msacco

13 hours ago, Merlin66 said:

Possibly not the best solution.....

but I’ve use a C11 at f10 for spectroscopy mounted on a NEQ6PRO for the past ten years, no issues no drama.

 

13 hours ago, scitmon said:

C11 Edge Weight is 13kg, plus Accessories and apply the 2/3rds rule for Astrophotgraphy... You are looking at a mount that can handle around 23kgs of weight.  The CEM60 is a very good choice I think

Thanks for the comment guys, I actually had a similar discussion in cloudynights, and EVERYONE was saying that the CEM60 is bad and that the G11 is much better.
Any opinions?

Well I guess there is no mount that can handle the C11 hahaha

Anyone?

3 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Well it was cheap and works so the proof of the pudding as they say 

Dave

Nice, I like it  And your dog seems extremely cute and beautiful.

4 hours ago, Mick J said:

Used an RC charger like you linked to above HERE,  we would just crocodile clip onto the battery and plug the toy's battery in,  did not notice the car battery getting low until packed up and ready to go home.  We used a small petrol generator after.

Well that sounds like a completely different story then, as that shouldn't happen in my case. Obviously it's something I need to keep an eye on though.

1 hour ago, Mick J said:

We used to have RC toys, charged the toy batteries off the car battery when out and about, over a long day we managed to flatten all the toy batteries and the car battery, stuck in a field late afternoon !!   Someone nice jump started us and we drove around for a while expecting to stall at a junction,  see where I am going with this 😁

Caravans and small boats have circuits/controls for multi batteries, power for essentials and run the lights and TV off another battery, some sort of circuit that balances the charging. This may not be the most helpful post but the last thing you need is everything flat.

How did you charge it? If I'll charge it from the car battery, it will be ONLY when the engine is running so the alternator will take care of it.

Just now, johninderby said:

It all depends of if you are charging up a battery from flat or maintaining the battery. Can be a complicated business. If a deep cycle is completely flat 10 to 15A is recommended.

Generally most of the time it will be for maintaining, but if the battery reaches around 50% after a day or 2 of use, then I will need to charge it harder.

2 minutes ago, johninderby said:

Deep cycle betteries take a charge better if charged slowly over a longer period. 

I'm not an expect, but the charging should be float charging starting at rather high amps then slowly lowering the amps as far as I'm aware.

1 minute ago, johninderby said:

Check the specs of the one I linked to. Fully automatic with 7 stage charging and auto shutdown if voltage drops too low.

From what I've seen it seems to charge at 2A max, I'm not sure how good that would be for the battery, even with 7 stage charging.

10 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

Those RC battery chargers should work but won't be "automatic" - they'll require you to configure the charger and start it. You'll need to make or buy an XT6 to 12V cable. If you're using a cigarette lighter socket then you'll normally be limited to around 6A anyway.

Thanks. Currently I believe I'll go with something similar to this:

2 hours ago, JRWASTRO said:

Hiya Msacco,

Here is a very robust unit  :  https://www.redarc.com.au/smart-start-bcdc

This will suite your 75Ah deep cycle battery.

Jeremy

Thanks, but there's no way I'm going to invest so much in a battery that I bought for $140. I would rather buy 4 batteries for that price.

12 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

So each link in that chain will have some losses - DC-to-DC can be 90%+ efficient, but DC-AC-DC is much less efficient. Add to that the fact that your AC charger is just going to assume it has limitless power whereas a well-behaved DC-DC charger will make allowances for the fact its input is imperfect because the car+alternator will be doing various things that they consider normal. The DC-DC stuff has lots of inbuilt logic to protect both batteries and charge/trickle-charge efficiently, whereas the AC charger doesn't know there's a DC battery feeding it and so will just sit there trying to pull power from the AC supply.

You can find Sterling and others on eBay, don't know about aliexpress.

So putting efficiency aside(I really don't need to charge it all that much and often), is there any other reasons? causing any damage to any of the batteries? Not charging the battery correctly?

As for what to search on ebay, I'm sorry but I'm not really sure what keywords to search for, can you tell me what exactly I should search or send me an example for something reasonable?

Thanks

Would something like either of these be sufficient?

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32844368647.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.5b196ae6d22tLp&algo_pvid=df71323b-37ba-42a2-b34e-54c65d0a9792&algo_expid=df71323b-37ba-42a2-b34e-54c65d0a9792-0&btsid=a0d84826-3a6c-43ff-a17f-97282e1e3c96&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_9,searchweb201603_55

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32915492330.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.5b196ae6d22tLp&algo_pvid=b7723cfd-1bb5-4876-b89b-26885f56d09c&algo_expid=b7723cfd-1bb5-4876-b89b-26885f56d09c-15&btsid=d447a05b-6dcb-40ed-9231-5e3d280adef5&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_9,searchweb201603_55

I assume that the 6A current would be a bit low for an AGM battery?

6 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

I've actually done just this before at work for a mobile mapping system (laser scanner, camera, and computer) in the back of a Nissan Navara. The whole system could use a dozen amps at peak so we opted to keep it isolated from the vehicle battery but didn't want to have to recharge the battery independent of the vehicle.

The 12V-to-12V charger option is the route to go. Most modern cars won't engage the alternator and pull the float voltage high of the charging level unless they think the vehicle battery needs it, so if you just hook it all up in parallel or similar then you'll find you don't often get the required voltage. The efficiency of the DC-DC approach far outstrips the DC-AC-DC loop.

We went with the Sterling DC-DC chargers - the one we used was https://www.12voltplanet.co.uk/sterling-pro-batt-ultra-waterproof-battery-to-battery-charger-12v12v-60a.html but they have cheaper options.

This can either be attached to the ignition indication circuit in the car (so it only tries to charge when the engine is running) or a separate switch. I'd recommend the ignition approach, though I think we included a separate isolator switch for that in series so it can be switched off entirely (there's also some chunkier isolation switches to let us disconnect the feed busbars from the batteries without having to remove connectors).

You do need suitably chunky cables between your charger and batteries, especially considering voltage drop at the current levels you might anticipate.

If I were trying to hack something up while being incredibly lazy I'd do the inverter+charger route, since that requires no wiring, but it will be slow and generally suck.

Thanks for the comment, since I live in Israel I'd probably need to buy something off aliexpress/ebay or maybe amazon(shipping would be more expensive though).

Do you happen to know anything suitable there I can find for a reasonable price?

Generally, the battery should be fully charged most of the time, I will be using it around once a month, so I don't need to worry much about slow charging etc, but about it being suck I would worry, can you please elaborate more on why it would suck? I'm not looking for an expensive solution, but a rather simple one.

5 minutes ago, johninderby said:

They do make 12v to 12v dc chargers.A bit of searching should turn up something cheaper than this one.

https://www.mdsbattery.co.uk/optimate-dc-to-dc-battery-charger.html8

I tried googling for something like that, but didn't really find any results. I tried searching in aliexpress/ebay but couldn't find anything.

Hi, kinda spamming this forum lately

I decided that I'd want to leave my deep cycle 75AH battery in my car, and make something that will enable me to charge. At first I thought that I could simply connect it to the car's alternator, but I'm not sure it would be very healthy having the car "charging" all the time. I could still use the same principal and simply have a switch that will enable me to charge it only when I need to, and that sounds fairly reasonable to me, I'm just not sure how well that's going to be.

One more solution I thought of was getting an inverter similar to this for example: https://www.aliexpress.com/item/32867195066.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.1c7e67bdN7ABJB&algo_pvid=7bf858c2-8f4e-4df0-9f4a-8b45f57538ae&algo_expid=7bf858c2-8f4e-4df0-9f4a-8b45f57538ae-3&btsid=a2649da2-a392-457f-8420-d9c2d515bab5&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_9,searchweb201603_55

That seems fairly reliable, then I could simply connect it to the car socket and charge my battery using my 220V smart charger I have, but how good will that actually be? Will that even work?...

Would love to hear some solutions and ideas, I believe it's usually more common in 4WD cars etc. Thanks!

8 hours ago, old_eyes said:

Will do. A little way to go yet to get the new observatory weather proof 

 

Really nice...

4 hours ago, symmetal said:

You could ask the seller I suppose or know someone who already has one.  The one that Dave linked to does have very bright edges implying this may be where the leds are. If the individual dots were leds I would expect them to be brighter than the edges of the panel which would not need or want leds.

Alan

Seems like this is the case, also comes with 3 lightning levels, so that really looks awesome and I bought it. Hope it will work as expected!

8 minutes ago, symmetal said:

I have an A4 and a A3 Huion LED Panel which have very even illumination. I did buy a cheap A5 one, similar looking to the one Dave posted for my RedCat 51 and the individual leds were just little perspex prisms. The leds were under the black strip on the left so the panel naturally had a noticible gradient left to right. The larger ones may use actual leds but it's best to check.

Alan

Do you have any idea how would I go about checking this?

Thanks for all the comments guys! Is there any difference I should consider between Dave's LED panel and the EL panel? The EL panel seems extremely expensive for the size I need, and this is without even talking about shipping.

Dave's solution really seems like a good option so far.

9 minutes ago, Davey-T said:

You might get away with one of these, some white paper will diffuse the light and they come with dimmer to adjust it.

Anything bigger you'll have to DIY a light box.

Dave

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/A3-LED-Light-Box-Touch-Control-Drawing-Tracing-Animation-Copy-Board-Panel-Giftt/233324181226?_trkparms=ispr%3D1&hash=item36533476ea:g:8asAAOSwxq5dZSHT&enc=AQAEAAACQBPxNw%2BVj6nta7CKEs3N0qWpqCNexrtRJ2cNVsCzz61blNHkczCbv54yRvb5%2FMfc3v0RvuizbBboKXiridp3Ish4If%2F7DZA6APl%2Fytk7bNd2xkEkt2L%2FBGjkqt6Es%2FCul5VAhhsgXGA3wqvrTXJo9SkWohOgOTyeBtU4L8LpwA9rS2fj1Sqb0FryOcV%2BYDEIXQYY8Ks70o6%2FpX%2BZYYX9cGDYLKD2484NafUTx4D690oVB0uUDavsO3IaIuPs3f6aK5p6yOlLbot5DudNJsgUBSERHoxzOYujDG0xOcLeS%2BaARWkAKgM2nzZ2YjjMwe4pHbVFvGPGr3wvlFeqh6XShmUZU9gBSi%2F3q3aiCuWVYkIZ47qI%2Fz%2BtabcVtmHygAVkPfWhZnUO%2BEjnUHQ462Q2X3xRAJChYjSnY1kydsrwOv5ZlrOht3C1BvnoBiAy6ph8FzRa%2BaN3PJvj9ztB%2BLi8%2BZmfbPfmo8xKHD1pday3wyANNpQ%2Fahi%2FYX7I%2BvO9cuaB11Lc4aH7z3YkV6TU3Vvniq3ZbxrN5WVZ5LUPJvl1%2BfTdqgGeVw0b%2BfCM1y%2Fn9y%2FzceO1y24tmXJuYBtd8hXgxg%2FHKgRwKrJS5c8m5gZtopV2vCuop6ZvhqCfbWJH3abY5DO%2BE94R7DNWzOoMoc41yoMzPXa6GdjoNY6gEgu2qjQsKawZm5It5fFg%2FwfY9x90JaXWnG0lqujodwX7ATytC3MRF0VZ26SmCg0W62g6BVPTEIrtL%2FeiE6IdxCfXxwpwcA%3D%3D&checksum=233324181226caa11cb7271040178d6219e8a57a07ca

That looks superb! Do you think that would do the job?

Hi guys, I'm looking into a solution to be able to take flat frames in night time so I won't be limited by sunrise etc.

I currently own an 8" telescope,  but might get an 11" soon so I'd probably want to have it big enough to be compatible.
I also wish for it to consume as low power as possible, as I've seen some options that matches 220V, but I'd rather find a good 12V option.

Would love to hear some ideas and see some work some of you might have done, thanks

20 hours ago, markse68 said:

£10? I guess it's quite expensive but they are great connectors- speakons too

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/mains-plugs-sockets/8997387/

15 hours ago, markse68 said:

You can get the Speakons with screw terminals- thought I'd seen them. And they're cheaper

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/loudspeaker-connectors/8997390/

https://uk.rs-online.com/web/p/loudspeaker-connectors/3400958/

 

Thanks! I'll need to find it on aliexpress/ebay though

14 hours ago, old_eyes said:

The powerpole distribution boards and connectors are cheaper than the neutricks and the distribution boards are compact and already made up. No sockets to mount and wire. The plugs are also crimp connections so no soldering. I am about to wire up my rig using them, so I will find out how easy it is in practice.

Let me know how it goes please! Would love to see some results.

3 hours ago, GraemeH said:

I followed a similar workflow to @tooth_dr but with only 2 different stretches layered. I'll try to summarise as best I can, but I can't actually remember every step.

Convert to 16 bit using Exposure and Gamma

Use levels on the individual colour channels to line up the histogram peaks (your blue channel seemed to be clipped at the bottom end) 

Stretch with curves as far as possible without losing the trapezium

Make a copy, then stretch one of them further to bring out more of the nebula

Put the less stretched version as a layer on top, and use the more stretched version (gaussian blurred by 5 pixels) as a mask

Convert to Lab colour space and stretch the a and b channels to boost the colour

Convert back to RGB and recheck the histogram, using levels again to line up the peaks

Try to deal with the vignetting using Astro Flat Pro plugin

Clean the dust spots using Content Aware Spot Healing Brush

2 cycles of star reduction using Noel's actions

2 cycles of space noise reduction using Noel's actions

I'm sure I've missed some steps, but this is an idea of what I did. 

Graeme

3 hours ago, JSeaman said:

Mine was simply curves and levels in photoshop then a dash of shadows/highlights to tweak. You can also play with vibrance/saturation to boost colours.

 

Thanks for the very detailed answer! I'll try getting comfortable with photoshop as well

5 minutes ago, tooth_dr said:

Flats are crucial in evening out illumination of the sensor - includes dust and vignetting! Trust me it will make processing a lot easier for you 

Hopefully I won't have any issues next time