PlankWithANailIn

Hi all, small update to the git hub repository to remove the .exe and include a manual driver install method that doesn't trigger the wrath of Windows.

Hi all, Long time lurker here, this post is going to be a bit disjointed sorry never done anything like this before. Over the pandemic I took up multiple hobbies two of which were astronomy and 3D printing and I have learned a lot from forums like this and others so thought that I would give back with a project my eldest son and I have been working on. At the end of the pandemic my son was finishing up his A levels one of which was computer science we thought it would be a good idea for him to complete a non school project to help with his application to university this coincided with me purchasing a PCB for my DIY 3D printer that attached to its tool head to control the extruder with a stepper motor controller and microcontroller all on one board. At the time I was aware that the DIY community was creating its own computer controller focusers and thought that this PCB would be super useful but no one was using it. The board in question is the Big Tree Tech EBB 36 PCB. BIGTREETECH EBB 36/42 Can Bus U2C V2.1 for Connecting Klipper Expansio – Biqu Equipment It has an unbelievable low price of £10, which is lower than an Arduino Nano and it has a motor controller on it and multiple mosfet's for controlling fans and heating elements, an absolute bargain. So my son and I decided we would workout how we could use this PCB to control a focuser, I would create the 3D printed case and he would provide the firmware and ASCOM driver. We quickly discovered an open source project, STM32duino (github.com), that enabled this board to be used with the Arduino IDE. We threw together some software and a case put it all on github and awaited the results of his application to university and in the end none of them asked him for interviews and all offered him places at achievable grades, that was over a year and a half ago now. Now that he has finished his first year of university we decided to finish this all off trying to make it look like a fully completed open source project to help with his CV when applying for a job in his sandwich year. After a month of work we have beaten the project into a finished state and are ready to publish. The finished project can be found on github here. https://github.com/RealtaScopeTech/Realta-EBBfocuser As a family we have Irish/English and Chinese Malay ancestry and settled on the name Realta as it means star in Irish. The project has been released under the MIT license that basically means you can do anything you like with it just provide attribution. I have attached a few images of it to this post and proof that it passes ASCOM testing. I the wild we have only tested it with N.I.N.A and it works ok for us and our MAK127. We have a bit of an issue with Windows not liking the installer that comes packaged with ASCOM, any advice on how to stop Windows thinking this is a virus would be super helpful!

If your imaging setup has vignetting and most do then you would expect see a gradient, the only way to be sure is to use it against real data and see what happens.

He's saying that there is a point where exposure length simply won't improve the signal to noise ratio by a significant amount anymore. The max signal to noise ratio is determined by all noise factors the biggest of which is light pollution and then read noise (when stacking) and then thermal noise and then shot noise. If you live in a city like 82.9% of UK citizens do then light pollution is by far and away the biggest driver over how good your images could possibly be and that limit means there is simply no point going for long exposures, short exposures then mean that other noise apart from read noise is consequently even less important. No one is arguing that cooling the camera to remove thermal noise isn't always better they are just saying for those of us that live in the real world of light pollution is just not that important as we can't take those long exposures needed to see any benefit. Most of us would do better trying to remove the effect of light pollution via filters first before buying anymore equipment. Once thats done long exposures become a reality for us and we can start caring about thermal noise. Additionally most of us will be coming from older DSLR's, going to an uncooled modern IMX sensor will already significantly increase our quantum efficiency and reduce the amount of all noise sources in our images compared to what we are used to. They won't be the best but they will be way better.

Has anyone tried running one of these from a 13.8v supply?

You can get a version of the Pi OS that turns the Pi Zero and HQ camera into a webcam. https://www.jeffgeerling.com/blog/2020/raspberry-pi-makes-great-usb-webcam-100 I was going to suggest IMX290 USB modules from Aliexpress but they have shot up in price from £25 and free postage when I bought one in April last year to £40. You need an adapter to C mount and they only get half a second exposure but I find that works just fine on my guidescope. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33009237481.html?spm=a2g0o.order_list.0.0.705a1802F6ki6c I had fun designing a case for it and shortening the USB cable to the exact length needed for my setup. Not sure its worth it as fun project when the prices are so high.

A 2 port USB hub is not worth £400.

This is literally an example of lighting regulations being used....this is what lighting law in action looks like.

W&W heaters are cheaper to buy on their eBay store due to free postage. I have 4 and they are all great.

I bought an equivelent cable from Ali express for less than half the price of FLO's. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/4000610764393.html?spm=a2g0s.9042311.0.0.27424c4dMrXcen Absolutely crazy charging £24 for a USB to Serial connection and cable. This one comes with a choice of colours and cable lengths too.

Ricochet's second image shows there is still an issue if the clips are removed. It looks to be a problem with the very edge of the mirror causing detraction blur/spikes and the clips causing a shadow within that blurry/spiky zone. Cover the edge of the mirror => no diffraction => clips won't show as shadows in diffraction because its not there anymore. Still leaves the question of how much to cover, I'd assume the just the very edge.

I think when they initialy tried to sell it they wanted way too much money. For my set up I think it would be ok as I use a DSLR for taking images. For guiding and mount control the weak CPU and memory will be just fine but some high resolution image capture might be an issue. The video is great but his concerns about dew probably aren't valid. The PCB's on these things will probably be above ambient temperature. They could also be conformally coated, if not you could do it yourself for a tenner. ￡374.70 delivered in a useful form factor...it's interesting. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33015991006.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.38de1e30YKLfg8&algo_pvid=9c20f345-a16a-431f-924e-66a635c18fad&algo_expid=9c20f345-a16a-431f-924e-66a635c18fad-0&btsid=0b0a0ae216179856043846373ed0be&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_

Altair cameras are rebranded Touptek so I don't think differentiating them using "genuine" is 100% accurate.

Why do you need USB3 with an all sky camera? It's not going to take high framerate images and it doesn't really matter how long it takes to download the image for time-lapse. If a USB2 cable works good enough just use a USB 2 cable.

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/startravel/skywatcher-startravel-102t-ota.html For £10 more you can get much larger aperture, a proper bracket for a finder, a RD finder, an erecting prism, a couple of eyepieces and a proper dovetail mount.

The C5 weighs 6kg according to celestron's website. Once you add other items to it its going to be really overweight for the az-gti. As an AZ-GTi owner I would like to know how it works for you.

How did you get it to work with your dslr?

Why would i use this software over this one? https://www.instructables.com/Wireless-All-Sky-Camera/ Its 100% free and comes with a nice web interface and is open source and works with other cameras. There's also a version for the HD camera. https://github.com/RobboRob/allsky By stacked images you mean converting an image sequence to time lapse video or star trails video?

Same thing can be found on Aliexpress for half the price. https://www.aliexpress.com/item/33035276887.html?spm=a2g0o.productlist.0.0.2f066e3eNXqFJu&algo_pvid=d1249ca4-729c-4bbe-92e3-e54c44c5e56d&algo_expid=d1249ca4-729c-4bbe-92e3-e54c44c5e56d-46&btsid=0b0a187916021948093825862ec8ea&ws_ab_test=searchweb0_0,searchweb201602_,searchweb201603_ Half the postage too. TS wants € 16.70 for posting a simple metal plate lol! I just paid for a SharpCap pro license and use it's polar alignment tool as it will work for any mount I might own in the future. No point using AZ GTI in EQ mode unless it's for photos and you are going to need to guide to keep it accurate.

Why isn't this being done based on the price you paid for it? Right now is a really bad time to be buying a canon camera as it has greatly increased it's prices at the start of the pandemic I bought a 250d for £549.99 from Canon's website the same model is selling for £829.99! Can be found on Amazon for £629.00 but still.

Don't listen to the post above. The AZ GTI on wedge is easy to polar align using Sharp Cap, as easy as any other mount. The biggest issue is that DSLR's don't currently work very well with Sharp Cap making it impossible to use one to polar align. I use my guide camera to do it instead. Another issue is that you kinda have to bodge together the equipment needed to use it in EQ mode so tends to be fairly expensive once all done. The Explore Scientific iEXOS-100 PMC looks to be ok but it will be replaced eventually as you grow and need more weight capacity. Thats a similar issue the AZ GTi has but it's lightweight and thus has portability which will probably mean you will continue to find a use for it for along time (until it's replaced with a Mk2 which has all the QC issues removed! I'm on my second as the clutch knob snapped off on the first).

I own a AZ GTI and 127 Mak. The Mak is has a small field of view so sometimes goto's will not always put the target in the field of view. So you will need at least a red dot to help with that. I find that most objects I want to see can't be seen with the naked eye in my Bortle 8 area nor any stars near them meaning RDF is useless most of the time. My solution was to buy a cheap 60mm guide scope and a guide camera and use plate solving in sharp cap to put the target into the field of view. The only remaining issue is focussing the guide scope but it's f4 so can find stars just about anywhere to get rough focus and can be locked down once focus is found and stay in good enough focus forever. Plate solving has taken all of the pain away from GOTO's in heavy light pollution in a garden with restricted fields of view (can't find the stars to do a 3 star alignment). My session startup now is polar align in sharp cap, plate solve to bright star (Vega at the moment), focus mak, check focus on guide camera, go view whatever I can see between the trees and houses (plan to put custom panorama image in stellarium to make working that out easier).

Lots of talk about the fundamental limits of USB without addressing the more important issue that you can't connect to either mount using USB. You can't connect to the AZ-GTI mount using USB or a network cable you have to use a USB to serial port converter. I don't own the star adventurer but the manual seems to suggest that its usb port is for power and firmware updates not controling the mount https://inter-static.skywatcher.com/downloads/StarAdv_manual_150722V2_updateds.pdf. It doesn't look like you can control that mount externally at all. I use a small lenovo thinkcentre mini PC strapped to my tripod and use that to control my AZ-GTI via a cable I made myself (The lynx ones on FLO are comedy priced at £30 for a £5 USB/Serial converted and 10p worth of cable!). I found the WI-FI connection to be too unreliable. I power the mount and PC from an external plug socket on my garage and use a powerline adapter to connect the Lenovo to the home network via the power cord. I then use remote desktop to control the mount and cameras from my laptop in the living room.

The AZ-GTI will hold your newt as it weighs 3.6Kg so is under the 5kg weight limit of the mount. The C6 is 4.54 kg and will be too much once other stuff is added on, might get away with it for visual. The TS-Optics Photon is 5.9kg!