Thoughts on which imaging rigs to concentrate on

[Gina]

Did give it one last try - the prop I used to hold the screen open had moved and the screen had closed a little bit - just enough to shut the darn thing off!!  I've now set it up with the screen wide open - just enough room in the box.  It's now connecting but SharpCap is playing up.  Have to give up I think.  Think there might be fog coming in anyway.  I've left the roof open in case I can get things going.  Laptop MUST be warm enough with the thermal enclosure!

[Gina]

RPi still installing packages...

[Gina]

RPi OS upgrade and reboot complete and now installing INDI dependences.

[Gina]

Now need to put the libINDI package onto the RPi and I forget how I did it last time - once on the card it can be unpacked etc.

Quote

$ tar -xzf libindi_1.3.1_rpi.tar.gz
$ cd libindi_1.3.1_rpi
$ sudo dpkg -i *.deb

Ah...  had a thought - take card out of RPi and put in card reader in Linux Mint box and copy file onto card in appropriate place.

[Filroden]

Just took my first Ha sub. What a nightmare finding focus. I had to reduce the step range on my autofocus as the stars quickly went too far out of focus to be measured.

Here's a single 60s sub of NGC2239 at 300 gain, 50 offset and -20c.

Edit: looks like I still might have tilt/spacing issues. The stars in the upper right are looking elongated in every sub so far (though an improvement over my previous settings which had all four corners looking elongated).

Edited January 23, 2017 by Filroden

[Gina]

Yes, a little bit but it's not bad

[Gina]

I put the libindi package in the boot directory and unpacked it etc. in there.  Somehow I don't think this is right.

[Marci]

Just move the extracted folder to your home directory...

sudo cp -R /boot/libindi_1.3.1_rpi /home/pi/

sudo rm -rf /boot/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

cd /home/pi/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

 

Once it's done installing you can delete the extracted installer...

rm -rf ~/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

 

Always safest to do everything in the Pi user's home folder at /home/pi ( ~/  = shortcut to current user's home)

Edited January 23, 2017 by Marci

[Marci]

1 hour ago, Gina said:

Now need to put the libINDI package onto the RPi

Ssh on as Pi, should put you in Pi home folder.

in web browser right-click copy shortcut for the file you want to download.

in your ssh window: wget [ctrl-v to paste] {enter}

(wget downloads files via http from commandline.)

[Marci]

You could also install FileZilla or similar on your main system and connect to the Pi via sftp using port 22, then you can just drag n' drop from your main system to the /home/pi folder on the Pi

[Gina]

Thanks very much Marci

[Gina]

19 minutes ago, Marci said:

Just move the extracted folder to your home directory...

sudo cp -R /boot/libindi_1.3.1_rpi /home/pi/

sudo rm -rf /boot/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

cd /home/pi/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

sudo dpkg -i *.deb

 

Once it's done installing you can delete the extracted installer...

rm -rf ~/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

 

Always safest to do everything in the Pi user's home folder at /home/pi ( ~/  = shortcut to current user's home)

Done all that but needed sudo for the rm ie. sudo rm -rf ~/libindi_1.3.1_rpi

All worked fine

I've used FileZilla in the past

[Marci]

No probs...! 

Your next mission tho will be to read into creating udev rules so that your devices always appear at consistent place, otherwise port numbers (e.g.: /dev/ttyUSB0, /dev/ttyUSB1 etc) change on order of connection.

Ideally do this for all your devices BEFORE configuring the libindi drivers for those devices... and then you can name the new STATIC ports whatever you want (/dev/atikcam, /dev/focuser, /dev/eq8mount etc) - they'll always use those names regardless of physical port / connection order.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Marci

[Gina]

Cheers   Think I've done this before   I'll bone up on it though...

[Marci]

(Apols if teaching to suck eggs!)

[Filroden]

How is the fog? I'm seeing lots of bad reports for the whole south of England including high pollution alerts. 

[Gina]

No - not teaching to suck eggs   Very glad of your help

Yes, it's foggy but I've seen worse!  No imaging tonight though.  Visibility estimated as around 100 yards (or metres if you like).  If was thicker earlier.

Edited January 23, 2017 by Gina

[Gina]

I have the ZWO camera working with INDI/KStars/Ekos   Here are a couple of images using the ASI185MC camera and fisheye lens.  Think I'll pop out and get the "real" imaging rig shortly and check that I can access the cooling and EFW as well as the camera itself.  The ASI185MC isn't cooled.  This is just to test that I can connect to the camera and capture images using KStars.

First image is with the zoom fisheye lens fully screwed onto the camera which loses some image due to being off-centre and this is at the widest zoom and far end of the focuser.  The second image was taken with the camera unscrewed a couple of threads to manually focus and then the zoom and focuser adjusted for good positioning and image size.  The focus setting is only approximate as the lens and PC screen were a fair distance apart.

This camera and lens is what I might use for a colour all sky camera.  This is covered in another thread.

[Gina]

Next I tried connecting to my NEQ6 mount using the indi_eqmod_telescope driver and it works   Now popping out to get the ASI16000MM-C and EFW.

[Gina]

Imaging rig indoors ready to try out and now having a break with a cuppa   

[Gina]

Camera working complete with cooling but can't see the EFW.

This image looking out of the living room window southwards.  Very misty weather so can't see all that much - but it's a picture   Can see the pylons on the far hill though - 1s exposure and gain of 0 with Ha 3nm filter and it's showing a lot more than I can see by eye

Edited January 24, 2017 by Gina

[Marci]

What make & model EFW?

Is it listed when you run lsusb from commandline?

[Gina]

ZWO EFW mini.

[Gina]

Gain upped to 180 and gamma to 70.

[Filroden]

That's good progress!