DaveL59

Just need to flock it now to make it nice and dark inside 😉

For me the thought to use a photo lens hood was more about stray light hitting the lens - RH neighbour with eaves mounted camera that beams white light across my garden, LH neighbour leaving upstairs lighting on with no curtains again flooding the garden as bad as a full moon. No idea how well the S50 baffles but I figure it can't hurt to add a hood esp as I already have 49mm ones for the camera gear. For the moon, yeah so far it hasn't found it and needed steering. I wonder if its internal algo isn't handling the DST shift so confusing the target location.

pics and a link would be useful for others 🙂

Once Stu's filter adaptor arrives I plan on using a 49-48mm step down ring and a regular photo lens hood that screws onto a 49mm lens. No need to spend lots one that hercules one that pretty much looks the same as a regular hood. Wonder if they just stuck an adaptor ring onto one so it fits the opening? Any lens cap will need to be very low profile, 1mm isn else it'll catch when the S50 parks. I'd bought another bahtinov mask off the bay-of-e and put the transit sticker onto that so it acts as a lens cap. I'd rather limit dust collection on my optical stuff esp having cats.

Well the upside with 2.4 is more range at least 😉 I bought a puck from FLO to give an EQ5 tripod a 3/8 tripod screw and that works well. Having a spare EQ5 tripod of course helps. For me it means I can pan lower given the fences here and a side benefit is of course further for the slugs to travel. I've put out a couple beer traps so I'm finally seeing a bit less of them as after rain it was almost slip n slide proportions on the fake grass 😞 For the battery, after first charge and some messing about connecting and indoor testing I ran it outside for a couple hours and it got down to 65-70% ish, no dew heating enabled. So an extrnal battery may be a good idea if expecting to run it for long periods. Oh on the WiFi side, I found that if wanted you can configure your router firewall to block access to www from the S50, which I've since done. Your phone/tablet on the same WiFi can get to the internet to gather any info needed and I can't see any reason for the S50 to need to.

Now when a google search hit list returns the S50 as in-stock and at £100 I had to take a look. I guess that's one way to pull in the punters 🙄 At least it wasn't a scam, I guess lol

Must admit I'm also curious as to its innards but resisting the temptation to try dismantling it so far. White it works I'll not void the warranty unnecessarily 😉

Neat idea Stu, tho I think the weight issue isn't as simple as mounting it where you have. Perhaps fine at or close to level and with a very light camera, but aimed high and the weight will be pulling the S50 "arm" backward so could add a load to the gearing that isn't desirable. I wouldn't try that with, for example my Sony A77ii DSLR as that's pretty heavy even without lenses. Now the little Fuji bridge camera might work but given that's only 3MP hardly worth the effort.

haha thanks, that'd be a rare and unusual thing here in the UK 😉

Yep, it was the issue to get it to connect since you can't manually add one with a hidden SSID. Also unhiding and rehiding doesn't work as next power up it won't connect at all it seems or at least didn't when I was testing 😞 In terms of security of the device or any other, there's been lots of vulnerabilities uncovered over time for WiFi and Internet protocols. Any firmware that doesn't get regular updates at least on security is a risk as in fact your router can also be. How often do you update that, for example? In some cases your ISP will remotely do that at least while they support that model, but if like me you run a non-ISP router they can't so that'd be down to you.

Maybe but I've reason to secure things as the folks directly next door seem highly dubious to me. In fact since setting up that open SSID with lets say a play on a UK crime agency as its ID looks like someone had a try to connect: Funny too, having broadcast that ID yesterday eve then turning it off, its back on today and there was a flurry of activity this afternoon and 2 people loading their cars with belongings and quickly departing 😄

well I don't know if anyone else sets their security the same but if anyone runs into the same issues I did then they'll have some pointers on what to check. I don't like IoT and other smart-but-soon-to-be-dumb devices as they quickly cease to get security updates etc if they ever did and then become a potential security breach. There's numerous CCTV devices for example that got hacked or had trojans in their firmware, in time no doubt those home listening devices like Alexa and the like will also and if on the same network as your devices containing your personal or sensitive data it's all at risk. So for me they only get connected to isolated networks and where possible with no internet access. Not saying my network is impregnable, just putting in barriers to make things harder and keeping any attack surfaces as low as possible.

Which part? If you WiFi connect to the Seestar access point as per the user "guide" you lose your internet connection on your mobile device, unless you have mobile data. Linking it to your home WiFi lets it be connected from your device over the same WiFi, retaining your internet connection. This way the app can get more info on targets to recommend etc. Or perhaps you are a distance from the Seestar so you can still remote control it via your WiFi rather than relying on a direct connection. If you mean all the security stuff, to each his own. I've worked in sensitive fields so my normal practise is to set things up that way even at home. Keeps my hand in as it were 🙂

yeah all the older film gear and even the general use glass is cheap as chips these days. Gutting when you'd spend a couple K buying it all only to find now its worth a couple hundred if lucky 😞 Upside is where you can use the same glass on your new DSLR and can add a couple extras for peanuts tho 😉

ooh that's a beauty, enjoy! 🙂 I've a couple medium format lenses that are Pentacon-6 with the adaptor to use on my Sony DSLR, the huge Zeiss 180mm F2.8 and an 80mm Russian lens, both very nice as something different than the regular 35mm lenses.

Yep, got it to work in the end today, had to tweak a few router settings but now finds the S50 and has internet access. For anyone else wanting to set it up this way: It seems the router SSID needs to be unhidden, also you need to not isolate stations on the WiFi else the phone/tablet won't be able to see the Seestar on the WiFi. You can use either 2.4 or 5GHz by making the band selection via the seestar app under device - WiFi. It does say 5 is better as more bandwidth so pick which suits best. 2.4 will have better range but potentially more interference if in a WiFi crowded area (e.g., lots of close neighbours). I have the MAC address restrictions enabled (added the seestar, phone and tablet to the new SSID) and it works fine, I also bind the S50 MAC to a fixed IP but the phone/tablet float on DHCP since I can use those on other hidden SSIDs on this router. I'm more accustomed to configure WiFi so that individual stations/devices cannot see each other in the WiFi, you'd never normally set a public WiFi up to allow it for obvious reasons so I hadn't spotted that right away 🙂

Surprisingly cloud cleared for a while so had a play with the new toy, quite impressed tho only ran it for approx 3 mins per target just to get a feel for how it works etc. A bit blowy tho so it struggled here and there, notably on the moon as it got even more gusty. For sure some sort of wind-break would be useful, not so easy to do on an astroturf lawn tho lol. So here's a few snippy copies from the phone stored jpg's with slight tweaks in MS photo. Another moon Gets to be funny when the wind gusts as you take a pic tho 😄 Overall pretty pleased for such short runs, just need some calmer clear nights I think so can do longer on each target. I noted that my copper tape didn't really help me see where it was aiming and neighbours CCTV kept flipping on which didn't help on some targets. When the filter adaptor arrives I think I'll pop a 49mm lens hood on as that'll shield the objective from stray glare at least.

So after some messing about, created a new vLAN, new SSID and the Seestar connects just fine to it according to the app. Thing I don't see the point of with this tho - when you click connect on the app it always asks to open wifi and you have to choose the S50 to connect to or it just does nothing useful. e.g., connect to the same WiFi SSID and you aren't connected to the S50. Am I missing something here? Or is the point to just let the S50 see the internet that way so it/the app can go get other useful stuff to display? If the latter then that's a PITA as I'd have to open that SSID to be able to go out to the internet which I never do for IoT devices (of which I only have CCTV cameras, on another vLAN).

Yep, just gave it a quick test and bingo, it works as it should in portrait. Oh well, makes the keyboard harder to use that way. Also noted the display that comes up asking for WiFi permissions etc fits where in tablet mode it spilled out the top/sides. Pity the app doesn't fully handle landscape but such is life.

ah, that's what I thought it might be, seems another tablet format issue with the app then, perhaps. Maybe I should try using it in portrait mode rather than landscape (productivity on the Lenovo). For the WiFi I could see the list but not connect to any where but on the phone it worked as you'd expect, so a difference in the UI handling possibly.

yeah that may be a neat add-on but not for me, too many flight paths pass around here and being ex airport manglement that'd certainly not be appreciated by the authorities 😉 Did you figure out what that +/- button is for at all? Nothing in the manuals about it and it didn't seem to do anything.

Get it to display a banner on connecting "thank you, we've now acquired your CC details and relieved you of £5,000 :-)" 😉 Looking outside just now at the wall to wall cloud, might just spend the evening playing with this one...

Or get the neighbourhood worried by calling it something more sinister (as in some sort of officious law enforcement name lol). Yeah I may revisit this, set up an isolated vLAN that I can route to from my internal so it can remain open on the WiFi side. Depends tho on if the app can handle being routed to get to the S50.

true since the router is broadcasting in any case. Worse is that devices will bleat out the auth info if they can't see the router so there's another weak point. I don't find it hard to manage tho since any worthwhile device has the ability to add networks manually where needed, so I just need to ID the MAC and add it to the tables. Admittedly I'm relying on those living nearby not having the tools and possibly the smarts to be able to try much more than a scan and poke. These days most routers are fairly OK in terms of security tho I'll always change any pre-set passwds and ID's. A while back someone nearby had a router that had an open password, was very tempting to change all the settings and lock it down but I didn't bother 😉 I have changed the default passwd for the S50 tho, since its published openly in the manuals, no sense letting someone else try to connect and mess about with it. That'd also be an attack surface if linked to your WiFi, another reason I changed it but since that ain't gonna work for me its less of an issue for the moment. Others may want to do the same tho.

Not down to you 🙂 I'd planned on trying that anyway just wasn't lucky in the way it works. Not sure I'm that bothered tho with the tablet being a WiFi one so no mobile data it'd have been handy rather than losing internet connection when connected to the S50, such is life tho. I secure my WiFi because lets say I don't have a lot of trust in certain neighbours nearby. Even the wired LAN out to the shed is on a separate vLAN from the rest of the house etc., so if anyone gets to it they can't do much, not even access the internet 😉