skybadger

I think there are a number of ways to address this : The dew preferentially forms at the same spot on one of the surfaces: potentially because there is a film of something on the glass there - give it a good clean and it may delay the formation of dew but wont prevent it. Any internal dehumidifiers arent working. Replace them and reseal the camera or bring the camera in and wrap in a large warm bag of dehumidifier in a sealed box for a few days. It will take that long if not longer to pull the moisture out of the internal ones . Take the internal ones out and microwave them if they accessible and are silica, on warm for 10mins. Works very well on an open plate (the granules need to be loose rather than in a bag). If they are zeolite strips, they need heating in an oven at 160 degree in a closed tin filled with silica granules to dry them properly. Seal the camera properly if you can find the leak. Add a gasket to threads like ptfe tape if they are a sealing surface. I ended up replacing the dehumidifier strips on my QHY 9 with zeolite strips inside the internal sealed (clearly not very airtight) cell, coating the inside of the camera with styrene resin to seal the pcb connector openings and have a much larger external reservoir of silica used to extend the camera internal plenum dry time to something useable. I also purge with argon gas through the silica reservoir to remove any water in the argon during purge. Purging gently from the bottom up enables the heavier argon to push out the damp air. That typically lasts about 6 months. These cameras are not sealed well! While I am sure your ASI is better than this, the only camera thats not likely to eventually leak is a vacuum sealed camera/sensor and even they are not infallible. HTH.

Yes. Skywatcher do dob drives as too the onstep project. Checkout the onstep wiki for large alt az dobs driven to track the stars. I'm currently building a 16" myself. Take a look at this onstep wiki example : https://photos.google.com/share/AF1QipNQ1-xMqhSLRxLNPbilI9xMvaDgAwkvBIDQC7HTN8Wnd583X-TtcITONy1NntnuTg/photo/AF1QipOlBDGs-jQXR2VwqyAzAloBC6NIPVklpHwVMuxr?key=U3I4V2hIVHFZUjJ4WjJaN3pJN0JTV3RtQ1pMcXN3

Threads are hard full stop. You have to work out the scaling to manage shrinkage and get the print settings right. Why do your prints stop ? I have an ended 3 and it managed fine but I did cleanup threads on the lathe as well.

That depends on the camera. There are other optical surfaces that get cold.

And what camera is it ? I have a qhy9 that needed extreme measures but the cooling rate didn't matter, just the achieved temperature.

What does a flat field look like without cooling ?

No probs - the relvant project in the repository ( which isnt immediately apparent ) is this one : https://github.com/skybadger/ESP8266_Weather , it uses a hygreon sensor and an esp8266-12 device, any generic adafruit one will do. it also uses the parts of a Davids weather statins which you can happily ignore or disable if you wish,. PM me for more if you want. Happy to help Mike

Update - tested operational now for 9 months and quite reliable, relatively quiet and overall unobtrusive. Voyager automates all of this using the ASCOM Alpaca drivers to open, take flats, observe and shut down on an automatic nightly basis depending on the safety state. What would I change ? I'd probably like to replace the ptfe sliders with shower wheels to reduce rolling friction but thats a function of dome design rather than shutter automation. The batteries have held out and the wireless charger functions admirably now. I replaced the one I blew with a slightly different one and it works well. The Solenoid lock is relatively ineffective and needs the mounting plate replaced in order to keep it atr right angles to the shutter mushroom lock knob. A beefier solenoid or the better mount place will do the trick. the cable system holds the shutter locked in place when not in use so not on the important list. Hope this is of use Mike

They look identical to vixen mt-1 stepper drives for the super Polaris.

It's on the page, components, dependencies etc. assumes some familiarity with Arduino IDE.

But that's not the same as a rain sensor. I have a rain sensor sketch at github/Skybadger under eap8266weather. It uses a pulse counting rain sensor. There's one there too for sky quality sensing.

Mines a skyguider2 intervalometer Nikon 5300 Battery Vixen vc110 TV 24 zoom ep. And I've just acquired an askar 180 for wider field use. Took the above to Greece and use successfully to watch the planets but struggle on a family holiday to get away to the darker skies and lonelier nights. Thinking of how to build a 16" travel scope for the canaries.

I see, thanks. I have a skytee that I've added onstep too for imaging but only one camera at a time.

I'm intrigued why you use two laptops - driver issues ?

I don't understand this . I use ASTAP under Voyager because ASTROMETRY.net is so slow. It is local on my PC. ASTAP solves in something like 2 seconds whereas ASTROMETRY remote can take 6 minutes or so.

I second the firecap feature alignment and tracking capability.

Try bil castors. They have a very wide range.

I use an automotive 8-40 to 13.5v converter on my solar/battery system in the obs. It solved a lot of 12v reliability problems putting the converter in. And it will supply 10A. But I guess I will have to look at the ripple now. Having said that I power the entire pair of scopes, cameras, mount, heaters etc all off the same DC sources supply and don't have any issues I can see. https://www.amazon.co.uk/your-orders/pop/ref=ppx_yo_mob_b_pop?_encoding=UTF8&gen=canonical&lineItemId=kjsptuirninwqoy&orderId=202-9967652-6373158&packageId=1&returnSummaryId=&returnUnitIndices=&returnUnitMappingId=&shipmentId=DVXPFlZDp I use an asi178mm cool and a qhy9 with it.

Slightly out of sequence, I'm doing something similar with a 16" and looking at your mirror supports. The spherical bearing is just dropped and glued over the hole ? Or rebated in using a counter bore ? Albert T uses domed lock nuts drilled through but I dont see that gives enough freedom.

My mojo too swings. Right now I'm getting back into the building side of things in order to refresh the observing appetite. Maybe you need to build something. !

Git also has a setting to preserve Unix end of lines or replace with windows end of lines which may help.

Delete the ends of the lines by backspacing the next into it and then re_adding a newline to reintroduce the original line structure. Or use a tool like sed to delete all those characters at the end of a line e.g. s/∆.*[0x387,]$/' '\n/r Is my guess at what that would be.

Yes, you have a mIssing ' character. And there are lots of hidden characters at the end of the mentioned lines due to converting from Unix to windows.

I printed mine on an ender 3 using Cura to slice. The body took 3 days to print and a lot of effort to get off the bed afterwards. Didn't do much if anything to Cura to get it working. 80 seems high for pla. I use mine at 60 and make sure I level after its come to temperature.

By hanging the telescope under the balloon in an altaz frame and using reaction wheels to control pointing alignment and one or more star trackers to know where you are pointing. I helped assemble one of those while doing my PhD in IR astronomy at UCL. They were old hat then and superceded by Iras and iso. Then balloon astronomy got coopted into top of atmosphere particle physics. That scope looks a bit large for that though.