powerlord

I really commend samsung tablets. You'll get a refurbished a8 under 100 quid, or a new one for about 140 quid. Stay away from the Chinese makes you've never heard of unless you know for a fact its good (ie don't trust reviews).

Stu

All ready for first proper sesh of 2024.🤩

15 minutes ago, Doug64 said:

Hi,

I hope someone can help me. 

I got a Seestar at Christmas and managed to use it properly last night for 1st time due to recent bad weather in UK.

I got some nice deep sky images however the jpeg / video wasn't copied to my android tablet.  The stacked files are on the SS under The Works folder

When I used my android phone the jpegs etc were copied to my phone under Coms.zwo.seestar album.  This album is not on my tablet, the images arnt there.

Can anyone offer any advice to help me get the images to show, be stored on tablet.

Doug

 

check the app permissions incase you've left something unticked ? also, what version android ? if it's very old I think someone else somewhere said gallery didn't work.

seriously though some places are just weird. I get it with my drones sometimes. It's worth just moving to somewhere else and doing a calibration, see if that sorts it.

41 minutes ago, Carbon Brush said:

Compass calibration. I was probably asked to do this when the scope was unpacked, but don't recall being asked since then until now.....

Last night I was asked to calibrate the compass, which I did following the procedure on the tablet screen. The scope was on a flat top wall so rotation was easy.
Moved to the first couple of targets without problem.
When asking for another target, not moving the scope, I got the compass calibration message again.
So I complied and then there were issues locating the target.
As I was on limited time, I packed up.

Today I planted the scope on the wall again, asked for solar, and was asked for a compass calibration - yet again.

There are possibilies here. A daft user. A clever scope that has detected other issues but not bothered to tell me. Or a faulty scope compass.
Any thoughts?

Your house sits on an old Indian Magnetic graveyard ?

yeh some bloke managed to open it up though, and there are nice bearing on each axis, plus it really doesn't weigh much. As for toppling, you can do what I did (see pics above) and just offset it so the balance is still centered.

At the end of the day with any of these mods, you're either happy to give it a go or not - each to thier own. 😄

I've been paramotoring and paragliding now for 18 years, and still every time I do it I get stressed. I have to plan it in advance - no 'oh the weather is nice I'll just go for a flight'. And even planned I start to get stressed driving to my take off field. By the time I'm there my body has kicked in its fight or flight response which means bowel evacuation time (luckily now I have the motorhome), followed by adrenaline filled rushed/stressed setup where I'm constantly trying NOT to hurry and follow my checklist, but at the same time can't stop hurrying because maybe the wind will change, etc, etc.

18 years. 100s of flights, but every one I know if I forget to clip something right or something unexpected happen it might be my last. I suppose it keeps me on my toes.

Funny enough, most folk think the sport ( and sky diving that I also used to do) are adrenaline rush activities - but at least for me, the adrenaline rush is in the stress and fight or flight of the setup (or for skydiving crammed into the back of a wee plane waiting to jump out). Once you are actually doing it - whether it's flying through the sky or falling through it, I find the whole thing incredibly peaceful and relaxing.

Not saying I get the same bowel evacuation setting up to obsy right enough 😁 But there still is that slight 'I need to do this quick before the weather changes' kinda thing. So I prefer to setup earlier in the day - hence the planning bit is covered. So I'll be out there at 3pm or so swapping stuff over for a night of imaging later!

42 minutes ago, DaveL59 said:

Kinda nice to know they've thought about battery protection then, perhaps will mean it'll last a bit longer before we need replacements 🙂 

yeh, when mine was out tuesday night, when it got to about 40% I plugged a powerbank in so it would image all night - and the power icon turned blue with a temp icon - and the charge didn't go up again. however neither did it go down - so it obviously just started drawing power from the powerbank in preference to the internal, until that had drained, then switched to internal. So all good.

Yup, nice they though about it - it shows the sort of primary use case being designed for. Whereas the dwarf was never really mainly about astro so I imagine it just wasn't something they even considered.

best comment "WE ARE NOT ASTROLOGY MAJORS"

Yeh I used to get that all the time. Building the obsy got rid of it mostly, but if I have to swap otas or summit it's the same. Like tonight. Forecast is nice , and it would take less than 10 mins to swap kit on both mounts, power em on and come back into the warmth. But I find it sort of stressful. It's not laziness. I just don't like doing it. Especially in the dark. Stupid really as I know I'll regret it.

1 hour ago, PeterCPC said:

On another point - has anyone tried the Sky-Watcher Star Adventurer Equatorial Wedge on a tripod to turn the seestar into EQ?

any 48mm extension works fine. or a bog roll. I kid you not - fits a treat.

Sure, I've got big scopes that give me great views too. But then yer 200p doesn't fit in a carryon bag to take on holiday. 😀

Another one to just show what the wee thing is capable of. About 3 hours worth of 10 second subs shot in EQ mode. stacked in APP, processed in affinity and siril.

Here is the go. Basically wedge to point whole thing at polaris. I stuck on a red dot finder so I could aim it. I've used a bar between wedge and S50 to recenter the mass under the tripod. You can easily make yer own wedge from a few bits of wood, piano hinge and a few nuts and bolts.

Once aligned, turn it on and use controls to move to somewhere. I've found around 60 alt in east is best - I roughly pointed at capella. (DO NOT DO A GOTO CAPELLA) Doesn't need to ACTUALLY be accurate. Just make sure that it has a clear view around there towards north and south.

Press the red button. It will now do a 3 star alignment by plate solving current target, moving alt anticlockwise a bit, plate solving, then moving clockwise from start a bit for 3rd one.

After that it will say target centred or something. Now you can do a goto capella and it should work. Your all set.

Now, the Dec is limited in how far it can revolve, so stuff in the high north is likely not goto able, but most stuff in east, west, south is fine.

Once you've got your wedge rig sorted it's really no more hassle to setup than in ALT mode.

7 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

Could you explain how you used it in EQ mode - I see nothing on the ZWO website about this. Good capture by the way.

I'll post a few pics later

Nope, I think it's just got better at allowing you to adjust the exposure for planetary. I tried processing the raw, but it really is just a handfull of pixels so not much more to gain there.

Oh, and this one I think deserved its own thread

With EQ mode I really think its in a league of it's own now for the money!

2 hours with the Seestar S50  last night in EQ mode.

Restacked and processed in Affinity and Siril.

Pretty amazing for an all in one robotic telescope for less than 500 quid!

Original seestar stacked from phone for reference :

If not aware, this is the zwo robotic telescope. Yours for under 500 quid. It's FL and sensor are not intended for planetary, but frankly I'm still impressed. Detail on jupiter visible, and the moons.

Now, I reckon .. For what it is..that's bloody brilliant. Jupiter clearly visible, and the moons.

That's the phone local version of the video.

I just used one of the wedges I have for my azgtis. You probably do need a wedge if you don't have one.

stu

yup, thats the 3 star calibration by a dumbed down name.

And tonight I got it working in EQ mode! I stuck a wee red dot on it, aligned with polaris, then manually moved to approx position of capella. I then pressed the start photo button. It then did the 3 star calibration ok. I then did a goto to capella, and this time it worked!

I then went to IC405 which was fine. Shot 30 mins and it all stacked nice with no rotation, and I'm now on M33 and will leave it there till it clouds up or battery dies.

Obviously lots of gotchas to EQ mode what with the limited DEC rotation, but it's still a bit of a game changer imho. With rotation on long integration really reducing your resolution to 1MP (i.e. centre square). Now you can double it back to the original 2MP. Hopefully I'll get a reasonable amount of time on M33.

I'll post the pics tomorrow.

So, this chap says he has it working in EQ mode. He says since latest firmware it does 3 star calibration.

https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/904547-say-no-more-field-rotations-for-the-seestar-s50/

live stream last night which I hoped he would actually walk through the setup - but no - just a repeat of a (very unhelpful) picture.

I will say I tried it last night 5 times. And though I got it to pass calibration in then failed to goto anywhere properly (mainly tried M45 which was well within range). And manually going to M45 area showed weird movement looking like it was still running an ALT AZ word model

He does appear to be the sort of person who cannot actually explain anything well.. so hopefully there is just some trick to getting it to calibrate right.

Obviously it can't see all targets even if it did work due to limitation in what the DEC arm can do. I personally hold no time for the 'strain on gears" argument - its got bearings, etc - its not an issue imho.

Maybe now it's been tried others will try and someone who can actually properly explain the app steps to get this to actually work once you've pointed it at polaris - mine just kept going to somewhere close to where it would if it was in AZ mode.

You're nearly right.

The proper cable may or may not have thicker wires, but the secret is, it has MORE of them.

The reason is that with USB, the data lines are used to tell the PSU what voltage and current the device can take (USB-C in addition can supply all sorts of voltage and current levels). In absence of these, a PSU will only deliver 5v at 1a max at 5v usually. most devices will play it safe talking to a 'dumb' PSU (which is how they now see it thanks to the cable), and will draw only 500ma or 1a  incase they cause the PSU to stop working (most cheap 500ma ones will just drop to low voltage if you try to draw more than 500ma from them or worse - do something nasty). I'm simplifying here - usbc actually spreads the current across multiple different wires in the cable - 12 in total for data and power)

Your cheap usb lead undoubledly had only 2 wires inside (Earth and +ve), hence you got 5v and 500ma or 1a. it's a 'dumb cable'

The proper lead will have a minimum of 4 wires and  lets the S50 negotiate and probably get its 2a.

A more sophisticated negotiation happens with things like new phones and laptops where USB4/C features are used, and they might get 12v and 2a or something - and then even more than 4 wires are required!

USB does not help itself here, in stuffing 'USB' marks on cables whether they are 2 wire or more (usbc can be 12 wire!)

To avoid this sort of thing happening (and this is true to a lesser extent with usb2 too where 4 wires are required for full power negotiation), I always bin usb leads that come with devices for charging. They will nearly always (unless its something like a laptop or phone), be rubbish 2 wire things. Before you bin it, pull it apart, and wonder at the 2 wires, or the fact you've just destroyed a 4 wire one 🙂

Stick to using good quality leads with are advertised as 'data leads'. For USB-C just to confuse things further, you can instead just search for 'PD' leads (power delivery). But data cables will also work fine (though not for very high 40w+ delivery required for laptops unless specced accordingly).

The thing that really annoys me, is this is there 5th go at getting usb right - and still its a bloody mess.

ooo, I'm no expert Elp, but don't think that's correct. @vlaiv will explain it better than I can though so I best not try.