It's just one more thing to go wrong!

[westmarch]

Having had a frustrating night trying to get another piece of electronic kit to work, I wondered is there a tipping point for everyone?  What piece of kit (electronic or otherwise) would you say causes you more bother than its worth?

John

[swag72]

At the minute I can say everything electronic is causing me grief...... disconnecting USB's, drivers, PC crashes......... *groan* I can't seem to be able to get to the bottom of it.

[Galen Gilmore]

DNG vs TIFF vs RAW files.

Lately these three types of files, and which ones to use, have been causing my images to go all wonky! 

[John]

For a few years now I've deliberately gone for set ups that have as few electronics as possible. All my mounts are now manual alt-azimuth apart from my old HEQ5 which just uses dual drives powered by a battery pack. No cables, no set up routines as far as possible I want setups that I can put outside, cool down as needed and then get observing.

Each time I witness folks having issues with their higher tech systems I'm glad that I've stuck to the low-tech / no-tech approach. It suits me fine

But I don't image, I just look, so I can keep it simple and still get good results.

[westmarch]

5 minutes ago, John said:

For a few years now I've deliberately gone for set ups that have as few electronics as possible. I'm glad that I've stuck to the low-tech / no-tech approach. 

I can see the wisdom of this. I get frustrated  when instead of looking up, I’m looking down at something not working and invariably loosing dark adaptation and precious gaps in the clouds. 

John

[geoflewis]

I feel your pain...!! I've been battling with elecronic issues plus for the past year since I moved everything into a home observatory. It's great when it works, but I've been plagued by USB issues, some nights one or another thing keeps dropping out, other nights nothing will connect - of course some nights its all plain sailing . However, we've had so few clear nights recently that its very frustrating when it wont play. This past week I discovered that the dew strap on my C14 failed, so that cut my session short. Then next time out when I thought that I'd finally got everything working I had to discard all my lum data as somehow the filter had become loose in the f/wheel and the subs were all ruined. Not reached a tipping point yet; I'm in too deep financially and I daren't back out as my wife would kill me - quite possibly literally, having moved her half way across the country for dark rural so that I could pursue my hobby.....

[carastro]

I must confess, I tend to stick to the less hi tech methods of imaging, less to go wrong and frustrate.  On the few occasions I have attempted to get a bit more technical I have had problems with USBs & kit disconnecting.

In particular I always have problems with Hubs, they just don't work for me, everything plays up, so started to use a 2nd laptop instead of a hub if I needed any more than 3 USBs.  Then this week I came across a rather sophisticated USB hub that some-one kindly sent me I had forgotten I had, and tried it out one evening and everything worked, I even used EQMod which I haven't been able to use for ages partly because of this Hub problem.  All four hub lights lit up.  Yippee - I have cracked it at last I thought.

Following morning I switched on to do my flats and the software can't find the camera.  Looked at the hub and only two lights are on, and several tries later no improvement.  

Back to the drawing board.

So I don't use an electronic focusser and mostly don't use EQMOd because I don't have enough USB ports and hubs don't work.  

Carole 

[geoflewis]

8 hours ago, carastro said:

All four hub lights lit up.  Yippee - I have cracked it at last I thought.

Following morning I switched on to do my flats and the software can't find the camera.  Looked at the hub and only two lights are on, and several tries later no improvement.  

Back to the drawing board.

.....and I thought that it was just me......!!

[westmarch]

Carole,

and I thought I had problems! I have nothing but admiration for the problem solving abilities of APs.  

John

[carastro]

I have another problem to solve and that is of getting a Game pad to work so i can use EQMod.  I bought a wireless one some time ago, managed to get it to connect, but seemed not to be working, then about 30 secs later, it started to do catch up on several slewing commands I had done 30 secs ago.  So not much use really.  I then tried a mouse on an extension lead, which worked ok, except nowhere to put the mouse down to make it work, and too far from the laptop screen to see where the mouse was pressing.  So that didn't work either.

Might get around to buying a wired game pad and give it another bash. 

Carole 

[ollypenrice]

I'm notoriously stone age. I don't use electronic focus or a mount hub device.  My mounts don't talk to the PC and have never heard of the internet. (I like handsets!) Basically, if it has a USB and you can manage without it, then manage without it!

lly

 

 

[westmarch]

1 hour ago, ollypenrice said:

I'm notoriously stone age. I don't use electronic focus or a mount hub device.  My mounts don't talk to the PC and have never heard of the internet. (I like handsets!) Basically, if it has a USB and you can manage without it, then manage without it!

lly

 

 

Thanks for the telegram! 

[AngryDonkey]

Same here, just lost half a night because a new DC converter I've started using causes very short voltage losses and caused all sorts of things to drop out.... ahhhhhhhh!!!

Having said that, whilst keeping it simple (and low tech) is definitely something to aspire to, there are great benefits that can be attained with complexity and automation (like a good nights sleep ). For me it's a case of battling my way through all these small and big issued to arrive at a stable system which eventually will hopefully work (most of the time). I think I am almost there now and I've already had a few nights where I can press 'go' and watch SGP do its magic. I have recently added a Pegasus Astro Ultimate Hub which has greatly helped in taming the beast (two cameras, two filter wheels, two focusers, two dew heaters, OAG , mount and polemaster, mini PC) and has been very stable.

To be honest the tinkering part is probably half the enjoyment for me anyway so in a strange kind of way I do enjoy these setbacks and it makes me want to go out again to see if I can fix it and progress! Who knows, once everything is up and running I'll probably get bored and move onto something else.... 

[ollypenrice]

4 minutes ago, westmarch said:

Thanks for the telegram! 

Olly

[johnrt]

My experience with USB and specifically USB hubs is the same as everyone above. I have tried a series of USB hubs all of which have introduced camera hangs, disconnects and just general odd behaviour and hassle. I now restrict my USB devices to to 3 (the number of ports on my laptop) x2 cameras and an EQDIR, one lesson I have learned in all of this imaging business is keep it simple!

[carastro]

Quote

My mounts don't talk to the PC and have never heard of the internet. (I like handsets!) 

Olly, I am sure I was controlling the mount via Sky 6 (I think that was what it was called) when I was at your place.  

However I agree with you - keep it simple - less to go wrong. 

But having said that I would like to be able to try out plate solving as I do have an odd occasion when setting up at an astro camp when I have difficulty finding the target so in order to do plate solving the mount has to be controlled by the laptop (EQMod).  I just wanted to see if I liked it enough to want to use it.  Plus doing repeated data of the same target when having to set up and down each time, it could be helpful.  

Carole 

[johnrt]

4 minutes ago, carastro said:

Olly, I am sure I was controlling the mount via Sky 6 (I think that was what it was called) when I was at your place.  

However I agree with you - keep it simple - less to go wrong. 

But having said that I would like to be able to try out plate solving as I do have an odd occasion when setting up at an astro camp when I have difficulty finding the target so in order to do plate solving the mount has to be controlled by the laptop (EQMod).  I just wanted to see if I liked it enough to want to use it.  Plus doing repeated data of the same target when having to set up and down each time, it could be helpful.  

Carole 

Have you tried SGPro Carole, it is the easiest tool I have found for plate solving and getting your mount pointing accuratley night after night, works via EQMOD too.

[gorann]

I don't think you can be more low-tech than me. I only use one USB cable and that is for PHD2. I find the target using the SW hand control on the EQ8, frame it using some high-ISO exposures combined with live view on the screen of my DSLRs, focus manually on a star using live view with 10x magnification (works like a charm). In addition, to avoid power spikes I run everything (mount and heaters) from an ordinary car battery continuously charged by one of these modern electronic chargers (same battery for 2.5 years - no problem). My plan is to start using my chilled CCD and then at least I need two USB cables to work, I know that will cause problems......

[John]

15 minutes ago, gorann said:

I don't think you can be more low-tech than me. I only use one USB cable and that is for PHD2. I find the target using the SW hand control on the EQ8, frame it using some high-ISO exposures combined with live view on the screen of my DSLRs, focus manually on a star using live view with 10x magnification (works like a charm). In addition, to avoid power spikes I run everything (mount and heaters) from an ordinary car battery continuously charged by one of these modern electronic chargers (same battery for 2.5 years - no problem). My plan is to start using my chilled CCD and then at least I need two USB cables to work, I know that will cause problems......

That sounds very high tech to me !

This is one of my observing setups - no power of any sort apart from me

 

[westmarch]

30 minutes ago, John said:

That sounds very high tech to me !

This is one of my observing setups - no power of any sort apart from me

 

 

John

I think this is where the laws of relativity kick in. You are only a low tech observer- that’s general relativity. 

Gorran is low tech for an AP. Special relativity applies to them. 

John

[carastro]

Quote

Have you tried SGPro Carole

I did try to use it with the trial version John, mainly because I wanted to be able to dither.  However I could not get it to connect to PHD2 even with an IT/SGPro expert's help, so gave up.

I was planning to use APT as I have used that in the past.  

Carole 

[John]

6 minutes ago, westmarch said:

John

I think this is where the laws of relativity kick in. You are only a low tech observer- that’s general relativity. 

Gorran is low tech for an AP. Special relativity applies to them. 

John

Yes, I think thats right

One of the reasons that I've not got into astro imaging probably

[geoflewis]

2 minutes ago, carastro said:

I could not get it to connect to PHD2 even with an IT/SGPro expert's help, so gave up

Hi Carole, I've just started to use SGP and getting it to play well with PHD2 was one of the hurdles that I encountered. A little help from a friend on the settle parameters (which confused me as I don't use dithering yet) got it working and so far (its still early days of course) I'd say its definitely worth perservering. You could request a trial extension to keep testing, I did that and they gave me more time to convince myself and I've now purchased it. Geof

[carastro]

Thanks for your reply Geof, I never got as far as dithering parameters, and have used dithering before with APT so am OK on that, but just could not get SGPro to connect to PHD in the first place, also didn't like the hieroglyphics in the selection box, it's a long while since I tried it so can;t remember where is actually was now.

But might be worth asking them for a further trial I didn't know I could do that.  Also using a different laptop now so might make a difference.

Carole 

[geoflewis]

1 minute ago, carastro said:

might be worth asking them for a further trial I didn't know I could do that

There was an option (button I recall) to request a trial extension where it showed how many days were left on the trial, but if you've got a new laptop then possible you could just download a new trial anyway.....