Realtimedoctor

I've a very similar setup, picture added below. I've left my setup outside over the last year, only bringing it in when I'm going away for long periods of time like a holiday. The telegizmos cover keeps it safe. I've had some condensation on and off, but I don't think it has affected my equipment ( see picture of guiding a 200p on eq6-r pro below) More experienced member maybe able to give you better advice (but as olly pointed out, on and off I leave my dew heater strip running through the night when the scope is covered). No problems whatsoever. Hope that helps. PS - I even leave my reel of extension hanging from the eyepiece holder. Plugged in, controlled by a smart switch inside the house. Also have left a normal Ethernet(UTP) cable plugged in 24x7 with no degradation whatsoever.

To be honest with you, I still have the crap amazon PSU I got for £12, it does the job as well. The voltage I get with those are around 12.1V, and under heavy load it may drop to 12v. That however, I think is down to using pretty long cables involved from the transformer to the PPBA. If you find a PSU which will directly plug into the PPBA with 2.1mm socket you'll be good. The main problem with these PSU are however their reliability, and low quality wire. Mine has 22awg wire, which is thin as anything. I'd not trust leaving the Amazon PSU outside for long duration. On the other hand, the pegasus PSU even though just like a rebranded generic PSU, does have good wiring(14 awg) a pretty heft to it. I leave it outside 24x7 under a telegizmos cover and haven't had any issues at all. Finally, the thing with PSU is you get, what you pay for. If I had more robust outside setup, I'd probably buy the Nevada power supply, but you can't leave it outside without any protection for long periods, hence I went for the the Pegasus PSU. Hope that helps. Cheers, Nish

I know this is going to sound daft, but are you sure you've not connected the power input into the adjustable power out port? It's a very easy mistake to do, and will cause power drop esp on the gen 2 PPBA. I suffered from similar issues, using a generic power supply, ended up ordering the pegasus PSU, had the same issues power dropping. Finally figured out that the I had mistakenly plugged into the adjustable output port while doing cable management, and didn't realise the mistake as PPBA still powers up and goes everything is supposed to do, bar the voltage drop causing a system reset. Hope this helps, Cheers, Nish EDIT - Pegasus PSU supplies 13.0v flat, and is very well made with 12awg wire.

Couldn't have said it better. The truth is you are looking at gear from the bottom of the food chain, they are designed and sold at the price to give decent/great results for the price. However, you can't expect them to outperform more highend scopes. Your stars look just fine(as a matter of fact, pretty great), unless you are aiming for APODS, I'd not frett about it. If you do decide to invest in something, I'd get a new focuser. I myself have been waiting on a Badder steel track for my 200p. In the meanwhile, the small amount of minutely elongated stars, don't bother me. Get your backfocus right, getting the tilt out of your system can become very expensive very quickly. Cheers, Nish

Hi, In my opinion this is a primary driven by the setup, and what the person is trying to achieve. Adding a electronic rotator helps in framing especially large targets on smaller sensor, as this can be done remotely via your choice of software (I'm assuming people buying electronic rotators are almost always into automation). Greatly optimises doing mosaics etc. Getting a manual rotator on the other hand is slightly different. Reasons are pretty much the same as above i.e. Framing and automation There is a nothing a manual rotator does, that you cannot do yourself by just turning the camera in the draw tube. If you have flex or tilt in the draw tube, a manual rotator maybe be beneficial as then you'll not be moving anything around the focuser once mounted. Instead of buying a manual rotator, you could just stick a small circle of white paper with rough 90deg markings on the focuser draw tube to align the camera ( that's what I've done, and works like a charm every time I need to rotate my imaging train for framing.) I hope that helps. Cheers, Nish

Hey, Can I ask what scope your are using? I wonder if the problem is being caused by your equipment striking the mounts tripod. As there are legs on the east pointing west side of the EQ6R-Pro tripod, it's possible that with such high altitude of almost 90 degrees, your equipment is hitting one of the legs and not completely flipping. That would explain the exorbitant star trails as the mount keeps trying to finish the slew to the flip side. Or worse yet, stops tracking momentarily/completely due to excessive stress on the motors. 90s is a lot of time to settle. Even with a lemon of a mount and massive backlash, you'd have the gears engaged and tracking by the 90s runs out. Cheers, Nish

Just to add an update. I setup my new pc with dual boot into Linux, and running kstars last night, I had zero issues. Everything works way too faster and smoother than the pi could achieve. Maybe was just lucky, but yesterday was the first full night of imaging without any hiccups whatsoever. I'm though, thinking of giving NINA a try, since now I've a Windows PC at the mount. Cheers, Nish

Hi there, I've been using ekos/kstars for about two years now. Only over the last couple of months, I've been seeing more an more frustrating nights, with random crashes just like you. The mount continues to run whole ekos crashes, and when I try to restart it gives me the same prompt that another instance is already running. Sometimes alos having issues with ekos not playing well with the camera, and the images won't download. After much faf, I narrowed it down to EKOS at times consuming too much ram and hence ekos just crashes ( I don't know why). The work around which has worked for me in the meantime is putting kstars into "low resource mode". That seems to have stopped crashes, and everything runs smoothly if left untouched, most of the time. This is one of the reasons why I'm upgrading my pi to a dedicated mini pc which will run u Ubuntu, and indi. Having more ram and compute power, I hope these issues will be gone. I'd suggest trying to see if you have low resource mode checked or not. Cheers, Nish

I used to use the skywatcher dc motor as well before ZWO. However, I made my own motor controller, from the moonlite protocol with an arduino. Ekos used to run it fine, but sometimes took to much time to focus, due to the backlash. So needed some repeatability, hence upgraded to ZWO.

I use the ZWO EAF on the standard single speed crayford focuser that came with my 200p. Your scope will have the same focuser. Mounting with the orginal bracket is slight pain in Bottom! I use one of the small hex screws and screwed it on the focuser lock hole. Everything works perfectly. You may need to increase the tension on the focuser, otherwise the focuser slips significantly with heavy loads. Cheers, Nish

Not sure if this counts! But you didn't mention what small is, so here is my spam! Lol If you look closely, there is a smaller scope attached to it as well 😂 😂

More experienced members may give a better opinion. But if you are using a very short telescope, and nothing is going to hit your tripod legs, and no cables pulled then, the answer is as you said, you can carry on way past meridian. Having said that, depending on the mount you are using, some have an internal meridian limit, and will stop tracking once it hits that limit irrespective of any other factors. I usually image 30 mins past meridian with my 200p, but anything more than that I get into the territory of too close for comfort. Meridian flips, are quick and completely automated for me. I only align, after a meridian flip and guiding is resumed with the previous calibration ( some would disagree with this, that I should go another calibration). I only recalibrate guiding, if I switch targets. My focus is checked throughout the session, and usually I just focus after a certain degree of drop in temp, so don't bother re-focusing after flips. Hope that helps. Cheers, Nish

Dear Members, I've a 200p, with the standard single speed focuser. I've been using it for the last two years without any problems. However, as my accessories have increased. I find my dimple crayford struggling, with slip and tilt. I've a IMX571 camera, MPCC, 5*2" manual filter wheel, and multiple Spacers. I estimate the total weight to be around 1.7kgs. My initial plan was to get the Baader steel-track NT, however it seems to be out of stock everywhere and no idea of when it will be back. So now I'm thinking of getting the skywatcher/ovl low profile focuser, or the JMI Event horizon Single speed focuser. (https://www.rothervalleyoptics.co.uk/jmi-ev-2n-single-speed-2-event-horizon-newtonian-focuser.html) I don't think buying a dual speed version of this event horizon focuser, is a good idea. As I already have a ZWO EAF, and will use that for focuser control. Looking forward to people's opinion in deciding which one to get. As the skywatcher is obviously cheaper and readily available, but I also like the event horizon, that it has a rotating base, which means will be easy framing. Cheers, Nish

Hi, In my minimal experience, guidescope are easier to work with. OAG are great if imaging at FL 1000mm or more, in your case I think this stands true. Having said that, I've been using my finderscope on my 200p, as a guidescope. I consistently get RMS of less than 0.5. As long as your guidescope is fixed using good tube rings, there shouldn't be much difference. Off axis guider are certainly better, but by his much. I'm not sure. If you use OAG, the headache of backfocus, etc is too much. If you are just starting, if suggest sticking with a guidescope. If you are an experienced imager and know the in's and out's of your imaging train, go for an OAG. Cheers, Nish

Optolong uv/ir cut filter. Get it from Ali express, I got mine 2" one, for £25. Arrived in 6 days. Worths great. Cheers, Nish