Cables, so many cables!

[thohem]

In the end, everyone starts using a laptop

You connect everything, your full of hope and then your guidecam stays silent. Drivers? Cables? Wheres the problem? You start searching...and possibly find it. Then, finally, everything starts up as you intended and you realise it's slow. Your live view from APT runs with 4 frames and due to sync issues you lose your first light, your guiding or any other control.

As already said: using a pc at the scope is ALWAYS the most stable connection. But everyone as he likes wish you luck with your tries

[mbalkham]

So I managed to get the scope and camera attached but can for the life of me work out how to get the guide cam installed over the network.  It shows up but won't connect.  Laptop is in the garden!!

[Xplode]

You won't be able to use the guidecam with USB over ethernet on any of the cheap devices.

The only way i have found this to work reliably is to use a computer with special software on it that acts as a usb server, other computer also needs the same software to connect to those usb devices.

Works great, but a little expensive and not that easy to setup for most people if they aren't into computers. Most people would just use a remote desktop solution instead.

[carastro]

I have a laptop in the obsy and once everything is up and running control it all from indoors via teamviewer.  

With the exception of focussing as I don't have an electronic focusser, but normally I spend several hours on the same target so focussing doesn;t often need checking and if it does I just pop outside for a short while. 

Carole 

[Shiinsuh]

For me while I have my gear out. I use a 5m 2-port USB repeater which I have my guide camera and my DSLR plugged into, and I have my DSLR running off an AC pack. That gives me just two wires coming off the scope, which are then looped around a hook on the mount , this is to reduce the pull on the mount while its tracking. Then for the mount its self I use a 5m serial cable with a USB - Serial adaptor, Both this and the USB repeater go into a laptop.

The laptop then has a long 35 meter Cat5e cable going into the house, I then control the laptop from the me computer in the house with TighVPN.

So far this has worked perfectly well for me. I did run if over WiFi before but it couldn't keep a stable connection and TightVPN kept dropping (despite strong WiFi signal)