Anthonyexmouth

Well, I bought a sensor cleaning kit and also done an argon purge of the chamber and it seems to have fixed it. Not sure what part of that helped but fingers crossed it's cured 

29 minutes ago, Varavall said:

The RRP of a 10m Startech USB 3 active cable is around £170  and the hubs are £50-115 depending on number of ports. So say over £200! But the Mele at £500 ish is water impermeable? Thinking of those heavy dews. You pays your money and takes your choice. I sit in the comfort of my home with the cables running through the wall. 

Mele is nowhere near £500 

I paid £211 for one with a little power adapter lead for my homemade 12v breakout box.

It says warm enough to avoid any dew issues on the box. 

I used to sit inside with my 15m usb cable coming through the catflap. Now I can also remote desktop into the MELE on my phone while i'm in bed to check it. 

4 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

Will do, thank you. 

It's worth saying I like to take my kit to a club dark(er) site so none of this is a permanent fixture - I already use the laptop so wouldn't a mini pc be a waste? 

Not really, leaving laptops out over winter when its below freezing isnt a good idea for the screen or battery. Being able to remote into the the mini pc while using the laptop from the comfort of an arm chair anywhere in the house. 

Everything can be mounted and plugged into the mini pc on the mount, no trailing wires to the laptop. 

Yes, the long usb lead solution does work, I used it for over 3 yrs but really regret not getting a mini pc sooner.

A good quality USB3 active/powered cable + a powered USB3 hub is gonna cost over £100, if it doesn't then it's probably not goning to be very good when it gets really cold out, thats when the cheaper ones fail. 

Put that towards a mini pc, keeps cables really short and tidy and massively more flexible

24 minutes ago, Wiu-Wiu said:

L-pro and L-extreme in the filter wheel here, with the asi 533 mc pro. 
because i wasn’t sure about vignetting, i went with 2” filters. 
 

the only issue I am getting with the L-extreme is that on faint targets (well, rather faint stars in the frame), the autofocus doesn’t work properly, even with up to 20s exposures. 
while being an excellent filter, i am thinking of putting my STC duo narrowband back in the wheel, and use that instead. Both are ha-oIII filters, but the extreme is a bit more narrow. On targets with fainter stars, i’ll use that one. (Osc has limited filter use so i still have 3 slots open  )

Apart from that, the choice for a filter wheel was to eliminate the need of opening my light path and risk getting dust in. Darks are just made with the front cap on in a dark room. 

 

The idea of minimal handling was my thought on the filter wheel. 

What are your sky conditions like? I'm low bortle 4 in my garden, MW is a bright swathe across the sky. Never an issue for fait stars here. 

I'm just about to get a new scope too so would be nice to have a clean setup that I don't have to expose to any more chance of dust than I have to. 

17 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

That's odd, I'd try ASTAP if you can. Also NINA only forwards the requests to the solver, it doesn't do anything itself as it were and if you have the same with two different ones (maybe even three soon) then I'd be even more tempted to say it's an odd config somewhere, which could be in NINA of course.

I know you said it's all ok but not sure what else is common that's all.

9 times out of 10 all works fine, and if i increase the platesolve tolerance in NINA to just over the error it works, so not sure its the platesolving side. 

14 minutes ago, OK Apricot said:

Cheers Adrian. Before I saw your reply I'd ordered a USB 3.0 hub to cut out the camera hub. If I get the startech or any other powered 3.0 cable and run it like this... 

Devices > hub > powered usb > laptop

... I shouldn't get any issues? This doesn't do much for the EQDIR cable length though. 

Plug the EQDIR into the hub. 

Until recently, when I splashed out on a MELE quiter3 mini pc to attach to my pier, I was running a 15m active USB3 cable inside the house through the cat flap on imaging nights. Ran that for 3 yrs with a startech usb3 powered hub stuck on the side of the mount with the mount/cam/guidecam/focuser plugged into it. 

I really do recommend a mini pc on the scope though after swapping to it. If you factor in the cost of the usb3 hub and a good quality usb3 active cable it really doesn't work out too expensive.

29 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I'd definitely use ASTAP for both solvers (Inc blind) but that aside I assume all the settings for scope camera etc that are related to solving are entered as they should be?

Yeah, all settings are ok. It's random too. The fact it's always the same distance error too is odd. just endless loop of telescope out of specified range, or whatever the wording is. 

Started to have an intermittent problem with the framing assistant. When i slew and it plate solves it gets to 2"17 and won't get any closer. I hear the mount moving but it's consistently the same pointing error which seems odd. I've even cancelled the PS2 to default to astrometry but it's the same. Anyone else getting this with Nina? 

Looks like i'll scrap the filter wheel idea and got for a drawer. Anyone know hot well light sealed the ZWO filter drawer is, wondering if its usable with a blackout filter for doing darks. 

I was just thinking about an optolong l-extreme and keeping the price down with the smaller one. 

4 minutes ago, Gumminess8083 said:

Yup, both ASCOM Profile Explorer, ASCOM Diagnostics, and EQASCOM (plus the drivers for my camera, as I cannot find any specific drivers for my mount)

you dont need mount drivers. 

I think you have a ftdi driver issue. your com port properties should mention the FTDI device.

Have you installed the ASCOM platform?

https://ascom-standards.org/

2 minutes ago, Gumminess8083 said:

Here you go :)

 

As you can see, unfortunately the COM 3 port is greyed out and not connected, since my cable is recognized as FT232R (aka, when I unplug and plug the cable back in, that is the device that gets disconnected and then connected again)

If you can only see Com 3 in the list of com ports then it looks like a driver issue. 

Just now, Gumminess8083 said:

I've tried setting my baud rate to all values to no avail already

 

This is what I see when I inspect the connection in device manager

 

Should I maybe try and plug the cable in the back of my pc instead of the front? Doubt that'd change much...

Now check the properties for Com 3 in device manager. 

Set your baud rate to 9600 

When you check the properties of Com 3 does it show it as an ftdi controller? 

47 minutes ago, CraigT82 said:

Haven’t done myself but I think that should be fine. Why would a FW allow the use of smaller filters? I would have though the filters would be further from the sensor if placed in a wheel? (Assuming you normally put a filter on the nose of the cam)

My filter screws into the reducer, 2" filter. Just thought I could save a few quid with 1.25" filters as the filter wheel will be screwed to the camera

Considering getting an l-extreme filter for my OSC. Wondering if I should get a manual filter wheel so I can use a smaller filter and also make changing to a LP filter easier and means less handling of the filter. Anyone else doing this? 

1 hour ago, Alien 13 said:

Looks a good choice to me, thinking of an AOC monitor myself.

Alan

for the price im very happy, use but great condition

Well, not sure I made a good choice but picked up a cheap used AOC u3477 ultra wide. Certainly makes a nice workspace for PI and remoting into my pier is nice to have Nina and phd2 side by side. 

2 hours ago, andrew s said:

I took a series of images from ambient to -5 c all was well until -5 when the speckle pattern appeared.  Ha ha thought I. Returned to 0 c no speckles. Reduced it in 2 degree increments to -10 c no speckles!  Then to -15 c no speckles. 

Will try drying the desiccant just in case.

Regards Andrew 

I've been having frost issues with my 294mc. Tried new tablets and a dew heater. Spoke to zwo and apparently they've been seeing it a lot this year with the heat and humidity. I wouldn't bother opening up just yet, wait until it gets a little cooler at night. 

1 hour ago, Phillyo said:

https://nighttime-imaging.eu/docs/master/site/tabs/framing/

This talks about images/files being saved as a cache and used so I think it must be saving them somewhere, again I'm at work now so can't check my own version of NINA but I can try again tonight. I didn't get much time last night as the Mrs had been away so wanted a catch up. Hopefully get more time tonight to take a look.

Also worth a try, on the image you uploaded further up of your screen at the top right you have image opacity plus other options up there. Does one of them turn off/on your image maybe?

Phil

No, the image opacity treats the overlaid image as the base image. The opacity just kinda emphasises the fov. 

58 minutes ago, Phillyo said:

Hmmm ok. I'll have a better look and see if I can figure it out. There's a cache folder somewhere storing your image files for overlay, it's just finding where it stores it.

Damned if I can find it. I'm reluctant to reinstall Nina, is rather fix it in case it happens again. 

6 minutes ago, Phillyo said:

Under Options, General there's a Sky Survey Cache Folder. Take a look in there, I think that might be where it saves them?

Phil

Alas no, I downloaded those files again and installed to fresh directory a while ago. Still got the same problem with my pic overlayed onto the image. 

8 hours ago, Phillyo said:

NINA has a cache of your files that it uses to overlay them onto the sky atlas. I think if you go to the settings, somewhere in there there's an option to select the location of the cache files. I'm at work so not in front of my PC at the moment so can't confirm.

couldn't find anywhere in the settings. 

2 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

hmm very odd and I assume NINA is pointing at the new location?

everything works as it should, i've just managed to somehow insert/overlay one of my images onto the skymap. Just have no idea how i did it or how to undo it.