jarbi

Thank you !

Yes indeed, but the secondary definitely needs heating with this setup. There is one hugh advantage of the secondary design: the mirror is not glued to anywhere. It is just genlty pushed down in the secondary cage with a layer of flexible foam. So whenever I need to replace this mirror it will be a piece of cake :-).

Hi, Just to come back to my own topic: my 16" UL dobson has arrived end last year in excellent condition. I have already assembled it and I could take it out for observation. The quality of the optics is really good, I needed to do some tweaks to the mechanics but no major changes, CS, Janos

Carole, Thanks for chiming in. My mount is connected to the PC with en EQMOD cable, and the slew is initiated from SGpro. So there is no gamepad involved, Cheers, Janos

Hi, All of a sudden my AZEQ6 started a very strange behaviour in DEC. When I connect the mount via EQMOD and I send a Goto command to slew to a target, It stops for a second when the slew reaches the target coordinates( I see in in the EMOD monitor). After that, my mount is doing 5 more consequent slews in DEC without any visible reason ( tried with different targets). In the EQMOD monitor it shows no change in coordinates, but actually is slew about 10 degrees in DEC. When I send the mount to the Home position, this DEC offset stays, so it doesn't return to the original Home position. There is one single clue : when I disable the encoders in EQMOD, the mount works fine. What I have tried so far: - I have reinstalled the motor controller firmware, it is still 2.11.05 - reinstalled EQMOD from scratch - Resynced the encoders in EQMOD - I always do reset alignment data + Reset sync data before the first Goto - I have checked the DEC encoder, no visible damage. Reseated the encoder connectors. Non of these solved the issue. It would be great if someone had an idea what is going on here.... Cheers, Janos

Hi, I would like to share my experience so far with you concerning the UL dobsons of Hubble Optics. To start with, I have purchased their UL 16" dobson end of May this year. They have advertised 3-5 weeks delivery time which would be acceptable. Now I am at week 10, and just received a message that my scope has still at least 6-8 weeks until it would arrive. It is pretty frustrating, but I cannot do anything about it. So, if you go for this design, be prepared for several months of waiting :-( CS, Janos

Just to update my own question: apparently there is a DIP switch on this board ( just above the ARM chip in the middle ), and you have to set it according to the mount you are placing it in. I requested the info what should I set for an AZEQ6 mount.

Hi All, I would like to share the follow-up of this story as far as it goes until now. The lockups of the camera kept happening even after disabling the power saving of the USB ports, and even when I connected the camera on a separate Usb port. I was also trying to revert to the legacy driver from 2018 which worked perfectly last year - no joy. The camera went for a revision to Atik somewhere in May this year, and I have a bad feeling that these issues started after... Finally I bit the bullet and I have sent the camera to Atik again for a hardware investigation a week ago. Hopefully they will come up with something because I am out of ideas... I will come back here soon when my camera returns, thanks again for everyone for your advises! When it is not a hardware issue it will be a hard nut to crack I am afraid, clear skies, Janos

Hi Everyone, I was helping a friend to replace his damaged motor controller board on his AZEQ6 Synscan mount. This new board has an USB connector as well. Replacement went fine and we reconnected everything. After reassembling the mount works fine with the hand controller, USB connection to PC works as expected. But - there is one weirdness. When we tried to enter in the Utility menu for changing illumination of the polar scope in the handctontroller, we get the message "Not available for this mount" ! The illumination adjustment was well possible with the "old" motor board without USB, using the same V3 hand controller (latest firmware installed). We could test is with a different ( V4 ) handcontroller - exactly the same message. I have checked the connector and wires of the LED, certainly not damaged. We installed even the latest update for the motor controller, no joy... I would be grateful if someone could shed a light on this, no idea how could we fix this.... Clear skies, Janos

Thanks for your helpful advises, I checked and indeed the USB power saving option was enabled. I have set it off now everywhere, so let’s hope it solves the lockup’s. For a test I must wait for the next clear evening 😉 Cheers, Janos

Ok, I will check it this evening.

Thanks Dr_Ju_ju, I am using Sgpro 3.0.3.169, this is the latest stable version. The loose USB port cannot be the reason, because an Asi 294 was running without interruption on the same USB hub the whole time. My fear that Window update did some "magic" somewhere which specifically affects the Atik software... The other day I have tested the issue with a previous version of the Atik and filterwheel driver- it made it even worse. I mailed Atik support as wel, but they are closed for business until the 3rd of September. Cheers, Janos

Hi, My latest imaging sessions turned out to be a nightmare for unknown reason, here is what happened. I connected my Atik 11000 and then EFW2 filterwheel as usual to a powered USB hub and started my imaging session in Sgpro. After 2 frames the download of the next frame took forever, so I tried to stop the sequence - no chance, I had to kill it with Task manger. By restarting Sgpro the camera and filterwheel was not connecting anymore. Powered on and off both - now it was working again for some time, than the same lockup happened again. After 4-5 times repeating this annoying game the camera decided to work and I could do some imaging but lost more than an hour... The question is: what happened here and how can I solve it ? The same setup worked already countless times without a hick. I’m using a Windows 10 Pc with the latest Sgpro and Atik drivers. Looking in the Sgpro logs I only find the fact that the camera was disconnected. If anyone had similar experiences please give me a hint, Clear skies, Janos

Hi, Just to say I started to work with this program as well a week ago, it looks very promising. I have processed some images with it my Canon DSLR and the ASI071MC, I find it user friendly. Learning curve is much less steep than in Pixinsight, but to be fair PI is a complete package until final processing. The goal of Astro Pixel Processor is a good preprocessing as I see, but that part is done in very detailed way with advanced options, cheers, Janos