dazza1639

I have the Baader LRGB set all parafocal and have done me proud. I also have the Baader 7nm SII, Ha & OIII filters again parafocal and performing well.

Thanks Bryan, Affinity Photo is a photoshop like program from Serif, its only £48 as apposed to £9.99 per month for photoshop.

I have recently made the move from a copy of photoshop CS2 to Affinity Photo. I am glad that I did, it has given me the push to try and get to grips with mono imaging in narrowband. Here are a couple of recent images taken with my Atik One 6.0 with baader 7nm HA & OIII filters, through my Equinox 80 pro scope anf Televe TRF2008 0.8x reducer flattener. These are my first go at HOO, and I struggled a bit with how to combine channels in Affinity, it's not as straight forward as pasing the mono images into each channel like photoshop, but once I got the hang of the new workflow and the differences with masks, I think I prefer it.

Darren

Just a quick update.

Just before Christmas I received a ZWO EAF, thanks FLO. I installed it on my Equinox 80 over the christmas period and all went well, apart from the flexible coupling catching the focus knob housing causing the EAF to beep and stop moving. Once I made some adjustments and changed the coupling it is now working fully controlled by Ekos through my Stellarmate. Unfortunately due to the terrible weather we had in Manchester I haven't been able to test it on the stars with the Ekos focus routine, but as I can manually control the unit through Ekos I'm sure this will not be an issue.

So for anyone wanting to use an EAF with a Stellarmate unit or as in my case a RPi4 running Stellarmate OS I can confirm that it works.

Regards

Darren

that's really nice.

Wow 46 hours, I don't think I've had 46 hours of clear dark skies this year. Amazing image.

stunning. such a simple image but really quite beautiful.

On 05/11/2019 at 01:21, joer13167 said:

Here’s what I did to get  this working.

 

Either hook up a monitor and kb to the Stellarmate or go to http://stellarmate.local:6080/vnc.html and replace stellaremate.local with the IP of your Stellarmate.

On the desktop you will see the software updater. Double click to run that.

After thats done go back to the desktop open a terminal window  and run

sudo apt-get y install indi-bin

 

Finally, open http://stellarmate.local:8624 to open the web manager. Select your profile then go to drivers. Scroll to focusers and ensure ASI EAF is checked.

 

If you reboot the driver will load. You can see this in the web manager.

Works perfectly with ekos

Sorry I didn't see your reply. Thanks for the tip. I am getting quite confused with this now. I have messaged Jasem through the chat window on the StellarMate website, he confirmed that it would work, however, I also emailed ZWO at info@zwoptical.com who replied that it wasn't compatible. Who do I believe? 

Regards

Darren

Cheers I had seen that. I was after a bit of feedback. It doesn’t look like anyone has give this combination a go.

Darren

Minor success last night, once I sorted out the camera issue, connecting manually one device at a time starting with the AtikOne seems like a winner. I managed 20 subs in Ha and 10 subs in OIII on M27 before my neighbours conifer got in the way, by which time I needed to go to bed because we only ever get clear nights when I have to go to work.

I have had another good look around, and found some info on the ZWO website saying that there are INDI drivers for the ZWO equipment but it doesn't mention the EAF, so I'm a bit stuck still.

Mine seem pretty spot on, and are even parafocal with my Baader LRGB set.

Managed to get it working if I turn auto connect off then connect the AtikOne manually first then connect everything else. Very odd 

Back to square one, out in the observatory tonight and the gremlins are back. I’ve had to go back to a direct connection to the Windows PC 😢

Is anyone using a ZWO EAF Autofocus With StellarMate and Ekos? I know it works with the ASI Air and it has an INDI driver, but I can’t seem to find any info or examples of this setup. I’m thinking of adding one of these to my setup but would like some feedback before I get one.

Thanks

Darren

I added it to my watch later list, last night, when it showed up in my recommendations. I will watch it over the weekend.👍

We’ve had a result I tried an unbundled usb cable plugged into a usb2 port on the RPi4. Connected to the camera only using KStars & Ekos running on the RPi4. The camera connected and found the filter wheel home position. 
 

I disconnected and rewired the camera with the original bundled cable IMO the hub and reconnected again using KStars and Ekos running on the RPi4. Again it connected and found the filter wheel home position.

Finally I reconnected everything and opened KStars on the Windows PC, I started Ekos which made the remote connection to the INDI server running on the RPi4. Everything connected and worked as intended. Hopefully this has sorted the issue, how long it lasts is anyone’s guess until the filter wheel is formally supported with an update.

Darren

I've just had a response from Atik Support, they say that they are looking into the issue and think it is to do with using RPi4. For the time being Atik Filter Wheels are not supported for use with the RPi4. so we may be on the right lines with using USB2 instead of USB3.

Darren

That's amazing. I'm hoping the do some HOO if the weather ever improves.

That's it James. it seems to me that it must be an INDI driver issue that isn't recognizing the double click of the micro switch when the filter wheel hits the home position. The only thing I haven't tried is plugging the camera into one of the RPi4 USB2 slots, when I tried connecting directly to the RPi I used one of the USB3 ports.

When I get home I will give it another go in a USB2 slot with anothe cable that is not part of the scope loom, incase it is an interference issue.

Darren 

11 hours ago, JamesF said:

Also worth a try perhaps is turning on all the logging in Ekos to see if that shows up anything helpful.

James

I’ll give that a go at least it will let people know what is going on 

14 hours ago, Davey-T said:

Have you tried  it using Artemis Capture to check it's not an internal fault, I have an Atik EFW2 that's a bit flaky, it has 8 filter positions but sometimes starts from filter number 10 upwards and I have to disconnect and reconnect to get it to start on filter 1.

It also sometimes rotates continuously when first connected.

Dave

It works fine using the ascom drivers it only gets the problem when running through the INDI server. The camera has worked flawlessly for the last 2 1/2 years. It has experienced this issue on ang off since moving to the raspberry pi 4 and StellarMate OS I have managed to sort it out in the past but now, no matter what I try the wheel is getting stuck in a continual loop.

It looks like this has got everyone stumped, I haven’t found any workable suggestions on any forum, nor have I received a response from Atik support, which is very disappointing.

Darren

Amazing the hours of work that have gone into that are well worth it

I had a Celestron Nexstar 8 GPS, which was the forerunner of the CPC. I started my Astrophotography journey with this scope, starting with Planets using a webcam, then using a DSLR with short exposures so that I didn’t run into field rotation. I then purchased an Orbit Wedge. This was expensive but rock solid and allowed for precise polar alignment which let me push the exposures. Adding a guide scope and Skywatcher Synguider allowed me to get longer exposures which were limited only by my awful sky conditions (Bortle Class 8). 

I have since deformed the Nexstar and mounted it on an EQ8, but I have never regretted the Orbit Wedge, I just out grew it when I built the Observatory. I still have the orbit wedge and would be willing to sell it, I think it was £750 new but would be open to offers around the £200 to £250 mark, it also has the polar scope and bracket that was an option

Darren