it home.  when this update failed i downloaded it again thinking it may have been a corrupt .bin file

when i downloaded it again i noticed the filename had changed from:  CEM60_MAIN_CONTROL_BOARD_v20190716  to  CEM60_MAINBOARD_20190716

its only a slight name change of the bin file and they are both the same file size but it just makes me wonder why they changed the filename and maybe the bin file was corrupt and this is the cause of my problem

the RA and DEC bin files also had a name change when i re-downloaded them.  the names had changed from:  CEM60_RA_motor control board_v20190716  to  CEM60_RA_20190716,  and  CEM60_DEC_motor control board_v20190716  to  CEM60_DEC_20190716

i don't have it. i've looked on their website for older firmware but can't find it.  i did take a photo of the previous firmware before i tried the update.

49 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

Hope they've improved things since the iEQ45 days, update scrambled my mainboard and it had to have a new board.

Dave

i hope this is not the case as i've just bought this 2nd hand and paid a lot of money for it.  i only bought it on thursday and decided to update it last night(Friday)

***Solved***

see the 13th post further down.  Ioptron ask you to power cycle the mount after each update.  that didn't work for me.   the method i used in the 13th post below worked for me.

hi, so i decided to do a firmware update on my cem60 mount.  i followed the instuctions from the pdf file from here: http://www.ioptron.com/v/firmware/CEM60_FirmwareUpgrade.pdf

i updated the handset controller without any problems.  the next instruction was to update the mainboard.  all seemed to go well then about 5 seconds before the green progress bar in the update utility software finished an error message popped up on the handset then the utility software reported a successful update so i closed the software first as instructed then power cycled the mount only to be greeted with the same error message on the handset so now my mount is inoperable.

here is video showing the update procedure:  

has anyone else had this problem and know how i can get my mount working again

ps. my laptop is windows 10, i7 proccessor, 12gb ram and has a rs232 port.  i have also tried a rs232 usb adapter with ftdi chip but i still get the same error

i think i have one somewhere, i'll give that a go. thanks

I have to have my focus tube fully extended to obtain focus and then locked in position with the screw.  i do notice a little movement of the focus tube especially with the heavy DSLR attached so it may well be image tilt as you suggest, thanks

hi, i have a canon 70d attached to a skywatcher ST80 sitting on sw star adventurer pro with the L-bracket.  i levelled my tripod and polar aligned.  i switched to liveview and zoomed in on a bright star (Arcturus) and used a bahtinov mask to focus.  i then took a test shot at 30secs at iso1600 and the stars look a weird shape.  does anyone know what is the cause of this

original RAW file attached

_MG_0336.CR2

On 10/06/2020 at 08:54, pc387 said:

Hi I've been trialing a photo enlargement software from Topaz labs (Gigapiixel AI) and have been blown away by the results;, certainly on terrestrial  photos' where I've heavily cropped an area of interest and noise is very evident. 

However after up scaling  the noise virtually disappears and the detail remains. May be worth a try (there's a 30 day trial, and the software is fully functional, and is very intuitive to use).

pc387

thanks for the suggestion, i'll give that a try

cheers

ahh ok,  i'll give that a try, thanks

On 13/06/2020 at 14:26, CloudMagnet said:

Its always a good idea to look at the pixels per inch as well. The higher the PPI, the less you can see the individual pixels so the better the image will look once printed.

I would aim for at least 200-250ppi to give decent results, 300 being ideal. With your tif file, its shows at 72ppi, scaling that to 200ppi gives a print of 20x15inches roughly. At 36 inches, there will be too much pixelation so I wouldnt go ahead until it was scaled up.

thanks for pointing that out.   i thought i was doing the upscaling in lightroom - see attached screenshot.

do i scale the dpi up when stacking in autostakkert

Hi, i want to get a large print (36x36inches) of an image of the moon i took.  After processing in autostakkert3, registax and lightroom i ended up with my image but i'm not sure if i've overprocessed it.  it looks great on a computer screen but if i zoom in i can see what i think you call noise(i'm new to this so i think this is what i am seeing), see attached photos.

When exporting the image in lightroom i resized it to 36x36 inches which lightroom upscales so the print will still look good(i think) for larger printing in a local shop.

My question is would this noise show up on a larger print or am i only seeing it because i have zoomed in on the computer.  The print shop said it may cost between £30 to £40 but i don't want to let them go ahead and print it only to find out i can see a load of noise as i would then have wasted my money
 

i have attached the original .tif, the processed, the enlarged processed and the zoomed in .jpg files

p.s.  i'm new to this and have been following youtube videos on processing so if anyone can help make my original.tif image better and upscaled to 36x36 inches it would be much appreciated

original.tif

hi, can someone tell if i have got this mixed up from the light vortex setup page.  i'm about to download the index files and want to download the correct ones for my setup and put them in the right place but it says on the setup page that 39 is the narrowest fov and the widest fov is 1.95

surely these should be the other way around

i have a QHY5L-II colour camera and two different telecopes, a skywatcher 200p with a fov of 16.50x13.38 and a skywatcher st80 with a fov of 41.25x30.94 could. someone explain please which files i need to download please