TerryMcK

Yes I agree with Mark the bigger the tap the better in stainless. I used to work with it a lot and have pinged a few taps in stainless. The trouble is it doesn't let you know and then all of a sudden you have a broken tap. Make sure you use a lot of cutting fluid or lube too.

It looks great. Well done on a difficult one.

Quite a bit of star trailing on the first picture which appears to be straight out of the camera. Have you used any filters on the camera?

Looks like you have uploaded the deep sky stacker settings files for the last two links.

30KG is a big lump of counterweight. What are you swinging on it and what sort of mount is it going on?

HEQ5Pro. I’ve been spoilt by it already having the belt mod done.

For widefield I have the William Optics ZenithStar 73 and flattener. You’ll still have a bit of change from your £1000. It has an imaging circle that fully covers a full frame dslr.

Mine, like Billy’s, runs cold. When you say you linked lakeside focuser to ML what is ML?

Without doubt this is the best case I have for my numerous PI4s Steve

https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07ZVK86HC This is a CNC totally metal case with integral heatsink. It even came with thermally conductive rubber to aid dissipation. Very solidly made with optional rubber feet. If using wireless it doesn’t appear to shield the RF in anyway and I’ve been able to use my iPad from quite a distance to pop into the hotspot.

I also use a cheapo power supply which is surprisingly good https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B07TWMFB92

If using a battery to power the rig it is beneficial to have an inbuilt inverter into the battery so you can plug the Pi supply into 230volts. There are many other ways of deriving 5v of course.

Welcome

I made a catsperch chair for use with visual astronomy back in 2013 which I still use occasionally. Great for a dob as long as the dob isn't 8 feet off the ground at which point I would not feel safe.

Here are the pictures and it is made mainly from 18mm plywood and a broom handle (guess where it is). I have the plans somewhere if you want a PDF of them.

4 minutes ago, Annehouw said:

I now use this same Polemaster on my iEQ30Pro. I use it with a laptop, but there is an Android version of the SW as well.

Interesting Anne. I have some Android devices and have just installed the software onto them. I will try them out using Android as I normally use a Windows laptop to polar align despite imaging with a Raspberry PI. Thanks for the heads up.

3 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

both Polemaster and Sharpcap to be quite sensitive to the seeing

Yes I know what you mean Billy. Getting the red and green indicators aligned (in Polemaster) when the atmosphere is bouncing around is challenging.

Another here with Polemaster

I’m using a 128GB card Doug. This has the operating system and a shed load of space for subs. As I mentioned I regularly cull subs off the Pi To make space as they are also simultaneously transferred to the PC.

This is the one I have https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B014IX03CE SanDisk Ultra SDXC Memory Card Up to 80 MB/s, Class 10, U1 FFP, 128 GB, Black/Grey. Dirt cheap and plenty fast enough.

It can be a bit daunting at first, like any new system, but after some playing around with Ekos for a while you will find yourself asking questions like “ I wonder if it also does <blank>?” and you will then find a setting that answers the question.

Great glad you got the camera going Doug  - that ID: 03c3:1603 will be the 1600 as you say. I think that the first two octets 03c3 are issued to manufacturers and in this case it will be ZWO.

As to the next question of connecting the mount and guider to the USB2 ports that is exactly what I do. I was getting timing issues when I shared the USB3 line with the camera (both on PC under AstroPhotographyTool and on the PI running Astroberry). So now I have the guider, mount, controller for the dewheater, focuser and the PoleMaster plugged into a USB2 hub and then onto the USB2 port on the PI. No timing issues at all using that config. Yes I now have three cables going away from the rig (USB3 cable, USB2 cable and power) but it works fine.

Try plugging the camera direct into the USB3 port on the PI. I think it will start as 03c3:xxxx when detected. On mine the 183 is detected as 03c3:183f and I think the 1600 starts as 03c3:160x - I can't test it with my 1600MM as I've lent it out.

With nothing at all in the PI apart from the camera it shows up as this:

Linux astroberry 4.19.97-v7l+ #1294 SMP Thu Jan 30 13:21:14 GMT 2020 armv7l

The programs included with the Debian GNU/Linux system are free software;
the exact distribution terms for each program are described in the
individual files in /usr/share/doc/*/copyright.

Debian GNU/Linux comes with ABSOLUTELY NO WARRANTY, to the extent
permitted by applicable law.
Last login: Mon May 11 11:49:19 2020
astroberry@astroberry:~ $ lsusb
Bus 002 Device 002: ID 03c3:183f  
Bus 002 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0003 Linux Foundation 3.0 root hub
Bus 001 Device 003: ID 04b4:6572 Cypress Semiconductor Corp. 
Bus 001 Device 002: ID 2109:3431 VIA Labs, Inc. Hub
Bus 001 Device 001: ID 1d6b:0002 Linux Foundation 2.0 root hub
astroberry@astroberry:~ $ 
 

BTW I plug the camera direct into the PI without going through a hub. 

actually scrap that. I have just tried it out plugging directly into the PI and it works without power being on. Hmmmm. As you say a new USB3 cable might do it.

I know mine doesn't work at all and is not detected without power being on.

Daft question Doug but there is no mention of 12 volts being connected to the camera and the red light on? Assuming it is?

Plex is set to record it for later. Or I could just iPlayer it.

The 183 is well matched to a scope of size of 72ED. It does suffer from amp noise but of course it can be calibrated out really easily. It is really sensitive though and produces excellent results., 

I’ve no experience of the 533 but that is marketed as having no amp noise. Also never used the Atik camera you mentioned.

Just going away from using a PC directly controlling your rig you might like to consider using a Raspberry PI running the AstroBerry Linux operating system. This has Kstars/EKOS already installed. Kstars is the planetarium software whilst EKOS is the observatory control software that comes with Kstars.

There are versions of KStars/EKOS for every platform (Windows, Mac, many flavours of Linux). I connect the relatively cheap Raspberry PI directly to my rig. I use the Windows version of KStars/EKOS loaded on the expensive PC indoors to remote control EKOS running on the PI. Although you don’t even need to do that as the PI is capable of doing it all itself. AstroBerry has its own web server built in so you can control the system using anything with a web browser on. I have kicked off the sequences using an Ipad for instance.

EKOS can do full sequences just like Sequence Generator Pro. EKOS can control all aspects of an observatory:

• camera control
• telescope mount control - including meridian flip which works flawlessly
• guiding either using its own guiding or PHD2
• dome control
• plate solving - you need to install platesolving software ASTAP or just use astro.net online - it leverages either.
• auto focusing
• filter wheel control
• adaptive optics
• FITS viewer

There are many other things it does and it uses INDI rather than ASCOM (Windows only) to control devices. You don’t have to know anything about Linux by the way as the interface is graphical just like Windows/Mac and is intuitive.

I have used many pieces of astrophotography software and this completely is a game changer for me at least. Best of all Ekos and Kstars are 100% free.

This is what I came up with and it works. The foam rubber mat is wrapped around the extension tube and filter drawer (it's in there - honest!) and held in place with some cable ties - I might replace them with velcro strapping in time.

I literally have it on the bench testing it at the moment. No light gets in and the cable ties are the removable type. It also has the additional benefit that it won't dew up as the mat also acts as an insulator.