Newforestgimp

I’d be interested in seeing the 3D printed item, sounds useful 👍

Hi There, I wont offer tech advice as I'm learning myself, but what I would say is save yourself some pain and decide on visual or AP from the outset, then go from there> the guys on here have helped me enormously and I quickly gave up any ambitions of combining two aspects with one set of kit. I decided to go the AP route and have started small to learn the craft, WO Z61 with an EQ35-M pro and DSLR, all I can say is from my brief experience the Z61 is a joy to use, the EQ35-M is beefy enough for my ambitions currently, has a 10kg Payload so i have a bit of 'scope' for enlarging the OTA at some point, and has better gearing than the EQ3-PRO and Eq5-PrO i believe, its modular so can double as a camera basic star tracker too. I've also enjoyed just sticking the DSLR on a weighted tripod with ball head & an 18mm kit lens and just popping away with 20 second or so exposures. I would only buy gear that you think will be of use long term TBH and I know that a small Refractor will always be in the quiver, its just so versatile for photography.

STUNNING

I just thought I'd provide a brief update to this thread, with what I've learnt recently, I took the advice provided here to get a powered USB hub for the ZWO120MM picked up a reasonably priced 12v one from Amazon 4 port +1 Charging. I was dreading getting the guide camera focused but turned out to be straightforward. I have added a field flattener (HUGE DIFFERENCE), installed desktop sharing so I can be outside and control the laptop whilst the lappy sits indoors, I had my doubts that it would work but it does and it works very well. So I use my mobile phone to access the capture software (APT, NINA, SHARPCAP) whichever, much easier than trying to focus on the DSLR screen, I'm using an old XBOX controller configured on eqmod to make the framing adjustments what a god send that is and can be used on the USB hub out at the mount or directly from the laptop indoors. Familiarising myself with N.I.N,A currently and Plate solving I think I'm there after a lot of back and forth on another thread and speaking directly to @han59 who sorted my settings for me (thank you) just need a clear sky to test, Anyhow I digress, I had to abandon NINA on my first use in anger as it appeared to stall when connecting to PHD and starting guiding but it turned out to be my impatience and not realising how long PHD2 takes to calibrate and start guiding. I quickly switched over to APT & had same issue but while checking things over PHD completed its calibrating and started guiding ! and with only an hour left I stuck with APT and fired off a an hour of 2 minute GUIDED (woohoo, get me, GUIDED 🙂 ) subs of M45 Plaeides (spelling) whilst not perfect by any means its still my first guided attempt and quite proud that I worked it through and got a result. Next stop, PLATE SOLVING and total control through NINA..... Thanks to all who helped me make the right decisions.

Yes it does, I set chip size in NINA but some reason pixel pitch was in there as some random number like 26.657627658265 so i didnt want to lose it, gawd knows where it got that from. I'm hoping that NINA will also save those settings upon closing but i will check next time i connect everything up for a test. Cant thank you enough for helping me. Clear Skies Andy

WHOAH !! I think you may have cracked it for me, i changed the FOV value from 1 to 2.5 gained from ASTRONOMY TOOLS and ASTAP said .... Solved in 0.9 sec delta was 3.2 Warning scale was inaccurate! set FOV=2.32d scale=2.4" Does that mean its set the correct variables for future use assuming i keep using my DSLR ? I dont remember seeing a FOV option in NINA ? or is it calculating from the X Y and Pixel size variables ?

No I didnt, bare in mind I've never done any form of platesolving, i assumed it can work things out as id never seen people manually putting coords in ?

Yesterday I tried with a Pleiades image I captured Wednesday night thinking a 5 yr old could solve what it is and I still couldn’t get it to work in ASTAP standalone, I must have something fundamentally wrong I think, but I turned my back on it, will try again today with a clearer head & record the error.

Thanks I’ll take a look at Binning values next time I try, I know I have the downsampling set to 2. ive also set error logging to trace so hopefully when it fails next time I’ll have something other than a cryptic message to go by.

I’ll check the guide speed thanks 🙏🏼

I had a brief weather window last night so tried NINA/ASTAP/PHD2 in anger for the first time and disappointed to say ASTAP plate solving kept failing, this time with an error relating to REFERENCE OBJECT ? I'm kicking myself now I didn't screenshot the error DOH! but the message meant nothing to point to something obviously wrong which was frustrating, at least it didn't fail due to lack of DB. I wish I'd known PHD2 takes a long time to calibrate itself when starting as i was convinced i was doing something wrong in NINA with guiding sequence step never seeming to come to any conclusion, so I shutdown NINA and went back to APT to attempt to use PHD2 (standalone) only to find the same delays GRRRRRR! However, PHD2 did eventually calibrate & start guiding (patience needed) so i set an APT sequence running on Pleiades as a test for ease of framing/guide star selection/Live view. I think it worked well and pleased i managed to get a guided set of 2min frames on first evening of trying. Now if I could JUST get NINA to plate solve !!, My hunch is something to do with target selection method and sensor & focal length details of my DSLR and scope, but next time I'll expect the PHD2 delays before it begins guiding and should be good to go with or without plate solving.

A 1m USB Printer cable....... whoop

It appears that NINA is indeed dependent on the G17/18 databases, uninstalled H DBs and installed the G17 DB and NINA stopped complaining about lack of database, still didn't solve the image but I expected that all along. Thanks all.

You've read my mind ! that was the only other thing i could think of that NINA is looking for G17/18, not sure How I uninstall though, it just seemed to place 1000's of files in the ASTAP directory, I will have a look though.

thank you, at this point ill try anything. So far out of all the new 'stuff' ive learnt and set up this is the only stumbling block.... so far 😉

Yes that was taken just to show the location of ASTAP, I've tried setting ASTAP as the both Plate and Blind with same location and it complains about no star database. If i open ASTAP separately i can change between H17 & H18 databases so ASTAP knows the databases are there. Very frustrating. What i cant test is if the error is because i cant actually take a night sky image (Cloudy) to test solving properly, but as mentioned i would think the solving would simply fail without message relating no database ? Frustrating.

yes ive pointed NINA to the location of ASTAP....

Hi All, I am very new to this whole hobby, and building up knowledge and testing indoors with the absence of anythink like clear skies, so I thought id try and get to grips with NINA as it seems a decent one stop shop for AP tasks, however, im struggling to get the Plate solving to work. I realise that i cant actually plate solve but the error im getting implies a set up issue on the laptop rather than unable to solve an image. The plate solving module ASTAP when used complains that no star database is available yet I've downloaded and installed both H17 and H18 databases for ASTAP, everything is contained in the same default install directory C:/programfiles/astap using the installers rather than the .zip packages. Anyone else have these kind of issues ? or is it simply because im not giving it an image to solve ?

I installed google remote desktop on my phone after this conversation and I'm amazed at how well it works, once i get the hang of setting up with guiding (not attempted yet) i can see me having 3 USB leads into the house between the laptop/mount/guidecam/dslr and tweek from phone outside 👍

Sounds perfect ! might have to invest in a tablet at some point.

I too was running from inside house but found the focusing, checking, app opening closing, framing, in and out of the house a pain. So i tried with laptop outside with my gear and it was far easier to use the game controller etc. might have to set something up from the shed so i don't freeze before the laptop 🙂

I've ordered a box from Amazon, hopefully will be ok to fit electrics in with Laptop for a bit of extra warmth. Just so I'm clear are you putting lid on box and letting it chug through the plan once set up or leaving open ? Andy

I Like it, I employed a similar less fancy approach...... Bin liner over the laptop did make viewing impossible mind 🙂 I'll look to employ something similar. Thanks Andy H

Hi All, What temperatures are you guys taking your laptops out into the field for imaging sessions ? it occurred to me that freezing temperatures could cause issues. Cheers Andy

After a disastrous test attempt Friday night where almost everything went wrong 🙈😂 I managed a successful live session Saturday night using CdC via EQMOD and Xbox controller with APT to fire off 180 x 60sec on the DSLR, no synscan handset anywhere to be seen,. So I’ve Bitten the bullet and went for a ZWO120mini mono, to add guiding into the mix. Thanks everyone for the help, I gave up on the svbony as it started getting just as expensive, so I figured I could only afford to spend once. cheers Andy H