Mount upgraded: GM2000HPS -> GM2000HPS-II

[perfrej]

Hi folks!

AS some of you may know, a few of us guys (Jonas Grinde, Yves van den Broek, Jeffrey Jongmans, Peter Woods and I) run a remote four-pier observatory located at the venerable Olly Penrice's estate in the mountains of Provence. Well, I just came back from there after an upgrade of both my GM2000HPS to a GM2000HPS II and the roof controller to a more robust one. I also got a chance to run a first light. The mount is silky smooth and even though I have been totally pleased with my generation one unit, I have to admit that there are some improvements. I ran a model and performed some polar alignment tweaks - total of three iterations and ended up with a resulting polar error of 41 seconds of arc. I'll leave it at that.

The new hand controller is nice with a display twice as large and "clickier" buttons - more distinct.

Here's a crop of one of the subs from the first light run with ACP. NGC6888, 20 minute Ha subs unguided with the TEC-140 with flattener (FL 980mm, image scale 1.14"/px):

The mount sits on the same pier as the old one, like this:

Happy camper!

/per

[ollypenrice]

Venerable Olly Penrice? I'm scarecly out of short pants! 

Good to see this first light and, yes, that's working superbly. We're right into pixel scale, I see, with this crop. No hiding place. None needed.

Olly

[perfrej]

Respect, Olly, that's what it is

/per

[Earl]

Looks great Per, I am almost pressing the button on my Dome to go all remote to, remote in my own garden but still I should not need to step ou the door to get going.

Do you happen to jnow if you can get :

Check cloud?

Clear = open.

Check time and objects visable from a selection.

Slew to object and start imaging.

[perfrej]

Earl,

I suggest you take a look at CCD Autopilot and an AAG Cloudwatcher. That will take care of all the automation issues and leave you free to sleep or what have you

/per

[gingergeek]

Awesome work guys 

[Steve 1962]

Lovely piece of kit!

[pixair]

Per,

Which roof controller you have had before and to which one you changed it?

[perfrej]

Pix,

I just added some more relays to the one I had. It is my own design... 

/per

[Earl]

Per is there a chance you good post a flow chart of your configuartion and software ?

[perfrej]

Hmmmm... Flowchart... Not sure about that. Never thought of it that way.

I use my own design (the Astrobox) for power control, focuser stepper drive, temperature and barometric pressure, roof control and USB hub. That is driven by hte ASCOM driver suite that I wrote for it.

Control of the entire observatory is with ACP, scheduling with ACP Scheduler. MaximDL handles the camera and FocusMax the focusing.

Apart from the Astrobox everything is pretty much as per the manual for ACP. There are lots of little scripts that ACP need to start up and shutdown the observatory.

I have think of how I would present all this in an understandable manner

/per

[Earl]

I have think of how I would present all this in an understandable manner

You know all good IT soluions need to be documneted well