DaveL59

6 minutes ago, JeremyS said:

Yes, but they don’t come with lens caps and now @Stu reminds me they have no SLOmo’s either!

Don't worry, the SloMo will come...

with age 😉 

4 minutes ago, Zeta Reticulan said:

Don't you have to say abracadabra first?

only when using the magic wand 🙂 

12 minutes ago, Zeta Reticulan said:

They can repair watches?

but of course:

Rolex meets service tool 😉 

7 minutes ago, Zeta Reticulan said:

Does this mean I have to buy a new watch?

nah, just pop down the local watch repairer and get them to retune it 🙂 

3 minutes ago, Paul M said:

The tidal interaction between Earth and the Moon is slowly transfering Earth's rotational (angular) momentum to the Moon's orbital momentum. Earth's rotation has slowed from something like  an 18 hr day in prehistoric times but the Moon has got further away. As this continues, Earth's day gets ever longer and one day there will be a last ever total Solar Eclipse. The Moon will eventually recede to a distance that makes it's disk smaller than the Sun's in all Earth/Moon/Sun orbital configurations.

It was news to me that there is a bit of an overspeed going on just now. I hadn't noticed anything...

hmm so the ice caps melting, more sea water mass, moon pulling that extra mass along, rotation accelerates a little bit...?

I guess many who've never looked to customise the OS and aren't maybe on XDA have never paid attention to the phone's boot up screen where it'd show the Samsung designation for the device. Always useful to note this however when you want to confirm a specific accessory will work with your device - glass screen protectors and even cases. The device ID can also be found in the phone's settings, about screens as well as on the OEM box. So I guess Celestron used that as it would clearly ID the variant of the device they've tested as confirmed to work as there are likely a number of variants of a model like the A52, A13 etc and they may vary according to the market they were sold into.

At least you now know yours is, what's the exact device ID of your friend's A13? Is that also on the list?

1 hour ago, paulastro said:

Presumably you mean the latest Android update, not an app update?  A friend of mine is having problems and it would be good to give him some good news.  Alas, he lives a long way from me so I can't just pop along and help him sort it out.

There is a new update to the app, just downloaded and installed it on my note-10+. Perhaps worth your friend having a look on the play store and see if he has the latest version. No clue tho if it'll help get a Sammy A13 to work if it isn't supported...

So will we be able to retire a smidgen earlier than we thought then? 😉 

makes you wonder if its possible to throw a buck converter in behind the power socket to at least flatten a spike?

I power my EQ5 SynScan via a buck converter when its on either mains 12v5A switch-mode PSU or the car starter LiPo pack. Might not prevent loss but I figure any level of extra safety is worth it.

18 minutes ago, bosun21 said:

I got my perspective back to front. Either way these two terminals need re soldering. The size of the tracking and terminals indicates that they have a load and are not merely switching.

no load if its a crystal on the other side but agree a resolder would be worth it. If one joint has failed then the crystal may no longer be doing its job. Modern lead-free solder isn't all that great huh 😞 

I believe he's referring to the pin-in-hole solder joint above C30 which looks like it has maybe come apart.

Not sure what those 2 (includes the one above C31) are part of on the other side (could well be crystals X1 and X2) but no harm to resolder and to remove any odd stray solder fragments like the one near U1 and checking that no others are around between pins on the PIC or other components.

One of the difficulties in persuading other nations to cut back on fossil fuel use, cutting back forests etc is that the ones doing the preaching are the same ones who've already been there and done that and are now developed and wealthy and with far less if any forest left. Perhaps they've eventually realised while on that journey and very slowly started to move toward other forms of energy, but they've also curbed their own deforestation by offshoring the production of foodstuffs to developing nations who are then needing to cut back forests etc to meet those and their own demands. Then we use fossil fuels to ship that produce back for our own consumption. It's no longer just so-called exotic fruits but even basic 'regular' fruit and stuff like salads that's imported in bulk.

While we continue on that path we can't reasonably expect nations that are still developing to comply just because we/science says so. Not without some means of levelling the field across the globe, otherwise its like saying well ok we wrecked the environment with our industrialisation etc but now we need you to cut back but we still want you do supply us while you remain poor/underdeveloped.

The explosion in population count, longevity as a result of medical advances etc just drives this further and harder. At some point the cliff edge will appear, the big question is can we as a species adapt and change our ways before we tip over the edge?

27 minutes ago, Giles_B said:

 

My app was set up for the Celestron 130mm Newtonian. When I transferred the cradle onto my VX10 I did notice that the pointing accuracy of the app improved from "roughly correct" to "flawless" when I changed the 'Scope type' to a Celestron 10" Dobsonian in the app menu - not sure if others have experienced this.

oh now that's interesting, never thought to try that!

7 minutes ago, billhinge said:

Sounds pretty cool to me, there were similar projects for financial markets. If you believe in technical analysis, which TA indicators are were more significant impacts on price . eg https://deepai.org/publication/bayesian-regression-and-bitcoin

If you are familiar with AI and github its fairly easy to try yourself

When I was a first year undergraduate one of the first questions discussed in tutorials was working out factors that influence a system and how they are proportional to the result. Sounds like an AI version of that

Lots of food for thought

 

 

hehe yeah technical indicators, support and resistance levels and so on, learned some of that when I dabbled with forex trading and writing my own bots. Thing is they rely on a behaviour within a sort of norm that doesn't really exist and is influenced by external events that can blow those away. Factoring in those events and their effect tho isn't trivial and typically needs some human interpolation based on experience and hunches. Easier to write a system to try ride a trend than to make quick coin on short fast moves but needs deep pockets to ride the waves along the way.

yeah sadly it splashed down into the ocean, oh well maybe next time 😉

Long March 5B: Debris from Chinese rocket falls back to Earth - BBC News

On 30/07/2022 at 18:48, EarthLife said:

Yes it is a good piece of software, until that is they decide to remove your access (they don't warn you) !

Just make sure that every design you do in it you export to your own PC on it's own SSD/HDD in a format that can be imported into other CAD software. IF you don't do that, you'll loose all access to everything you've ever done when the time comes.

Also applies to OneDrive if they decide you breached their T&C's they'll just disable and then you find you can't get hold of them in the time before they wipe your data/files. So I've read, personally I never use anything cloud based that I pay for unless its done thru work directives. I'd rather run my own fileservers than trust whoever to maintain security, privacy and continuous service and pretty much all of them have failed at least one of those if not more.

10 hours ago, MAKARON said:

 

i don't wrote here, but i have connected the mount to power supply DC 16V 3A, and the red lamp has not been flashing, but both the motor has been noise. sorry for my English lang. 

 

 

Be very careful about the supply voltage as you're at or over the limit which I believe is listed as 15v in the manuals, any higher than what you're running and you risk frying the boards. Out of interest what does the handset report as voltage with this new 16v supply?

15 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

I’m often amazed both how stupid and how intelligent our Jack Russell can be at times. Mind you, his maths is dire. 

I guess then if the dog is the relative equivalent of these directed/focused AI is a cat then the equivalent of an unsupervised one? After all they rarely do what you tell them or expect, well other than sleep and eat that is 😉 

There's a lot of hype around AI but considering that it will have been designed and programmed by us humans. It'll have defined logic and methodologies that we have crafted and coded. Now install it in a fast enough box and it may be able to seem to perform as if it had intelligence and with algorithms perhaps even seem intuitive when it 'predicts' and responds to situations, conversation etc.

But the big question, for it to actually be intelligent as opposed to just another app, can it think outside the box?

Would it ever be able to make a leap of understanding or hypothesis as humans have done to reach the level of development we have, or will it always be tied to follow the paths defined to it ad nauseum?

Where it is perceived to have "learned", for example a new language, is it simply mapping inter-related constructs and deriving a suitable output or has it really learned and can thereby hold complex conversation in a natural style?

to give you a range of magnifications you might consider a zoom eyepiece. One in the 7-21/8-24mm range would probably be much easier in use than the one that came with your scope, tho zooms do tend to have a narrower field of view at the longer end of their focal length (21mm end). There's several options available, some quite pricey but good quality, like the Baader and others lower in price. This thread may give some more info

I have the SVBony 8-24 and the 7-21mm and I find both very useable and well made.

yep from the video it doesn't look as you described plus there were lots of smaller bits along with it

Chinese rocket debris falls back to Earth over Malaysia - BBC News

4 minutes ago, Franklin said:

I see, It's the Goto Synscan version, that's why I didn't recognise it. I've only had the simple RA 6vDC battery powered ones before and the motors on them are a little different.👍

I think that this one is in fact  the DEC motor as the RA one is in under the plastic cowling that houses the DIN connectors. That's why I was initially concerned about needing to tap to a larger size as that'd have been fun if the shank of the bolt wouldn't have fit thru the latitude knuckle on the EQ5 mount main body.

wow was that £30 complete with eyepieces etc? Bargain and it's not a bad OTA/mirrors, the finders are great too.

As far as those Hilkinson bins go they aren't all that modern I think, do they have a JTII sticker on them anywhere, possibly no JB/JE markings but quite likely early-mid 80's at best. Expect they'd work OK depending what you want them for but they aren't weatherproof so bear that in mind.

2 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

 

 

Yes of course but if I had thought on I should really have taken a few pictures. 

 

ya did kinda miss the opportunity of showing the tap going in driven by a FBH, that'd have got a few of us going maybe 😉 

12 minutes ago, wookie1965 said:

Sorry Dave I didn't do one I've just fitted two ceiling fan lights, the set turned up and just wanted try it checked the bolt first for the right thread got the oil out and tapped the hole. 

Never even entered my head to video it I should of took pictures but I didn't do that either 😥

ya do know we're kidding, right 😉

Some days when I'd tearing  lens down I forget so end up taking pics on assembly that show what I had done. After all as they say, reassembly is the reverse of dismantling... usually, tho not always 😄