MarsG76

On 10/06/2019 at 00:58, carastro said:

Glad you got it sorted and have the skills to do so.  If it happened to me I would just have to replace the mount unless I happened to encounter some-one clever enough and kind enough to repair it for me, I have no electronics skills at all.  

Carole 

I'm very sure that if it happened to you and you dropped a line on here, someone in the area would be more than happy to help... I know that if someone down here near me was in that predicament, I'd be more than happy to give a helping hand.

Great work.. reminds me of when I was building mine.

WOW, that is one awesome mount...... well done.. feeling slight sense of jealousy.....

A new computer for the observatory.

2 hours ago, Waldemar said:

I am not familiar with your mount, but if the IC is in a socket, you can replace it and have a sparte board at hand...
If you do so, ground yourself while replacing it, because static electricity is a real killer for integrated circuits.

I play with electronics for a living ;-).. but unfortunately the RA encoder chip is surface mounted... still replaceable if I could get my hands on the IC...

Just now, Waldemar said:

If the damage is done to an IC, you will not see any burns or scars... and very little is needed to kill them.
anyway, I am glad you are in bussiness again!

As it looks like it was the IC after all, but I was hopeful that it was a simple fault, but I got quite a few years out of it.

13 minutes ago, Thalestris24 said:

Hiya

It was most likely a voltage spike that killed the board - probably when you power cycled. Maybe have a look at the old board, especially the input circuitry to look for any obvious damage.

Louise

Hello Lousie,

There's absolutely no signs of damage on the board... I inspected it thoroughly looking for an obvious burn such as a bulging cap or charred components or dry joints to attempt a repair but everything looked clean...

Hopefully this board will last as long as the last one.... now to my next step.. the Obsy computer..... my SFF PC and LCD arrived and I need to port my recently failed laptop OS to it with my setup, than I'll be back in action.... I opted to get a mini desktop PC instead of another laptop for the obsy... losing 2 laptops in the scope hut and both within 18 month, I figure that a desktop might be a bit tougher for the elements.

UPDATE: New MC Board is in.. the CGEM is working... CGEM Resurrection... 

Very cool.. the sky cam is definitely a great tool in our hobby. Is is still a "el-cheapo"?

1 hour ago, wesdon1 said:

A massive Thank You to all members who took the trouble to give me brilliant advice on Solar Observing safely. I'm new to Astronomy and i'm so happy and learning all the time. I can't over-state how helpful it is when more experienced members/astronomers help people like myself who are new to the Hobby and trying to make sense of the vast amounts of information that one needs to observe the night sky and daylight solar observing etc. So Thank You to all you good people, i'm very grateful for all the help. 

We're all here to learn, share the knowledge and most importantly.... enjoy the hobby.

36 minutes ago, Demonperformer said:

I suspect it might be easier from Sydney, being a little bit higher ...

Perhaps it is but would be good to see live.

Well done.... challenge accepted....

On 26/05/2019 at 14:51, Trikeflyer said:

+1 for having a process. One time I put my scope out and was rushing because it was intermittent cloud and I wanted a ‘quick look’ in between the clouds. Focused on getting set up quickly I nearly looked through at the sun without putting the filter on. Luckily I spotted it the missing filter otherwise it could have ended in disaster. That was a lesson learned - don’t rush - have a process to avoid silly errors. Now I go through a stringent mental checklist much like Mark outlines above. It sounds silly that i could forget the filter and if I read about someone else doing it I’d probably think that it was an impossible mistake to make because it’s so obvious, but distractions happen to us all when setting up kit. this one could have had serious consequences. I share so that others may learn. Be careful out there and be safe when solar observing have a checklist, it could save your vision  and your embarrassment.

Steve

That is scaringly close to disaster.... lucky that you spotted the missing filter.

On 25/05/2019 at 19:03, ollypenrice said:

The Baader film might actually be safer because it is a double sided filter. Once it's delivered it should be fitted into a permananent ring the size of the scope's aperture so that it undergoes no further crumpling and it should be cared for properly, stored in a box etc. When fitted to the scope it should have permanent ties holding it in place against wind or knocks. It can be easily checked for pinholes and these can be blacked out. They won't show for the same reasons that a secondary mirror doesn't show.

Remember to block finderscopes, Telrads, etc., or you can get a nasty burn at the focal point!

If you really are worried you could try the projection method. Google solar projection and you'll find many ways of doing it.

Olly

On 25/05/2019 at 19:30, Philip R said:

As long as you check the filter for defects, i.e. pinholes, rips, securely attached to your OTA or 35mm/DSLR lens, etc., before each and every use, solar safety films are perfectly safe. Also worth mentioning that you should make a solar filter for your finderscope and/or RDF - better still, remove either or both before viewing and use the shadow for alignment. 

+1 from me on the above... solar observing is no joke and setup always needs triple checking.

Hello Astronomers,

I have some sad news, sad for me anyway, but unfortunately during the final night of imaging my last DSO, the Fighting Dragons in Ara, my CGEM blew up.

At about 4 am, I went outside to check on the imaging progress and decided to dim the laptop screen but accidentally hit the "sleep" button instead of the "DIM" button. Usually this shouldn't be a problem.... but when I "woke" the computer up, the CGEM stopped tracking. Not thinking like it's a big deal, I tried to re-center the object and guide star and this is when I realized that there is something seriously wrong as the mount was not responding to my computer or hand controller commands.

When I power cycled the mount and hit a RA button, the mount moved, it moved at full speed until the OTA and camera almost hit the peir.... the only way to stop it was to cut power to the mount.

Power cycling it a few times did not change anything except that the mount stopped responding in RA completely.... note that the DEC function works as normal.

The hand controller is working normally and not reporting any NO RESPONSE error messages either.

I went on a fault finding mission and tried a different Hand controller with no change than I opened the CGEM and swapped the RA and DEC motors on the main motor control PCB to determine whether I burned out the motor.

With the motor connectors swapped the mount moved in the RA axis and worked properly by pressing the DEC buttons but now the mount is not moving in DEC, so I knew that the motor is not burned out, but the Motor Control board is faulty, possibly the RA encoder/controller chip.

I tried to re-flash the MC Board firmware, hoping that it's possibly just a corrupted data in the EPROM, but after a successful firmware flash, that did not change the situation.

With is information, I need to get a replacement motor control board, and this might take a while to arrive from the USA... so until that moment I will have to return good old observational astronomy using my 14" Dob and imaging will have to wait for the future.

I guess I'm lucky in a way that the failure happened toward the end of imaging my last image, in that last hours, instead of in the middle of it, so at least I ended up with an image.

My theory why this has happened:

I don't think that accidentally sleeping the laptop caused the mount to fail, at least not the act itself... of course, there is a possibility that it's just long term use and eventually everything fails, since I had the mount for 9 years, and it did do a lot of tracking hours... BUT than again it did work flawlessly for all of this time until soon after I started experimenting with PEC, and I had PEC running when this happened.

Could it be that PEC in the mount was trying to move the RA axis in one way, and PHD2/GPUSB tried to move the mount in the opposite way, causing some kind of conflict, or short circuit like/excessive current drain event? perhaps not in general use with quick pulse commands, but when I did sleep the laptop, could it be that GPUSB was stuck in nudging the mount in one direction, and than PEC tried to move it in the opposite direction and that state was held for long enough to burn out the encoder or controller IC?

Either way, comparing PEC programmed mount on PHD2 guiding accuracy to no PEC accuracy, the results are so close that PEC might not even be worth the hassle, and PEC is more useful for unguided imaging?

I think that when I fix my CGEM, I might stick to NON PEC autoguiding since, like I found, PEC is no, or very little, improvement, such a small improvement that the reason can be caused by just the atmosphere becoming slightly more still within the comparison time... accuracy difference of only 0.02-0.05" arc sec RMS.

Thanks for reading and of course thoughts, opinions and experiences welcome.

Clear skies,

MG  

On 11/04/2019 at 01:40, HunterHarling said:

-Nikon vs Canon vs Sony

Being a DSLR imager.... I'd love to see a head to head comp with the DSLRs heavyweights in the ring.

19 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

Narrowband DSLR - a challenging challenge!

I'll second that....

1 hour ago, Rodd said:

And even harder to get out of!

Rodd

true that...

Great project.. my Skycam is also a budget el-cheapo solution.. I use my rarely used IS DMK41 with a $9 CS and a $8 4" security camera dome on top of my Obsy.... It doesn't deliver quite as a wide field of view as your project but still allows me to keep an eye on the sky when I'm imaging when away from home or inside watching tv through VNC.

3 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

It's worth remembering that ANY image of a DSO is an achievement 🙂

Very true, not the easiest hobby to get into....

57 minutes ago, Rodd said:

I remember when I finally, after many frustrating long hours, figured out how to take a sub it was of M31 and when the sub appeared on my screen (an auto stretch), I hooped and hollered in my back yard before running into the house to show what I had done.  I knew at that time that the boat had pulled away from the pier, and I was aboard, for good or ill.

Rodd

Yeah, I remember that feeling well.....

8 hours ago, Stub Mandrel said:

@MarsG76 My early 'works' were no better! Not sure if I shared this (claimed to be the North America Nebula) before:

We all started somewhere.. but do you remember how proud you were of your first image?

I remember that I was as proud as punch of my first shots, even though they were as mediocre as can be comparing to the slight imaging improvement we have today.

@Stub Mandrel don't laugh... this was on a single arm alt-az mount that wobbled with me just breathing near it.... 30 sec exposure, ISO3200 non astromodded DSLR..... ah memories of the start of the AP track....

Very nice project... are you having any issues with dew fogging things up?

My first DSO image is an embarrassment to post....

But here it is...