teoria_del_big_bang

My case is a tad on the over-priced side but it houses the SSD as well.
It does have a fan but it can e disabled or set to come on a certain cpu temperatures and really is not required as the case acts as a passive cooler and is sufficient on its own.

RPi CASE

Steve

2 minutes ago, pete_l said:

That's encouraging. My Pi4's scream along with a bootable SSD. How's your WiFi connection? My Pi4's are in "full metal jacket" enclosures as I dislike moving parts such as fans. I hack-sawed off a corner of the aluminium as the case was shielding the WiFi signal.

I too have it in a metal case which virtually redners the WiFi next to useless so have a WiFi dongle that works a treat.
It has never put a foot wrong since, the connection is much faster and have no issues over a 100 meters through a couple of walls.

THIS is the one I bought.

Steve

30 minutes ago, pete_l said:

I do not know what version Raspberry Pi you have, nor whether the RPi4 is any better (it has a lower CPU Core voltage to hopefully the designers created a better on-board power supply.

The other thing that matters a lot is the quality of the micro-SD card. On my Pi3b+ a cheap card writes I-O at about 4MBytes/sec (with the CPU at 600MHz) while a SanDisk Extreme manages 13.25MByte/sec. without changing anything else.

Thanks for this info it is all very interesting.

I have the latest RPi 4 with 8Gb memory and I am running it from a SSD drive not the SD card.

You could e right with the voltage though as I think this converter is bang on 5V and I et the 240V ps is more like 5,2V (I will check this).

Steve

I use the Polemaster and once mastered then PA becomes 5 minutes of a job. And for sure a HEQ5 is a great mount for starting out in Astrophotography, and often many use them for a lifetime.

I assume things work the same for the Southern pole star as for Polaris. So the main think is to roughly align your mount in the right direction so that the polemaster camera is pointing at the southern Pole Star (Sigma Octantis). I have read that this can e particularly difficult to identify so you need to ensure you are looking at the correct star.
In the North Polaris is fairly easy to find as it is much bigger than the others around it (and there are easy ways from a well known constellation to find it) but once I did actually manage to point the mount at another similar size star and had similar issues as I could not get the other stars to fit the pattern on the screen.

So my first question is have you set your mount declination to roughly the correct angle for your location ?

Then my second question is are you sure you are clicking on the correct star ?

If so then also make sure you have the South selected in Region selection in the top left hand corner.

Then match the screen template to the surrounding stars by moving the slider under "Confirm Polaris/Oct", you can get better finer adjustment just clicking on the + and -, so move slider till close and fine adjust with the + and -.
The stars should all then be inside the circles, they might not all be directly in the middle of the circles, some may be in centre and others a bit closer to the outer rings ut just line them up best you can.

Then you have to click on one of the outer stars ( choose a bright star and one far away from the pole star will be more accurate than one close to it, but not too far that is will go off the screen when rotated. Also it does not need to e one of the stars in the circles) and then rotate the mount using the East button on the hand set about 15 degrees, keep an eye on the star you clicked on.

When rotated about 15 degrees click on the star again, rotate another 15 degrees (or more) and click on the same star again.

Then send the mount back to home position and watch the screen it will have a circle on it and the star you clicked on will follow the circumference of that circle if all went okay.
If you do not move your Polemaster camera in the mount the next time you do the PA you can skip this rotation as it will ask you to use the last recorded rotation.

Then really its a matter of clicking on the pole star and following the remaining on screen instructions and adjusting the mount to line the star up with a circle.

Then click on monitor and you may need to do some very fine adjustment to the mount so get two crosshairs to align perfectly.

Steve

1 minute ago, Tomatobro said:

I would try adding two capacitors, one across the input and one across the output. 1000 uf electrolytic 25 volt. They are polarity marked so they need to be connected the right way round. It might be a defective unit as I have used similar items without problems.

Thanks, I probably have some somewhere in Garage I can try that.

Steve

Some while ago I made a power pack from a substantial 12V leisure battery  with a view to being able to find some dark skies and get away from my patio.

I have also added a 12V to 5V 3A supply so I could power the RPi running KStars and Ekos.
The picture below is before I added this 5V but gives you some idea of the size of the thing.

But unfortunately attempts to use it have proved problematic.
It works in a fashion but the RPi runs very (VERY) slow when using it. SO slow it is essentially unusable,

If I power the RPi from the 240V power supply and everything else from the battery then it works fine so obviously I have an issue with the 5V supply, either current or voltage is not correct;.
The voltage is 5V so I assume it is the current but I am using one of THESE (The 5A version) and thought is would be fine.

So no idea why I have an issue but wondered what do others use to power an RPi from 12V (Withous similar issues) ?

Steve

1 minute ago, Doberamus said:

Yes, the guide camera is an Altair 290c so that might be the issue. I didn't get a chance to try many other permutations...

I am not really sure what I am talking about here so take it with a pinch of salt but I certainly do remember some issues with using two same make cameras on APT (I think) and somebody suggested using the native driver for one and the ASCOm driver for the other. Like I said this is from a year or two ago and I am not computer wizard so I could be wrong with this thought.

I have to go out now but I will have a search when I get back if nobody else chips in in the meantime.
APT is a great piece of software and the chap that wrote and maintains it is very approachable and very helpful you could always drop him an email.

Steve
 

Hmm, odd.

What is the guide camera ? Is this also an Altair camera and so APT uses same driver ? I have read somewhere about an issue with somebody using two ZWO cameras in APT and having an issue.

I personally do not have any experience of Altair cameras with USB hub but I assume it is no different to the USB hubs on ZWO cameras.

Does APT recognize both cameras if you plug then direct to your PC and us the hub for the mount ?

Steve

3 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

The wifi and the USB 3.0 share power on the RPI board, and are very close to each other, this was a design flaw, when one is in use it causes issue for the other,  I swapped to a USB 3.0 wifi dongle that works three times faster than the built in one, and never had an issue since....cost around £12...

I too bought a USB wifi dongle (as suggested by @Stuart1971 in a thread where I was having similar issues) and not looked back since.
It has never put a foot wrong since, the connection is much faster and have no issues over a 100 meters through a couple of walls.

THIS is the one I bought.

It was fairly straightforward to install on the RPi once I found the correct instructions and at moment on Amazon is £17 but well worth it as before I was often giving up with the wifi part way through a session and rolling out my 100M ethernet cable.

Steve

12 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

f you are using the USB 3.0 on the RPI, and the wifi at the same time, this is a known issue with them, you are best either to use a powered USB hub, plugged into one of the RPI ports, or an external wifi dongle instead of the built in wifi....also always use the 5ghz if using internal wifi and try it on Chanel 44...👍🏼

This is great advice - putting the wifi on a designated channel and using 5gHz instead of letting the RPi decide stopped loads of similar issues for me. 
Have you tried this yet ?

I think that if you are not careful then if the RPi is left to select the best channel then sometimes it can swap channels and thats when the connection drops for a while, enough for the remote connection to drop out.

Steve

Yes I think thats what most people will do, I had the guide cam and filter wheel going through the USB2 hub on my ASI1600 and it never put a foot wrong and kept all the cabling nice and neat.

Steve

Use the USB hub on your 269C for the guide camera and it will be fine, also a lot less cables trailing about.
The guide cam will be perfectly olay through USB2 which the hub will be.

Steve

10 hours ago, tooth_dr said:

Hi guys

Any suggestions for gain/mode/exposure time for H-alpha imaging. 
 

I grabbed a handful of H-alpha subs last night 300s/gain 56/photographic mode and thought they looked a bit noisy.  Are these the right settings for narrowband?  I’ve attached an uncalibrated stack of 11x300s

 

Thank you!

Adam

 

This is a stack of 5 Ha subs from last night, same as you they are totally uncalibrated and I am now a bit worried about the amount of hot pixels I have.
I probably have not noticed these so far due to pre-processing my previous images that will have masked these.

You can clearly see many hot pixels that are made cleared because of the dithering. Does this look normal or should a new camera be better than this ?

Steve

3 hours ago, Spongey said:

Mode 1, Gain 56, Offset 10, 300s subs is what I use for narrowband, and it's been giving me pretty good results. 600s subs would probably be better but I'd rather take the small hit to noise and have more subs for pixel rejection to play with. I'm using 3nm filters for reference.

I'm not super experienced when it comes to NB imaging (this is my first mono camera), but an integration of a few hours has been enough for me to work with.

As I'm currently scope-less (although hopefully not for too much longer!), I've been using my Samyang 135mm at f/2.8 for imaging, but I did try the same settings at f/5.5 on my Esprit 100 before it was returned to good effect. I'm working on a widefield narrowband cygnus mosaic at the moment and I'm very happy with the results so far.

Cheers 

Pretty much the same for me, Mode 1, Gain 56, offset 30, ended up mainly using 600S subs, I did try dome 1200S but honestly saw little gain  I can upload some lights when I power up my RPi on the rig.

Steve

1 minute ago, callisto said:

Where is this?...can I book a table?  🤣

Outside only !

Steve

That's a great image.

I don't see a lot wrong with the stars, maybe a tad  yellow but that's all, and I am not really experienced enough to give a proper analysis but just looks a fantastic image to me.

Steve

Hello and welcome to SGL 🙂 

Steve

23 hours ago, SyedT said:

I have a second-hand Avalon M-Uno and cannot fault it. Most nights I'm guiding at an RMS of 0.4 or less, and this is with an FSQ85-EDX/Edge HD 8 + Esatto microfocuser + reducer + filter wheel + camera + MiniPC + Pegasus hub + guidescope. I do have to use counterweights for balance, but less than would usually be needed due to the single-fork design. Another bonus is that you don't need to do meridian flips (but have to ensure that the rear of your imaging train has sufficient clearance; this can easily be achieved with declination counterweights if you need to move your train further forward, see the image below).

Two caveats are that the maximum recommended imaging payload is 20 kg (yours is 15 kg which it will handle easily), and that since the mount is belt-driven it will always require guiding (i.e. unguided imaging isn't a recommended option). Belt drives are also more susceptible to windy conditions, but I'd imagine that would be an issue across the board.

I do have the Synscan version of the M-Uno which was basically plug and play for me as I'm used to EQMOD. I think these have been discontinued and now only the StarGo versions exist; haven't used that so not sure about it. I've previously owned an Avalon Linear which performed very well; I'm still in touch with the new owner and they seem to be enjoying a similar performance.

That is an awesome looking rig and a guide log to go with it. 🙂 

Steve

If of any use my current Focus parameters.

As already said if anyone sees something that could be better please tell me.

I have no real confidence these are anywhere near best settings and if I get another clear night this week then I will try to spend a bit of time doing some more messing around with different parameters to see if I can get them any more reliable, although for several nights it has focussed withing 100 steps each night and that could be down to temperature differences rather than errors (not sure).

I noticed that I am now using 5 sec exposures which may be a big part of why it seems more stable, albeit now a longer process.

There are several things I would like to resolve:

1. I have not looked into backlash compensation so will also look into this and follow the link from @Stuart1971
2. Does the filter make a difference if they are all parfocal ? In theory it should not but does one filter help with focussing over others ?
3. What effect does changing the binning have - should it be the same as whatever you are using for the imaging ? I assume focus should be the same for all binning options so would using 2x2 or 4x4 make focussing quicker or more reliable ?
4. What effect does the box size have ?
5. What effect does kernel size have ?
6. What effect does Sigma have ?
7. What Detection system and Algorithm work best ? I have used all the algorithms and to be honest not sure one was any more successful than the other but I have not tried all combinations of algorithms and detections, that will take sometime.

I know there are boxes that appear to explain what all these do (another great feature of EKOS) but that does not really tell me which will work best for me.

There is so much I do not know and I really have only got mine all "Apparently" working by hit and miss or "suck it and see" methodology.  So would be great to know what I was doing.

Steve

14 minutes ago, TerryMcK said:

That's great help guys and I'm sure it will certainly help all us EKOSers (is that a word)

I'd take that, thank God they did not call it ETOS. 🙂 

Steve

1 hour ago, TerryMcK said:

That's interesting advise Steve. I haven't really got to grips with EKOS auto focusing finding it hunts around never really stopping and me randomly setting a few parameters to no avail. I will have a look at your suggestions thanks.

Yes that's pretty much were I was a few weeks ago, and apart from the suggestions I made, that was gathered form several sources, I am still not fully sure what all the parameters do and how it affects how it gets focus.
But whether it is luck or what last few sessions it has seemed to work well each time (but as I said starting off from pretty much in focus anyway).

One thing I forgot to mention that helped is having a fairly low initial step size. I think the default is quite big (maybe 100 or more can't remember) but this seemed to take it too far out of focus and it never recovered.~I am not sure what it is now but it is in the tens, 30 or something like that and very much improved.

I will power up the Rpi and list my parameters if it helps, bear in mind I still not fully sure what everything does so in no way am I saying these are the parameters to use jut what is working for me now.
As I said others on SGL have posted their parameters for which I was very grateful, and I have looked at others on different websites but there doesn't seem to be a lot of consistency between them all so either there is no defining right or wrong or all work equally well, or equally badly 🙂 

If anyone on SGL is the auto focus guru I would love to hear from them 🙂 

Steve

Just to add to my previous ramble I have had some issues with auto focus lately which now has settled down and has worked flawlessly last 4 or 5 sessions.

Generally it needs to pretty much close to focus before letting it run or it can struggle.

Also there a a host of things you can change, things like parameters, exposure time, averaging over more than one exposure, algorithms.
And not sure which way to point you as I asked the question about what parameters work best .

ekos-auto-focusing-what-parameters-do-you-use

I also did a lot of searching Google and apart from ensuring it has all the correct settings for your scope, camera etc people seemed to use quite a differing variety of parameters and algorithms, some claiming they were the best , others to say just what they used.

So whether this is just a difficult process to get right anyway, or all these algorithms do the same job essentially I am not sure.

Some common things did seem to run through what most of them suggested:

1) needs to be manually focussed to be somewhere close first - can be done several ways but I found taking a quick image of stars and zooming in on the stars in the resultant image and if looked blurry moved focusser one direction and another quick (3 sec) image - if less bloated then continue in that direction or change directions until best image is seen. Sounds faffy but unless you are miles away then really doesn't take long and saves going out fitting the Bahtinov . I now also put the focusser lock on whenever I finish a session and power down to prevent the focuser getting moved when no power to motor, Just remember to unlock it at start of next session - becomes 2nd nature after a couple of sessions. It then always focusses and sometimes moves a little but not much.

2) Average over at least 2 images.

3) Keep guiding enabled.

4) if any issues use longer exposures. 2 to 3 seconds seems to be common.

Steve

I too love KStars / EKOS.

I am running Stellarmate myself but to be honest I was just curious to see what Stellermate had to offer that was different to AstroBerry and it isn't expensive so gave it a try but apart from some very small differences, none really that make any difference to the imaging, they are both pretty much identical.

And to be fair I too have had some issues that have caused my RPI to reboot, ot I have had to reboot it due to it freezing despite using the latest RPi 4 but none of them were whilst an imaging session was underway, they were always when setting up so not a major issue and I have had an odd issue with some equipment not connecting through USB2 but not often od always resolved by a reboot.

So not sure if similar issues as @Len1257 but it has not all been plain sailing.

So why have I stuck with it?

Well mainly down to EKOS, I just love the layout.
Most other software will do the same but I just find how EKOS is laid out is is so easy to follow all the steps needed to get a session going very quickly and I am not looking around for which tab or which button to click to get it all done.

Even the colour scheme helps me find everything, My eyes now are not too brilliant and I need good clear reasonably bold fonts and in EKOS I have no issues seeing it all.
When you get used to using the full scheduler it is brilliant and amazing how it works every time without issue.
Just lately I was struggling to decide on a target to image but didn't want to wast the 3 or 4 clear nights I have had recently but having lots of data for Pinwheel Galaxy did not really want another galaxy and it was after 1:30 am before any real nebulas I wanted came into view from my patio ,but I just set a time to start, set a loop of 1 Ha, 1 OIII and 1 SII, gave it a link to an image I took the previous night, and a time to stop as the darkness would be fading ,and just went to bed an left it.
So at 1:30 am it all sprung into action and slewed to the just appeared target, auto-focused, then plate solved so the target was framed exactly like the image from previous night, started the PHD2 guiding (including calibration of PHD2) then away it went running round that loop of 3 images until whatever time I had set and in the morning I had several images of Ha, OIII and SII.
It handles flips flawlessly as well and will check its position before the flip and ensure it is exactly same (but 180 different) after the flip.

The freezing or reboots are very rare these days and I just love having all my kit run from a small £80 Rpi and SSD, and the freezes more down to the RPi I suspect than the software.

I am also not over keen on the KStars planetarium and it is way behind some others like Stellarium, BUT you do not need to use this all night just to select the targets at start of session - and if it is a repeat session then no need to use at all just tell it where a previous image is and it gets all the data from the fits header and also p[late solves to the image. So I can live with the shortcomings of this 🙂 

Now I did try NINA running on a smallish but powerful Windows fan-less computer, still mounted on mount, as it has some great reviews, and it can run in conjunction with Stellarium.
I do think it a great bit of software, with some really good innovations, but in a way (for me) is too complicated with more than one tab or button to get to the same thing and one issue for me is that I struggled to see some of the writing on the tabs and buttons, the font was just too small and color contrasts not so good. Now that is my issue I know, and maybe with time messing about I could have changed it to suit me and maybe I didn't give it a fair chance, but I think I just missed EKOS so my RPi went back onto the mount and still using it.

Steve

There is obviously something to be said for having a good quality calibrated monitor but no idea how to do that.

Steve

Had a go at removing the green, as I agree the black areas were quite dark green but couldn't resist enhancing the gold colour but I think I've over cooked it a tad too far, and I have lost my stars, so may make starless and add them back in later 🙂 

EDIT:     Ahhhggg!
 

I thought I had over cooked it a tad when processing it on my laptop and just seen it on my desktop monitor and it looks awful, 
I was going to remove it but will have another go using my desktop and post that - so please ignore this there is far too much contrast and colour.

Steve