Imaging Laptop Nearly Ready What Else Do I Need?

[tich]

I picked up a cheap Dell D620 laptop that I'll be using solely for imaging so after fitting the hard drive from my old Fujitsu I installed windows (Vista Urrgh!!) The battery isn't brilliant but as the laptop only cost £34 I'm not complaining. I guess it could do with a bit more memory at some point too but it should have enough to run everything. I've put some film on the spare screen surround & fitted it so it had a permanent red screen. I'll be using a modified Canon 1000D & QHY5L-II cameras so apart from drivers, Ascom, EQMOD, PHD & Cartes Du Ciel, is there anything else I'd need to install? I did manage to get my NEQ6 working with a laptop before but it wasn't any good for running the guide camera & PHD as it used to lock up so haven't got round to trying it again until now.

The Dell already has a serial port so it should just hook up to the mount ok, well I hope.

[tich]

After some digging around & swapping some bits & pieces the cheap Dell now has 4gb ram & the other which will be used for processing images now has 8gb so hopefully it wont run out of memory when stacking with DSS!!

It took me a couple of hours to get it to connect to the NEQ6 then all of a sudden it connected & seems fine. Although I did try using a serial cable from the laptop to the mount to begin with & it was having none of it so I ended up using a Hitecastro cable instead but even that was proving difficult to connect.

I did some test slews using CDC & after getting my head round it seemed to operate ok. Best of all was the night was clear so off I went to the darksite to try everything out. I thought I'd set everything up quite early so I can see what I'm doing & after chatting to some others at the site I had everything ready & was awaiting for darkness to fall. I went through the polar alignment method using EQMOD which went without a hitch slewed to a star & synced it with CDC.

All was going well so I went for my first target C2012K1 PanSTARRS, I've never imaged a comet so I just did a single 2 minute sub of it then slewed the scope to M51. I started PHD2 & got the mount guiding. I started to fire off some 5 minute subs then after a while PHD2 froze. So shut it down started it again continued guiding & taking some more subs until I lost the guide star which happened 3 times in total & PHD froze twice during the imaging session. So a bit frustrating to say the least as I always seem to have issues with both variants of PHD.

Anyway these are the results I got using the laptop & guiding-ish!!



55 minutes worth of data using an ED80, modified Canon 1000D & ST80 guidescope with QHY5L-II planetary/guide camera. A bit noisy so more data needed but I guess it's a start.



Cropped version.



I just need to sort out these issues with PHD & I'll be happy.


 

[Dave_D]

I'll always recommend astrotortilla for that bang-on-centre-frame goodness

[tich]

I'll always recommend astrotortilla for that bang-on-centre-frame goodness

I've heard of Astrotortilla is it easy to use & what does it do? I only ask as I've tried other programs in the past & opened them only to be completely dumbfounded!!

[Dave_D]

it isn't an 'install and go' system but read this a few times, especially before you install (as you need to calculate which files to download as the index files are based on your scope FOV)  and it all becomes clear. 

http://lightvortexastronomy.blogspot.co.uk/2013/08/tutorial-imaging-setting-up-and-using.html

[wuthton]

I have a USB hub that caused crashes on my new laptop. It worked fine on the old one.

[tich]

The laptop I have has 4 USB's & so far I haven't used them all up just yet but if more kit is needed then I might look at getting one of those.

[Landy Dave]

Definitely install Astrotortilla and follow the instructions in the link above to the letter, I got it working in 20 mins now I never have to worry if I am aiming in the wrong place.

Also try APT as its great for setting up shooting plans

[Lonestar70]

Hi Tich,

Try swapping your camera usb ports around.

With 4 USB ports you probably have 2 USB controllers (2 ports on each)... Cameras and Video devices tend to get high service priority on USB and some controllers will only permit this on 1 of the 2 ports at any given time... so it pays to have each camera on a separate controller.

It is just possible that both cameras are competing for access at the same time... and PHD won't wait very long before it locks up.

Put your Guide camera on the same USB controller as the mount and the Main capture camera on the other controller along with mouse or any other low priority devices you may have fitted.

You should be able to determine which device is allocated to which controller via 'Control panel' > 'Device Manager'

I had similar problems before swapping things around.

Hope this helps.

Best regards.

Sandy.

[tich]

Thanks for the tip Sandy, however I have the mount & guide camera plugged into one pair of ports & the DSLR plugged into the other with one spare for now but I'll probably end up using the spare one with a control pad at some point. When I was imaging with it on Saturday PHD2 locked up. I ended up having to reboot the laptop & set up again & on the second go everything was running fine. For some reason I can't get my head round PHD I set up a plan to get started but the start button wasn't  highlighted so it wouldn't start so I ended up using a camera timer plugged into the DSLR.

Anyway the guide camera I use is a QHY5L-II with all the relevant drivers are installed so it works with Ascom, PHD finds it then when I'm ready it calibrates & guides. I did try using the ST4 cable the first couple of times but I had some issues so now I just use it to guide via Ascom. It does take a bit longer to calibrate but seems to work ok I just don't understand why it locked up.

As for Astro Tortilla I haven't had a chance to look through it yet but I hope I can make sense of it.