blameTECHIE

and now I have the music from Tetris going around in my head! 😆

Oh I'm in trouble now - working with headphones on and next thing I know is a Recorded Delivery box being placed next to me as the door shuts 😳 But it's a ZWO OAG, how could I not?! Thanks to @CCD Imager for the quick despatch and keeping it such great condition.

~£330 for the items I want - and I'm thinking that's a good price and I should order now We don't really need that new oven, the current one has served me well for fourteen years

So much for not spending any more this summer 😮 An upgrade for the delivery from yesterday - 1TB should do it for a night (or five) of imaging before transferring to the laptop for processing. and a (looks brand new) 2" 2x ED Barlow from @Stu1smartcookie which arrived very quickly and very well packaged very happy with both - just in time for the light nights eh?

After a great PM conversation with @PadrePeace [based on this post] and a question about software, which turned out to be N.I.N.A., I'm no longer going to be leaving the laptop in the garden all night and as I'm not currently running my Astroberry (I will learn one day), I've found a use for the WiFi dongle and will be swapping the M2 SSD out of the caddy and into the chassis this evening

Another useful site might be stuffin.space [link goes to CZ-5B for convenience] - site isn't as heavily loaded (and generally quick to load) I think both sites are displaying calculated orbits based off most recent published data from space-track.org

After a lovely few days away in North Somerset, picked this up on the way home (coincidence we were away and just happened to be a large hunk of metal nearby for £50 that was collection only ) Now to figure out an adapter for an EQ6-R mount and then I can break out the pre-mix concrete.

This guy: "I can see Uranus" that's it, definitely grabbing my coat and making a quick exit now

not a real telescope - where's the mile of USB/power cables hanging off it and good luck getting ASCOM drivers!

Early start from the postie - and an exciting day for me with another (and possibly final for this year) two items: Can now mount my PoleMaster onto the EQ6-R: and, thanks to a darn fine deal from @Mark1489, I've a new camera as well: these things really are bigger than you expect (and it came with the PSU for the Thermo Electric Cooling)

wow - at that price it's worth getting as a spare (or two) @barbulo *** edit *** I thought I'd done with buying for a while, but now I've got 10 tabs open with AliExpress items

Hope nobody minds, but I ended up with a wifi dongle that was RealTek driver based and no native support. Thought I'd just add a note for anyone that comes across this post but is like me and completely ignorant to RPI/Linux. Won't guarantee it will work for all, but I followed the first accepted answer on this page and it failed on the driver 'make', but the second accepted answer worked brilliantly and seemed a lot more streamlined in the approach, this is section that starts "The best and easiest way to handle this problem is as following"

well we're done with grocery shopping so me and my mate Malbec will have a go at finding realtek drivers and the CLI for installing them though Malbec is a bad influence and might lead me away from astroberry into the realms of buying more stuff 🍷 **edit** Through no effort on my part, google search results yielded this - and it's now working as wlan1 I'm leaving the onboard as wlan0 so I can use it as a hotspot when not at home thanks everyone for the support saying it does work, I just need to improve my linux skillset.

if I could get it working that would be great - but I know nothing of linux and without an equivalent of Windows 'device manager' on astroberry and some help (read that as lots of help) then I'm a bit stuck maybe I should stick with it - it's going to force me to learn at least something in a new kernel (and both are Amazon Prime so one can go back afterwards)

It would if I'd ordered the correct one - oops. Had two in my basket and chose the cheaper option - not realising that this one has a RealTek chipset so is no longer supported despite it being in the listing. Oh well, Amazon Prime so it's going back and I've ordered the correct one as it's got £2 off again today and should be here tomorrow

Two items today - thanks to @noah4x4 for a bargain, the reducer will be perfect for the 9.25 XLT And an Amazon purchase of an external wifi dongle so I can get my RPI/Astroberry working from the very top of the garden with a bit more signal strength/stability, thanks to @Stuart1971 & @teoria_del_big_bang for their comments on an astroberry network problem post (I've gone full "belt & braces")

OOOOH! I have some downpipe from a shed guttering solution that never got fitted - perfect. And I can keep that in place after the pier is sorted and use it with the EQ5 (the plan is ED80 on the EQ5, 9.25XLT on the EQ6-R, the weight of which was the reason for getting the EQ6), then I'll have double the frustration options, thank you @M40

Thanks @michael8554 The cabling solution was temporary as I knew I'd be switching some things in and out - the box is an outdoor waterproof "christmas lights" affair with a suitably rated cable and I've been careful to make sure all cables are off the ground and also no chance of something touching the metal legs/body of the rig. Spent some time the next day tidying USB leads to route around the RA/Dec pivot points so hopefully any update I have with 'success' will also look a bit better Once I have final placement sorted and a pier (that project is in progress now) then I'll get some armoured running up to a permanent outlet box and then work out appropriate cable lengths - want to do this properly now as I can't afford to be replacing anything because of stupidity and shorting out the mount/cameras (or even the Pi/laptop)

Some extremely good condition and useful books - something to be going through on the cloudy/working nights, thank you @Adreneline

"looks up price of charity shop sofa and shipping" it looks great and definitely something I want to have a go at, but not sure I could make it to the same standard as yours @Tiny Clanger

I've the same setup (80ED + EQ6-R) and was looking for solutions to the same problem - was going for a longer (double the length) mounting rail but didn't know how to mount the guide scope properly. Thanks @KP82 for the link, that's now in the basket.

it's pretty much all I've got @woodblock - once setup I keep as far away as possible and it's had a good firm push into the ground when I first place it that said, viewing isn't just limited by clouds, it's also restricted by how soggy the ground is. Hopefully this will rectified when I manage to get a reasonably priced secondhand pier, then it's going at the top of the garden with a large amount of concrete/re-bar As for the PolarMaster - I've got a Star Adventurer, SW EQ5 Pro and the SW EQ6-R, so I'm wanting to get used to using it for when travel is permitted again and I'm away from home - would rather learn here than in the middle of a dark sky zone with limited time and I think the PM will hopefully be quicker than SharpCap and platesolving, at least it is prefocused (or I hope so )

Thanks for the reminder - I bought one of that exact item in June last year. Just went and found it in the garage, opened it up and yep it has a base and won't cover the width of the mount legs. Now I see two solutions 1)I won't use it or 2)I'll use it but now have justification to put a pier in the garden. Option2 it is then - and easier to "do and ask forgiveness" than get planning permission from the other half

I did thanks @M40 - just the one glass, it was green, had a label and started off with a cork in it 🍷🍷🍷 - and thank you for the support I did get out the following night and tried Ekos, had everything talking to Astroberry and realised that whilst trying to learn a little astrophotography, it a step too much for me right now to also try an unfamiliar interface/OS and is definitely a skillset I need to work on. So went back to Win10, polar aligned in 20mins via SharpCap and even had tracking via PHD2, though I hadn't accounted for calibration/alignment but was keeping under 2' which I was pleased with on first proper attempt. (ignore the camera profile, I set that later and resaved to something DSS could livestack) I also found the goto error in Stellarium - I'd configured for 'let ASCOM decide' on coordinates system but seems it decided to hand off to stellarium, which was set for decimal rather than HMS or something (can't remember now) and I was off target with everything - more work needed there, but at least when pointing at nothing I was tracking it rather well . But another night, another PICNIC problem fixed - I'll get there ..... oh, and I owe you a 🎖️

My immediate thought was Sloth from The Goonies (think it must be the 'ears')