Dazzyt66

5 minutes ago, JonCarleton said:

Is that an Arduino board and are you using the INDI Arduino driver?  

 

No, its the Waveshare HAT for the Pi. I run 12v to the HAT though which powers the Pi too. I couldn't get the indi_wmh_driver to work with it though (although thats probably just me and my knowledge of the Pi) - I was beginning to think it wouldn't ever work, but on a whim I updated the Astroberry software and on then tried the Astroberry Focus Driver - apart from me changing the pin numbers on the setup it worked first time. I'm really pleased with it - even using a Bahtinov I couldn't get my stars as pin sharp as they are now! Really pleased!

Hey all,

We've just upgraded our caravan and are looking to do some travelling to warmer climates over the winter. Currently I have my HEQ5 semi permanent in back garden. This is too heavy to travel with anyway. So, my question is:

I'd like to take my DSLR setup using Ekos/Kstars with me. I'd like to keep using autofocus and the scheduling/capturing element but I realize the plate solving and slew to target may not be an option. What is a good, light and super portable mount I could use (only for camera and 200mm lens and possibly ST80)? I've been looking at Star Adventurer as I already have a decent lightweight tripod. Does anyone have any advice before I spend another couple of hundred quid?

Cheers

Daz

48 minutes ago, MHaneferd said:

Thats quite cool and impressive!

And….how many hours did it take from starting the build, trial and error, to end? 😊

Building was easy - a few hours start to finished product. Getting it to work with Ekos drivers probably half a day due to rubbish instructions for the Waveshare board and the stepper motor combined - there was A LOT of trial and error. In the end it worked with the Astroberry Focus Driver - so all in all about a day and a bit to get it fined tuned... and a LOT of swearing lol!

Actually, I'm wrong, they are not in the final image - what I thought were the bunnies are in the wrong place to be them - if that makes sense - so maybe I'm not doing anything wrong after all...

Final build done - looks good if I do say so myself and it works a treat!!

3 hours ago, alacant said:

Hi

Dust. It's quite normal. 

Best not to remove it as it forms part of the flattening process for your light frames. 

If you want to fight it (futile!) You can clean the sensor, but be sure to clean it after you have used the current set of flat frames, otherwise you'll be left with dust marks on your final image.

HTH.

3 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Indeed, like @alacant already said - it is dust on camera chamber window. If you remove dust - you'll need another set of flats for lights taken after dust removal.

Best way to remove it is to use one of these:

3 hours ago, RolandKol said:

Hi Mate,

yes, as @alacant it is a dust.

And no, it is most likely not on your sensor and most likely not even close to it...

Usually (but not always), the dust on the sensor is very dark and usually very small (unless extremely dirty), yours looks like the dust on the filter if you use any.

You can calculate the distance of the dust from the sensor using the formula as per description in the link below.

 

(air blow bulb / air bulb / rubber dedusting ball / etc ...)

Thanks guys. I figured it was dust. The thing is, it stays in my final image after stacking - is that normal or am I doing something wrong. I don't use darks just processed flats and bias?

Thanks again.

Daz

On my flats. And how do I get rid of them? I think they may be on my sensor as they appear on all images regardless of what lens I'm using...

21 minutes ago, Tomatobro said:

I think the name of the free software is Filezilla. You have to enter the IP address in the manager then you can see on the right hand side of the screen the Pi and on the left side your PC file locations. Just copy across what you need.

 

Yes its FileZilla FTP Client just looked it up

 

Thanks for this - just set it up and its working perfectly!!! Thanks!!!

7 minutes ago, StevieDvd said:

There is a free version of a program called mobaterm. It can be configured to access remote devices via ssh or even run a Linux desktop. When connected via ssh a terminal window also has an option to display the files in the current directory and you can copy/paste them to/from the host.

Though have you tried the network connection or it's not working.

See here as it may be a simple fix.

 

Thanks for this although Filezilla seems to have done the trick.

I wasn’t sure where to post this so hopefully it’s in the right place.

I can’t seem to find an easy answer to this via google so hopefully someone here knows the answer,

I am using Astroberry for image captures via Ekos. Currently I move the captured images to a usb and then to my Win10 laptop (pro). When I used my Mac I used to be able to access the pi folders directly with SMB - I cant seem to do this on Windows. It doesn’t even see the pi on the network (although it is connected and I can access it via the browser) equally the pi can’t see my shared folder on the pc. I’d like to be able to transfer the images over the network (not during capture though). Can I do this easily?

TIA

Daz

So today I built my autofocuser for my manual 200mm lens. I cant believe it stayed clear enough for me to test it out but it did! I did 90mins of 60s 1600iso subs after autofocus in Ekos. Used my old bias and flats for the lens - will do some new ones and try it again but here's the result. I have no idea if this is any good cos I've never really looked at the NAN before - but my stars definitely seem in focus!!

Well, finally I did it. Built my DIY Astroberry Focuser using a Nema17 Stepper with Waveshare controller. 

Obviously this is prototype 1 while I await better brackets etc. But, it works!!! Hoping for a clear night so I can try it with Ekos autofocus!! Oh, and it cost me about £50...

I'm not sure if I've missed something here so forgive me.

You are connecting to RPI with Lynx cable with EKOS/INDI running on the Pi? If yes, this is how I connect so unless the Lynx cable is broken it should work (as other have said some cheapo cables may not) - is the cable OK, clean connections etc? You could test this by connecting it directly to your PC/Laptop usb running INDI/Ekos from there (rather than on the Pi).

I use it with Windows, Mac and Ubuntu where I VNC into the pi - so operating system will have no bearing on the mount connection if you are using the Pi as the server as everything is handled on the Pi.

So, assuming the above all works the issue may be with the USB port on the Pi? Have you tried other ports? I use the USB3 connection for my setup (although this shouldn't matter) and also, is there enough power for the Pi? If you are running other things off the Pi USB it may be not coping with the load. I would start by only trying to connect the mount only to start with.

As others have said, if you have it working with BT then at least you have a working solution. This will have no bearing on the functionality re time lags etc so long as the Pi is close to the mount. I used to use a wifi connection the same way before I switched to EQMOD and had no issues at all.

Hope this helps.

Daz

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

That's a tricky one because the 1/4 inch bolt is the norm for attaching the camera and should work. Perhaps the dovetail doesn't have a flat surface where the camera sits on it?  Could you add a friction washer between camera and dovetail? Or add some improvised brackets to stop the camera rotating?

Olly

Thanks Olly - yeah, the dovetail I use atm isn't flat - so I guess thats where to start, although I can improvise a spacer to make it flat against the camera.

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

The most used option for a DSLR plus lens is a decent ball head mounted on a dovetail with a 3/8 inch screw, there are DSLR friendly dovetails around too that have a flat surface like this. 

Alan

Thanks Alan - this is the kind of thing I was looking at but didn't want to buy until I'd worked out all options.

Thanks guys for the quick response.

Daz

Hi guys,

Having started to get some decent images with my camera and lens setup I want to look at making a more robust rig to attach to my HEQ5. At the moment I use a small 4” dovetail fixed to the camera using the 1/4 unc but this can often come loose as the mount moves around. What is my best option for:

   Mounting 1100d

   200mm Lens (no additional support atm)

   Planned RPI stepper focuser for Indi

I may also add a small guide scope at some point.

Any help appreciated before I start buying mount parts that can soon add up to a tidy sum in their own right!

Cheers

Daz

I use Siril all the time and have done 600+ 30s subs in around an hour start to finish including all the conversions using an 8gb i5 laptop and a MacBook Pro. Not sure why it would take that long, I guess it all comes down to how you preprocess and stack everything. Great images btw I’d be more than happy with those.

There’s a fantastic tutorial on using Siril here - I follow these steps and get the best images I’ve  ever done (although that ain’t many 😂)!

Daz

Really REALLY great image - I'm struggling to see a major impact of the extra hours though - Looks like I've only got about 9 more hours of data to go with mine then... 😂

I use only Siril and Gimp on my Macbook. I think Siril will stack planetary too but I've never used it for that. Here's Andromeda stacked in Siril and processed in Gimp:

+1 for the RPI suggestion

I was in same situation as you last year - only had a Macbook (which I didn't want to use outside) and iPad.

The RPI is really easy to set up. I use it with (free but worthy of donation) Astroberry (Kstars and Ekos) and did all the processing on my Macbook using Siril and Gimp. I'm not sure about planetary captures because I haven't done any, but it works brilliantly for me. I now have a dedicated Win10 laptop I use for the processing (I tried linux for a while which also worked fine).

The RPI will cost you about £60 and everything is captured to it so you can leave it outside going while you catch some z's. Of course you can use vnc/browser to use it live too and it works on my wireless network or in hotspot mode so no cables apart from those at the mount and its all powered by a £50 Halfords powerpack/starter.

Nice!!!

8 hours ago, CCD-Freak said:

Here is another one I did with a Zeiss Sonar 180mm F2.8 lens.  It worked but i was disappointed with the amount of chromatic aberration it had.  You can never tell until you test it.  

 

That setup is very nice!

2 hours ago, CCD-Freak said:

This is a system I cobbled together some years ago with a 200mm Takumar lens and a SS-Pro camera.  The focus motor makes it easy to get precise focus and it holds it once you are done. 

 

 

Thats exactly the approach I am going to take - I run all my stuff of a Raspberry Pi and had already looked into the autofocus build 👍

Here's an excellent explanation of taking calibration frames and the reasons why (and indeed the diminishing returns of doing loads). I don't use darks at all but go for 30 bias and flats.

https://youtu.be/JKWmP5W3nts

37 minutes ago, powerlord said:

very nice. I've got 3 old 200mm lenses - a chinon f3.5, F4 takumar and an f3.5 tamron. all got for buttons on ebay.

the hardest thing about using them is focusing them. And then the focus rings tend to be very loose, so KEEPING it focused is tricky.

I have bodged a rig up to use my skywatcher EF with them which helps a lot.

But when you see results like this, you wonder why folk spend hundreds on ED telescopes don't you!

It's certainly pretty distorted towards the edges, but could that just be you being out a bit on the back focus ? where did you end up getting focus on the lens scale ?

stu

Thanks. I am really impressed with what can be done with basic lenses and I've decided for imaging that is all I'm gonna use now. My HEQ5 is definite overkill for this (as I thought I may go down the ED route at some point) but as I've got it and its permanently set up why not eh? 😂 

Anyway, the distortion doesn't bother me but I guess I could crop it out. I was fully open at f3.5 and as others have said I could stop it down which will probably improve things. I left it at 3.5 cos I wanted to get enough data before the clouds came back in - this was only meant to be a test image 😂 

I used the Ekos focus module for obtaining the focus which was a little backed off from infinity (which is what I would've expected) - I have got a Bahtinov mask too which I use but didn't this time. I was planning on building an auto focuser for my ST80 to use with Ekos, which I could modify to fit the focus ring on the lens - this may improve things more.

TBH - this is a perfect, 'easy', cheap way to image for me. I'm not planning, or expecting, to win any imaging awards. I just like to see what I'm able to do from my Donny back garden and my wife and daughter like to see whats out there.

Glad you like it.

Daz

We've all been on this journey, and pretty much everyone will give you differing answers on where to start. As I'm a relative newbie to the hobby too I can let you know my experience so far (I am going to assume you are starting out with visual aim in mind as opposed to imaging):

I started with 150mm Dobsonian (reflector) - Skyliner 150p which is great for general use visual, planets and galaxies etc. (be aware that deep space objects will mainly be 'fuzzy' views). However, this is a big scope for moving about and setup which I found cumbersome - many people use them though as its great for a garden. I eventually sold this. I think the current cost of them new may be out of your price range but used you may even be able to get a 200mm.

My goto scope which gets used pretty much anytime is a Startravel 80mm (refractor). Lots of people have them. You can easily setup in minutes. Travel ANYWHERE with it as its so portable and it will give you good views of planets and also galaxies etc. Again most deep space objects will be seen as 'fuzzy'. This is easily in your price range so you could use the rest for eyepieces etc.

I then got fancy and got a HEQ5 goto mount and tripod which makes finding things a doddle. This is VERY heavy for transporting about and if I'm honest, goto sort of takes the fun out of trying to find things on your own and getting to know the night sky. Goto also adds extra cost to your purchase. I would avoid GOTO when starting out and use the money to get best scope that suits your preference.

My final scope is a Skymax 150mm (commonly known as a Mak). This is also very heavy. Is FANTASTIC for planets but out of your price range - I include it here because the 90mm and 120mm versions are probably in your price range and combined with decent EP's with give you great planetary views and some DSO (again, unles its something like Orion, they will appear as fuzzys).

If I could do it all again, my advice to myself would be:

Use binoculars until you know what it is that interests you. When you decide on what is your main focus, buy something that you will find easy to setup and use. If you are even remotely thinking of imaging I would start with a camera and a lens and progress from there. Do not get distracted by gadgets like GOTO as that will eat your budget - you can always upgrade as you progress.

You will find plenty of advice here as you decide. Hope this helped a little.

Enjoy the hobby! Thats the main thing!

Daz

16 hours ago, CCD-Freak said:

What 200mm lens are you using? 

Its a M42 Kalimar fixed 200mm f3.5 lens I got from Ebay for £20 - as I  know little about photography I cannot tell you if this is a good make or not (I'm guessing not for the price  ) - used an M42 adaptor on my now astro modded 1100D.