powerlord

One thing to add - the continuing to have to do the gome palaver every time is a pain. I'd love to know if this is normal or an eqstar pro quirk. Additionally I've never got meridian flip to work. Whenever you goto something on the opposite meridian it never works and goes all the wrong way. the only way I've found around this is to manually (well..via controls) move it to the other meridian, plate solve and goto somewhere close a few times. No idea what thats about.

jfyi - I've found DSS's 32bit floating point incompatible with affinity. Saved 32 bit floating point from APP import fine into affinity (all affinity processes, filters, etc work in 32 bit btw unlike photoshop), but I found nothing that worked for DSS - one of the reasons I moved to APP. stu

will have another go. astroflat no good to me - I'm on mac.

Surprised someone hasn't done an unofficial manual covering all that, tips, etc. Be a bit of work, but would certainly be appreciated by users. I never understand as a Software Architect how companies can spend lots of time on developing and testing a feature, but then no time at all on documenting it. Madness.

yeh not sure what i did to screw up the stars. back to the drawing board. needs the best of both.

these days, and for this application I wouldn't use old analogue 78 series regulators tbh. Use one of these: https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/393101687463?hash=item5b86afbaa7:g:hTsAAOSw~Jhf1f29 it's far more efficient - no heat - and easily adjustable and clean. I use them all the time, and have them in use for my custom built power hub for example. you can set the voltage up to 8.4v (thats 2s lithium ion fully charged which is what your camera battery is), but I set em to 8.2 - it will show on camera as about 80% charge.. but of course will never go down. If you can't solder, look for ones with screw terminals such as this one (a bit more fancy as it has current limit): https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/144018428033?hash=item21882ad081:g:0UUAAOSwZVhgg7uR stu

can you post your settings. I just attached new zwo eaf and it appears to have a mind of it's own - sometime your press up and it moves a bit, sometimes it doesn't, sometimes it just keeps going. and even a small movement is large. it's fine on my C8, but a movement like that on my 72ED is no good at all. I got it because i need it for doing automated focusing between filter changes with the asi1600 - so far it appears like its not going to be staight forward 😕

Hi all, I was wondering if someone with one, would open it up and tell us whats in it. My suspicion is very little - either nothing at all other than switches on the 4 input connections from the jack, or maybe a few resistors. I'd be great to know so myself and others could make their own and save lining ZWO's pockets with 37 quid for, as ZWO put it 'a must have option' - so much 'must have; that the don't include it in the already massively overpriced 184 quid EAF itself. stu

well, the zwo eaf one with asiair pro does actually auto focus, but the cheap ones don't - it's just a way of focusing without touching the scope. hence no wobbling around all over the place while you try and tweak the focus and try to work out if it's focused while wobbling around everywhere. For your ED80 probably not an issue, but certainly my longer FLs became much easier to focus when I could use the electric focuser and see a nice stable image as i twiddled

I always focus on a bright star with a bahtinov. it's effectively infinity - don't see why you'd try to focus on the target. I suppose the argument is atmospheric disturbance, etc- but frankly I've never had any issues focusing on a bright star. If you don't have one, get an electric focuser - its sooo much easier when the mount and scope is stable. And I suppose, make sure you have the right grill spacing for your OTA for the bahtinov. certainly mine never 'move around'. I always get a clean 6 spikes.

yeh, i've fitted it to my 200p ok. and i've ordered the adapter from FLO for the C8. kit is comes with will to my 72ED. And I've bought some knurled M4 and M3 nuts from ebay - 2 M4s attach main EAF body, so that makes it easy to move between scopes. and the M3 knuled ones will replace the grub screws in on the axle grips so they too can be quickly popped on and off all in the field, etc. For the 200p, I had to make up a few 3d printed parts but it's all working fine now. stu

very nice, I'll be trying the same thing with my new ASI1600. And to me, this should be called map of the world - north america, britain, ireland, europe, spain, mediteranian, suez canal, saudia arabia... its all there. I reckon it's aliens sending us a message. 🤪

that looks better to be sure. well its ordered now. Plus you seem to have linked to some sort of establishment which requires my physical presence, and then requires some sort of manual exchange of goods at that physical location ? I can't see that ever catching on personally. 😜 Do you wrap dew heater inside of dew cover or outside ? I mean, inside best, but then gonna make dew cover more wobbly ?

Dew Shields - I've ordered a 2mm black sheet of correx. Can make dew shields for all 3 of my main scopes with one 15 quid sheet. will just sew some velcro onto it. 40 odd quid for a dew shield... they're 'avin a larf.

oh yeh, sorry it was so poor I didn't do much processing - I just used affinity remove background and didn't do my usual of pulling the black up - there was no much light pollution, especially at the bottom that it I just hacked into it basically. I resent paying more that 5 quid for a 'dew shield' - which is just of plastic with velcro on it - I'll make one myself. dew heater - huh. wouldnt have thought it could do anything useful with that big top glass. Ill have a look then - though does feel to me a wee fan would work as well if not better.

happy birthday to me... asi1600, 8 wheel filter, filters and EAF. woohoo. need to see how folk have fitted eaf to c8 and 200p, then try to sort some sort of quick connect so can swap it between em. plenty time to train now with short crappy nights before darkness starts proper again!

Hmm, so clear skies last night, and clear outside app said dew point much lower than temp.. but within an hour tons of dew all over C8. cleaned/dried and made a dew sheld from a couple of bits of paper, but only got 30 1 min subs before it dewed up again. is app wrong ? For my 72ED, I have a dew heater but I can't see even a bigger one working with the Celestron C8... is it worth getting one ? would have thought a wee usb mini fan or something might work better ? Anyway.. ASIAIR crashed on AP too so took me 90 mins to set up.. and couldn't work out why it thought my FL was 1258mm. It was only at 3am when I came down and cleaned off dew and had a go at saturn that I realised I'd left the fecking reducer on it...which also explained the vignetting with my 6d. duh. I was getting nice clear view of saturn then but tiny, so thought I'd flip 120mm mini over from guide duty and try for some shots.. took a while to get focus, and then asiair kept crashing every time I put it into video mode. I then bumped asi120mm off focus and decided I'd had enough and went to bed. Pity though - but I'll be prepared next time and have pre-setup my asi224 for saturn. anyway - 30 mins on M27 with a full moon at nearly the shortest night of the year, with an OTA I've only just bought and this is it being used at first time.. with antares .67 reducer. Frankly I'm surprised I got anything with that comedy of screwups. And today all my new asi1600 related toys arrived!!! but that's another story.

everything in title really. Anyone else found the same ? tried multiple reboots of asiair pro. Even more annoying, when it crashes and comes back up, app tries to take you back to video mode again.. which crashes, etc etc. stu

I don't think alignment matters.it's basically using what its got, which results in pics which gives it a view of the world. correction for spinal tap moment above - I usually stop when i get it under 1 minute, not 1 second. I have had very low seconds a few times, but I usually get bored after goes below a minute. Doubt PAs gonna make goto any better - even a rough as a badgers nether regions PA is good enough for PA. It's long exposures where proof is in the pudding. Last night ASIAIR did have a funny turn though - i PAed down to less than 1 minute, and shot some test shots of M27. Lots of star streaking over about 10 seconds. so tracking on, but PA off. Went back to PA routine and it said all good, so I did it again.. and found that though it went through it all and let me adjust it never updated the values even though refresh was working, etc.. I rebooted asiair and then PAed again. This time it told me the truth - that I was miles off, and I PAed again down to less than 1 min (about 20 secs). And test shot M27 again - this time all good. It's never did that before so something to be aware of.

took me a wee while to adjust to using asiair pro PA routine, but now usually get it to under 1" in about 8 mins or so. most of that is my dodgy EQ5 ALT screws which raise it a random amount per tweek. I've been doing up to 10 minute guided exposures. Not tried any longer than that so far. stu

So I've had that with one of mine. Basically you are saying you cannot connect to the synscan's wifi hotspot yes ? is it using batteries ? If so, change em and stick new ones in and try it. If it's using a power adapter, check its putting out more than 12v. i.e. 12ish-14 or so. stu

got a bunch of stuff from ebay from them. mixed bag, but mostly good. 50mm guidescope really nice quality. small 30mm scope as good as ZWO one. laser collimator a bit rubbish (laser a line). mounts, vixen plates, guide mounts, pollution filter, IR filter, etc all seem good. they often have a sale on which knocks 20% or so off too. I picked up one lf their SV105 cameras up for 19 quid. I mean it's very basic 2MP camera, usb2 and dsoesn't do long exposures, but works well on the moon, etc.

asi1600mm pro back in stock at flo... bought the bundle - 8 filter wheel, rgbl, sho. And a zwo focuser. that's my 50th birthday present to myself (birthday in 2 weeks) I'm puposefully not keeping a total, but it must be around 5k I've spent since I started this hobby 6 months ago...but hey ho, it's only money.. and it's not like I'm lubricating walls with it - it mostly has decent resale values. It will not come as a surprise though that there is no mrs powerlord. It does make purchases decisions much easier. 🤪 I want to design some sort of quick release/attach for the ZWO focuser so I can swap it between my scopes.. that and learning to use the new kit is the summer task - ready for when we get some proper darkness. plenty future plans too.. a pier.. an observatory.. who knows. I'm really enjoying this new hobby. Last big one was probably learning CAD and 3d printing 7 years ago, and before that, paragliding/paramotoring and sky diving. It's good to keep trying new things isn't it ? stu

images can be saved to sdcard. they are always saved to asiair (get a fast usb stick - the 64gb it comes with is very slow). it doesn't seem to work control wise if you have the shutter lock on. So yeh, you can't have that on. sorry for my ignorance, buy why is it important feature ? DSLR wise - yeh mini USB cable. no point plugging in tyo usb3 port on asiair as canons are all usb2, but if there's one spare it will of course work fine. I use liveview still to focus as its a PITA using the focus on the app. But then remember to turn off live view so you don't get amp glow. After trying android apps to control DSLR and finding them flaky as a flaky thing, I was pleased to find I've never had an issue with control on the ASIAIR, just make sure you are in bulb mode, RAW only (not plus jpg), and no mirror lock.

https://www.astroshop.eu/miscellaneous/astoptics-sct-to-m48-adapter-8mm/p,57905 still choking on the price right enough.