GeekTeacher

Hi, for reasons I won’t go into, I need a stand-alone hand controller for my Celestron Focus Motor when used on a SCT with a EQ6-r Pro mount. I’ve seen several DIY home brew projects which create an interface between a game controller and the motor but I’m too hamfisted with my arthritic hands to make one myself. Does anyone here know where I can buy one from someone who makes them, even if not a commercial product. I’m currently controlling it with the touchpad on my laptop using the Celestron software but this is not very usable and a hand controller would be much better. Any help or info would be very welcome. Cheers.

Sorry, I misunderstood. Buying a travel router seems to be the best option and yes, I understand how it generates IP addresses for a private network so that two or more computers can connect to each other. But are you using a variant of VNC, as the version of RealVNC I've downloaded seems to connect to VNC Services on the web. If there's no internet connection I don't think it works.

Remote Desktop How do the two computers see each other if they're not on a network? I'm in a dark site in the middle of nowhere remember. No connectivity of any sort, except the possibility of connecting the two Windows computer together.

Thanks, yes I'm starting to think that the portable travel router is best solution. Unfortunately Remote Desktop is not enabled on my version of Windows 10 Home, but Team Viewer should work.

Exact;y, How do people connect to a mini PC for mount and camera control when out in the middle of nowhere? No phone signal, no internet, no network? Just a laptop in a nice warm place such as car or house and a headless mini PC. out in the cold. Can the Window 10 mini PC be set up as a WiFi hotspot or Access Point and share its desktop with a laptop via Team Viewer or something similar (I believe VNC needs an internet connection)? The portable router mentioned above seems the best option up to now, but I was hoping not to spend any more money. Will it allow me to share the mini PC desktop with my laptop or iPad mini through Team Viewer. I presume the portable router has DHCP to generate IP address on a private network. If it does, it will work. Thanks

Is your RPi connected to your home network or the internet?

I've got VNC running, but it needs a LAN and internet connection.

Hi, I hope this is the right place to post this. I want to connect my Windows laptop ( or preferably my old iPad Mini) wirelessly to a headless mini PC for controlling my mount and cameras etc so that I can use it in a dark sky location with no WiFi or wired network or internet. I am familiar with Team Viewer and VNC but they both work through being connected to a local area network (LAN.) I think what I want is a wireless AdHoc network between just two computers but I've not had any success with setting one up. Both computers run Windows 10 but the mini PC network adapter doesn't support hosted networks although the laptop does. Windows 10 no longer supports setting up AdHoc networks by default. So I do have some idea about what I'm doing, and I've had success using Team Viewer and VNC connecting through my home network, but this won't work out in the field. Does anyone have a wireless solution for this problem or even one where I connect the mini PC to my laptop with an Ethernet cable, perhaps a crossover cable. If not, does anybody use a headless mini PC for control out in the field and how do you operate it please? Please understand that there will be no WiFi network available unless one is setup between the two Windows 10 computers. Any helpful solutions, suggestions or comments will be very welcome. Thanks, Martyn P.S. If it can be done with an ASIair, it should be possible with Windows 10 computers.

Many thanks, I missed this.

Yes, it was suggested by someone the other day for me, but thanks. However, the point still is that I shouldn’t need to go trawling the internet for basic instructions and info like this. There should be a manual for a high priced commercial product like APP.

I am all When I said 'all-in-one' I meant not having to go down the PIPP-A!S3-Registax route or similar. I meant using just one package for converting, calibration and stacking before finishing in PS , GIMP or Affinity etc. However, I do believe that some people with the right skills could just use APP on its own, without the need for further processing in another package. And I am always astounded to hear of people who say they use both APP and PI - are these people made of money? They are not cheap software packages. Shouldn't an either / or be sufficient? PI is not all-in-one either which amazes me for such an expensive package. Why should it be necessary to need to use PhotoShop, GIMP or Affinity after using PI? But most people do. But all this is getting away from the main point of my topic - where's the manual for APP or at least some comprehensive and well-organised tutorials that cover the all the possible settings buried in the menus? There's not even a third-party book on it as far as I can see.

Yes, I've got DSS, AS!3, PIPP and Registax as well as PhotoShop. But I work mainly on a Mac and I want an all-in-one processing solution for it, rather than to need to use several packages and still end up needing to do the final work in PS. APP fits the bill nicely and I'm slowly learning it but in a very inefficient way, fumbling through it like many people already have. A manual would help me be more efficient and Mabula has said several times that he is working on one, but it's been four years now, so where is it? This is a commercial product, not someone's hobbyist freeware. You wouldn't expect to pay 198 euros for other software without any instructions from the company you bought it off. Siril is free, works on a Mac and is good in parts, but still a little clunky and not as slick as APP. PixInsight is too expensive and too complicated for me - I don't want to spend hours trying to understand the maths and processes. APP with a manual would be perfect. I mean, can you tell me what the lanczos-3 filter does for pixel interpolation?

Thanks, that's a start.

Hi everyone. I want to bite the bullet on some serious astro processing software and APP is my current choice. I've seen some great images from people who use it and it seems generally well regarded. However, after running the trial several things worry me about it. The first is the lack of an available manual which has been requested many times over the last four years but which still doesn't seem to have appeared. For a commercial product costing so much it is unthinkable that there should be no documentation for it. Yes there are a few video tutorials on the website and others scattered around the internet, but surely there should be a proper PDF manual for such a relatively high priced piece of software. I might expect this of a free program but it's fair to say that many open source programs are much better documented than this commercial product. And it's OK to say that people never read the manual and that it's easy to work out for yourself and to a point that's true, but there are so many options available in the program which I don't understand and want to know more about but I can't find the info. The next thing is that the main developer, Mabula, doesn't seem very active in the group forums any more. Is APP still being developed? Has someone else taken the lead? I know some other admins/moderators have been appointed so are they they main point of contact now? Finally, where are Tabs 7 and 8 in the preprocessing section? It sort of smacks of space for future development but makes the program seem unfinished. Or do they magically appear at some point? So I'm asking you all which tutorial do you find the best for a good introduction to APP and then some very basic processing using just a DSLR with OSC lights, darks, flats and bias frames to stack. Nothing too complicated. Any thoughts and help appreciated. Martyn