adyj1

As this is the GTI Owners Club, I have to also add a link to AstroBloke's GTI stripdown video as well - very organised and well explained, so easy to see what to do;

Thanks 👍 Always makes me laugh that he's crouched on the floor with whatever odd screwdriver he had to hand. Very useful video, though, and excellent channel.

Can I ask whether you just tightened the grub screw on each gear, or stripped the mount down to remove the complete motor/gear assembly and adjust the distance between the gears by reseating the motor in its assembly? Thanks Ady

I'm getting on well with Affinity Photo and its astrophotography features - a few useful YouTube videos (from affinity) available too. sub-£50 one-off cost after a free trial. Seems a reasonable place to start as a beginner and has a lot of similarities with Photoshop if you decide you want to move into the 'big league' of spending. There are better, more expensive processing tools for better, richer astrophotographers than me 😉

And to try to make up for my schoolboy error, here's a single 5-min exposure DEFINITELY WITH THE L-ENHANCE, with only stretching to bring the stars out - no other processing whatsoever so you can see the 'raw' focusing. I have no problem focusing with it... edit: damn, that's big...

I think you probably do - it's the bit that screws onto the very front of the camera. Here's the diagram from the zwo web page explaining how their different adaptors make up the standard 55mm back Focus, and you can see the 11 mm tube attached to the camera.

So red, in fact, that I can't be sure that this isn't my 6.5nm HA filter - d'oh! (damn that manual filter wheel!) Sorry Edit: The thing I learned today was that if the stars are white, it wasn't taken with a single-band HA filter - so this is definitely the L-enhance. However I do have some other exposures labelled with the wrong filter name 😞

Yous asked for it 😉

Not sure what has happened, but my nebulosity was a lot redder when I finished Affinitying it. I'll see if I can repost the original when I get home.

This. I got my 533 from the forum, and it luckily came with all the orginal accessories, which included the filter holder @Budgie1 is on about. (I also have a UV/IR filter for when the L-enhance isn't necessary, so ended up getting a cheap filter wheel to avoid having to do clumsy filter changes in the dark...)

I am a fairly new owner of an l-enhance and have had no problem focusing by hand and autofocuser in my (theoretically) bortle 4/5 back garden. Coincidentally, I also have the ASI533MC Pro which I was running on an AZ-Gti while I was messing with my main mount... If you don't laugh at my processing I'll show you a work in progress; 😉 (5min subs, 1h50m total integration, although this was on my EQ5)

@Catanonia, did you work this out?

I have an ender 5 with a whole bunch of upgrades. The metal hot end and glass replacement bed mean I can print PETG, which works for me, with pla+ as a close 2nd. I was just trying out the glass bed to see if it would cure my adhesion problems, and clipped it onto the base part of the magnetic bed (in other words with the removable magnetic bit removed. When I came to remove the glass bed to try the magnetic one again I found the glass was stuck solid! At least I sorted my adhesion out issues with the glass, and it means I don't need clamps anymore as it isn't going anywhere 😂 Hair spray is my adhesion weapon of choice...

Fusion 360 is still free for personal use - you just have a restriction on how many projects you can have in edit mode at one time - but you can have many more in 'read-only' mode, and can swap between them all very easily, so not that much of a restriction... And the paid-for version is more expensive than solidworks, so it shouldn't be dismissed as 'free software'. (Mind you I do have a soft spot for free tinkercad from when I was first starting out...) I do print things that I could buy - as long as it is appropriate in terms of load-bearing and accuracy.

If you mean how it prints them, then you are right to wonder; it prints in layers from the bed upwards and bits that 'stick out' don't have anything to rest on during the print... The solution is normally to add break-off supports to the print job. You have to use an intermediary app called a 'slicer' to turn a design file into the specific print instructions for your printer, and at this stage you specify things about the print, like how much 'infill' is printed, or whether supports are used - and no end of other customisations. Like I said, a new hobby 😉

Both prints look great - I particularly like the dec knob adjuster. There is definitely a category of "things you didn't know you needed to 3d print until you realised you could 3d print them" 😉

You never knew how much you needed it until you got it 😉

My first advice is that 3d-printing is another hobby, rather than an appliance that sits in the corner churning out perfect prints at your every whim. (That opinion might be a little out of date as I've heard that a lot of the better modern printers can be much more 'plug-and-play', but in my experience eventually something needs tweaking...) In astro terms, it is easy to print custom boxes for DIY projects - for example exactly the right sized hole for the DC power connectors, the fuse holder and the gx-12 connector your project needed. This then encourages you to take on more diy projects. The print I'm most pleased with is the custom motor focuser mount I created for my AA 66-EDR - I didn't want to fiddle with the screws that attached the main focuser to the OTA, so I designed something that used zip-ties to attach it to the main tube ("Mr Heath, meet Mr Robinson" 😂). (Pic to follow) Amongst the other prints are DC power boxes, stepper motor mounts for my EQ5 goto project (the first thing that got me into 3d printing), Raspberry PI case for astroberry that included a 12v-5v dc step-down and a holder for an msata ssd, and a bunch more (just remembered Eq5/6 polar scope dust cover) . On the non-astro front, useful prints have been a 'bean hopper extension' for my coffee machine means I can fit a whole bag in, and a replacement to fix a broken steam knob that is much easier to use than the original.

Did you notice anything obvious (dust, etc) on the sensor?

No clever mnemonic, but I noticed it is always said "RA and DEC", and the RA axis is the 'first' one (the lowest on the mount) and the DEC axis is the second one (the higher one on the mount). Works for me, but obvs a personal thing. How about "R you pointing to polaris?" to remember the RA axis points at the celestial pole, and also a perhaps unnecessary reminder to Polar align 😉

If you are using an Eqdir cable directly into the mount, you don't actually need anything from skywatcher. In a nutshell, install the latest ascom platform from http://ascom-standards.org/ then install then install eqascom from http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/eqaindex.html (where there are setup guides). When it is controlling the mount, EQascom does not run in the same way as normal programs and can be quite confusing when you are starting out. As Borromir once said, "one does not simply run EQascom" - you need another piece of software (like NINA or APT or CdC, etc) configured to call the eqascom driver and when *that* software tries to connect to it, the EQascom program runs. You can't close that EQascom instance - once you close the program that called it, it closes itself. There are scripts installed with the eqascom drivers to start and stop the eqascom software on its own, called "start eqascom" and "kill eqascom", but you only really need these when setting up and tweaking the eqascom settings. Final piece of useful information is that if you run up CdC, say, and "connect to telescope" - which will start up eqascom - if you then start some other software that connects to EQascom as well (like NINA), it will also connect to the running driver and closing CdC *won't* close EQascom (thankfully) - it will close itself once all applications that are linked to it have closed (or you run the "kill eqascom" the script, which isn't normally required). Borromir was right. 😛 Ady My terminology might be slightly off about what is actually a 'driver' and what is an 'application', but that's way down in the detail...

When you use an EQDIR cable the telescope is called "EQMOD ASCOM HEQ5/6" (or maybe something very similar). Don't worry, it doesn't actually need to know the exact model of your mount. I have an EQ5 with DIY goto and it uses that driver name.

I'm trying to picture it - is that just conduit that extends out of the shed, or conduit on top of a wooden beam? (obviously there has to be a structure at the end of the conduit to support it...)

I appreciate this thread is about a power box, but if you want manual/ASCOM-controlled dew strap control you can do a lot worse than the Lynx Astro controllers from FLO. I've got the 2-port version where you have one heat setting for both ports, but the 4-port version allows individual control on all ports. £69 and £99 respectively. No fancy external temperature monitoring, but that would cost a lot more.

Hats off to you - an excellent piece of lateral thinking. I don't quite understand what is keeping the 'lid' on, but know whatever you've done has a good chance of working. Fingers crossed for tonight. If it does let go in 50mph winds, rather than the next-door's garden I think you'll need to check your local facebook page to find out where it went... 😉 1 Ady