DaveL59

in this thread one was dismantled to remove the prisms, is this what yours now looks like now?

also found this forum thread which might help. I'm not registered there so can't actually access it but you may be able to without registering... http://www.astronomyforum.net/skywatcher-telescopes-forum/173647-skywatcher-infinity-76p-300-eyepiece-come-apart-help-please.html

Hi Clair might be worth posting a pic of the eyepiece to give us a clue You can hopefully reassemble but if can be a bit fiddly getting the small lenses into the body and staying the right way up en route, worth giving each a clean with lens cleaner and avoid handling with fingers as you add each back in if poss too.

Hi Louise yeah that was the one, at that low output hopefully it'll be fine then Must admit I looked at the photos of its build "quality" and toes just curled. You'd expect a better finish in mass produced boards but then at that price... Having said that the rats-nest wiring in some items at much higher prices leaves me speechless too, surprising what can lurk beneath a nice classy fascia that you don't get to find out till something stops working.

yikes, don't like the fact that there's no drillings for mounting posts in the board nor any heatsinks. I guess for the price it is dirt cheap, make sure its in a well insulated enclosure and cables secured with suitable strain relief. You might want to have some ventilation also to assist cooling if running for extended periods, guess you'll know once its up and running and you can carefully check its operating temps.

so long as its dry and reasonably ventilated you could well be fine. I'd say at the back tho away from the main door might be best. You'd need to take precautions against creepy crawlies and dust/grit blowing in under the door but at least temps should remain reasonably stable and near ambient at this time of year.

no reason a scope can't be used thru an open window, so long as the room isn't heated and causing thermal currents around the tube. So long as you can pan around the part of the sky that interests you it's fine. I often use mine aimed thru the conservatory door, saves getting too cold

silly question, but cap on the end of the main tube removed? Just like with a camera, easily forgotten Also use the lowest power eyepiece without the barlow - the one with the higher number, usually 25mm or 20mm in the supplied set. as above, once you can see something then do align the finder on what you have got centred in the main eyepiece, will make life a lot easier when trying to target points in the night sky.

yeah so far mine has been fine in all weathers, no misting or frosting as the CCTV module runs quite warm so acts as its own dew heater 🙂 I have another camera that's in its regular non-outdoor housing with lens that's been running for over a year to monitor the area I put food for the hedgehog, hanging under an old ready-meal tray to keep rain off. I did cover all the case joins and SD slot with dielectric grease and it all still works fine, no frosting or misting up at all. For my main el-cheapo cam I've used a different poly dome than the original as it was smoked, as well as to improve weather sealing on the inverted CCTV dome rig with a neoprene seal between the lip and the dome body, so far has worked really well. The smaller cheaper housing looks like a seal has failed and unfortunately that one now has condensation coating the inside and after rain has water sitting in the base of the housing. That one's gonna have to come down altogether I think, might be usable to house the hog-cam perhaps but I don't think I'll be running that housing inverted again.

how well does the housing stand up to being "inverted" with the dome up? I DIY'd mine using a ip-CCTV module and adapted a housing to suit and that works reasonably well so far. Another cheaper dome housing hasn't faired so well at resisting water ingress so I'll have to pull it apart and see what can be done, one day... The Sony starvis sensors (assuming that's what this one has) do a reasonable job at picking up the brighter stars even with the fast minimum shutter speed so like you I find its a handy day/night sky view. You might be able to polish the dome to improve it, car headlight polishing kits might work for that, but you may also be able to source a replacement clear dome for relatively low $

I'd agree with James on capacity suggestions, for extended running you need to be looking at much more than the smaller packs can deliver. For lead batteries they will be heavy and you should avoid car batteries - they are meant to deliver high cranking current in short bursts but not for long slow discharge so will fail quicker. Regular SLA also don't like being run flat, below 50% and you're shortening the life of the battery. Leisure are better for this as they're designed for deep discharge, but again heavy and its best to avoid cycling them too hard. You need to store lead batteries charged and maintained too. Lighter weight Lithium cells are around, LiFePo is a good example and you could pitch for 50% AH rating vs the lead battery and get the same runtime, i.e., 10AH is a reasonable swap for a 17AH lead battery. That's because volts will drop off as battery discharges on a lead cell, where Li types will hold up longer but have a sharp drop off as they near discharged levels, the in-built battery management should protect the cells from abuse. Unfortunately these are still quite expensive but potentially will outlast lead batteries 3x which may balance that out. They also don't need to be charge maintained in the way lead batteries do. Oh and don't forget when totting up the load to also allow for conversion losses, you may need to add 15% or so to the load total. Then also allow for AH capacity "loss" if operating in cold environments, batteries don't like the cold, some more than others.

so its states a capacity of 40Ah at 3.7v, for 12v that'd be approx 25-32% of the stated capacity so around 10-12Ah effectively. Hope that helps. Are you planning to run all this from that one power pack and what runtime would you be hoping for? You'll see some losses ramping to 20v but maybe less that using the mains out into a laptop PSU so might be worth testing both ways and see which is better in terms of battery drain.

I'll admit I take great care carrying the scope down the couple steps back into the conservatory. Only got that wrong once and thankfully not carrying a scope... well not so far...

central heating boiler venting out on the garden side too, perhaps? I guess I'm lucky that mine blows out the front so no moisture laden air blowing out on the garden side, plus the conservatory is cold so the scopes don't have much temp change if I do move them out to the garden. I managed a little peek at Orion earlier having got back after spending the day at my dad's tho clouds coming over now so I guess the view will soon be obscured. Still at least you planned to have a go, hopefully no harm done 🙂

Happy Xmas all 🙂 another on their own, tho I will go visit my dad in a little while and over to rest of the family tomorrow ack wireless keyboard seems to be doing its own thing this morning, forgot its xmas pressie of new batteries lol

have fun with that John, I've a few SMD LED's I need soldering onto an old GPS HUD but last time I gave that a go I found I was good at melting them so gave up in the end. Must have another look, one day but its low priority. Solder paste and flux and a v fine tipped iron or hot air station would be best but for a one-off I wasn't looking to invest much in kit. For sure the microscope will help a lot

hi Geoff I went a slightly different route to start and used spare CCTV IP modules in a modified housing attached to the side of the shed. Downside is shutter speed is too fast really at 1/10s slowest, but it kinda works. As I had network out to the shed anyway it seemed the easiest way to go and no remote PC needed. Others use Rasberry Pi's I think so they can drive a USB camera. I had a play recently with a webcam on a network-USB server and that seemed to work, so a future option perhaps as I've a spare one kicking around. Sadly that was from Maplin who are as you said no more. As for power, I guess you could run a single 12v of suitable amps and feed it via a splitter to a 12-5v buck converter so that you have a single supply but both 12v and 5v. Otherwise a PC PSU would do it, tho they tend not the be high amps on the 12v rail.

so another automation fail by Boing then? Must admit I was half expecting musk's one to not notice the ISS was there and run straight into it... musta used a different team to the one that did the car non-guidance system.

ah ok, fair enough. So essentially these private operations don't care about polluting and carbon footprint, so long as they can do it cheap, not good

reminds me that one day I must dig out the old german cuckoo clock from my childhood and overhaul it... been in a box for years now but got diverted with other stuff, lately bino's and scopes and now it seems 2 failed Seagate HDD's in the fileservers

well assuming the usual H+O2 fuelling, perhaps not as much as you'd think. but that said the footprint for building it all etc, a fair bit...

this just arrived, now just need some clear night sky to try it and see if it helps with sky glow on the bridge camera

I run up the portable AC in the conservatory to cool things down in the summer eves which helps

if you do end up having to drill it out be careful not to damage the threads if poss. Not the end of the world tho as you can always re-tap with the next size up and use the appropriate size grub screw to replace it. Have had to do that on a couple of the micro size binoculars where prev owner had butchered the flat blade type grub screw and the threaded hole by using too much force and too wide bladed screwdriver. A LH drill bit you may be able to work by hand or using a pin wrench to hold it, rather than a power tool. As noted these small bits are quite brittle so beware. After all it's hopefully only nipped tight rather than over-torqued As Billy above mentions tho, glue can do it but you really want a tiny amount so you don't have the key stuck in the thread too. Another way is heat, a micro torch with a fine flame (jewellers type) just aimed at the screw area and a drop of WD40 while hot may break the thread free, but not good if the shaft its fixed to is plastic etc of course.

While I do have a shed, it's not in great order and have had to refix the felt a couple times earlier this year, plus storing the "spare" road wheels etc in there doesn't leave much space. Luckily I've a conservatory so that's where the 4 bigger scopes live, set up so they're easy to move into position either out to the garden or viewing with one out the open door. Upside is they're pretty much at ambient given its an unheated space and if windy but using them thru the doorway there's less wind effect on the long OTA's and easy access to mains power etc. Downside is summertime it can hit 45C+ in there but doesn't seem to have caused any issues with them so far. I'd think the critical issue to avoid is damp conditions, add spiders and maybe slugs into the mix and you can have problems aplenty if they get into the optics. Don't forget too that slugs if they find their way into the electronics cause havoc. One got into the electronic catflap a year or so back, stopped it working and wiped/scrambled the chip memory. Once cleaned up and working again I then had the fun of herding cats and persuading them to go thru to re-programme the chip ID's so they could get back in again. Bearing that in mind I keep the scope electronics bits in the eyepiece case as it sure wouldn't be fun trying to get those working if that happened to the goto components.