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

If somewhat agree with that. Having says that, I don't think any of the UK suppliers stock it anymore. If spending £1000, I think there are likely better alternatives. But in used market with a price of around £500(that's what I sold my mine for), I don't think there are a lot of cameras that will give it a run for its money. Cheers, Nish

Hey, A few years ago, I made the same similar switch from a dslr to QHY8L, almost new, from a fellow friend of mine. At that time, I got similar advice, it's an old camera, why bother etc etc. I stuck with my gun, and got the QHY8L. Used it für a little over 2 years. No regrets at all. It's a great camera, yes it's old! However, does it really matter? The point is, it works, and works great. It's pictures are as good as you can get, at this price point. If buying second hand, I don't think there is anything that really that beats QHY8L in terms of fov, and the pictures you get from it. To people, who say why? It's a damn big sensor, and that matters to most people. I hope I don't offend anyone, and I'm certainly not as experienced as others in this forum. This is just my personal experience. Cheers, Nish PS - I had the QHY8L on top of a 200p

Hi, The answer is local. If you are starting ekos on the same machine to which your peripherals are connected. In your case, it's the Rpi running the ekos, and ask your peripherals are conn to rpi. If for instance, your peripherals were connected to the Rpi, but you were running ekos on windows machine, and not through vnc. Then it would be remote. There is a setup wizard in kstars. If you go through it, it will configure everything for you. Cheers, Nish

Just to add, I leave mine under telegizmos 365 and have done so for the last two months. Prior to that, I had the cheap bicycle cover, on top of a garden furniture cover on top of an absorbent mat. Never had any issues, I've left my equipment set up outside for over two years, and everything works perfectly, bar a few rust on the adjustment bolts.

I've been using EKOS for over 2 years now, and have literally had zero issues. Apart from occasional com port conflicts, which are resolved quickly. I barely can remember a time where astroberry has spoiled my imaging session. I wonder what sort of issues you've had, because I keep reading these and never understand if I've just been lucky. Also as you've used both. What do you think NINA adds to the sequencing? Are there any specific functions you find missing from ekos, or things more intuitive to use. I've been tempted to get a NUC to give Nina a try, despite not having any issues with ekos. Cheers, Nish

Yes, everything gets it power from the PPBA, including the Rpi. I only have one power cable that tracks up my mount and the scope, to power the PPBA.

Hi, I've had zero issues with using the PPBA as a hub. It only has 4 ports, but I also have 4 ports on the Rpi and two on my camera. So with good cable management, and planning that's all the USB port you'll ever need. Cheers Nish

Hi Jonny, IT really depends on what you are trying to achieve. Most people who go down the mini pc/rpi route, are trying to achieve some sort of automation. Where they can sit in the living room, and vnc/rdp into the computer at the mount. However, with that automation comes another headache. Entangled wires, and a mess that just gets bigger and bigger with every equipment added. So people go down the route of either a USB hub at mount and all power cables routed as cleanly as possible. Having said that, using something like PPBA, or PPB hugely simplifies cable management. Which if you are trying to achieve automation reduces a ever lingering disaster of cable snags. With a PPBA for instance, things are simplified hugely. I'll give my personal example, I've a PPBA, and Rpi4 mounted on my telescope. I just have one wire going down from my whole setup which is to power the PPBA. Everything else is connected to the PPBA or Rpi4 directly with short cables. So it really depends on what you are trying to achieve. If you are going to baby sit your session, then a simple USB hub and dew controller will be the cheapest and simplest way. If you want to set everything up, and hit the snooz button on your mind. I'd go down the PPBA or PPB route depending on your usb needs. Cheers, Nish

Thanks To be honest, I've not really noticed any issues with my DSO images. I never go pixel peeping, and not looking for APODs either 😋 So I might just leave it for the time being. A couple of days ago when I took this image, I spent quite a bit of time "perfecting" my collimation. So I wondered if it was the reason for hazziness, like pinched optics etc.

Well, my scope stays outside in the garden 24x7. So unlikely it hasn't Cooled enough. I may remove the primary sometime now to check for the edges. Thanks