laptop question

[brrttpaul]

Having played with the zwo camera I was thinking of taking this to a dark sky site, I have a leisure battery already but no laptop ( i use a small desktop computer in an obsy) so it got me thinking if I was to buy a small laptop with a good battery life I could just take that couldnt I ? any suggestions on what type laptop much appeciated, also could I charge the laptop with a leisure battery? or would this be to much of a problem as all the chargers dor laptops seem different.

Cheers

Paul

[Sunshine]

I just bought a laptop for imaging, one thing i regret was getting a 17 inch, if it will be your imaging laptop mainly i would strongly recommend a 14/15 inch model.

my 17 inch is great for movies i guess but out in the field it just feels like i need a large table, unwieldy, i would sacrifice size for increased capability, if you can get one with dual HD's one being a solid state HD then thats great!

I should have looked at a 17 inch model in person before ordering online, i would have bought a 14/15 inch instead for sure.

[brrttpaul]

i did have the lenovo idea pad tiny thing and handy but for whatever reason it only comes on for a second then switches off, no idea if its the charger the battery or something else

[cjdawson]

Having owned laptops for the last 15 years, I can say that they have completely changed from when I got my first one.

Currently, I have 2 laptops (one mac and one windows) the windows one I use only for astronomy.  For this topic, I'll stick only with the windows laptop that I use at the scope with my ZWO Camera.

Firstly, as I'm sure you are aware, using a laptop to control a telescope is a game changer, you'll most likely be aware of this from the computer in your observatory.

I bought my laptop when I got a Starlight Express Superstar to act as guide camera.  My ZWO ASI290MM came later.

The laptop that I bought for controling my scope was a HP Pavillion 15" I5 with 8GB Ram and 256GB SSD.

Something like this is similar in spec.

https://www.cclonline.com/product/255168/81HN00FAUK/Laptops/Lenovo-V130-15IKB-81HN-15-6-inch-Full-HD-Notebook-for-SMBs-Intel-Core-i5-7200U-8GB-RAM-256GB-SSD-Intel-HD-620-DVD-RW-WLAN-BT-Windows-10-Home/NOT05309/

in fact, this is better than mine as I've only for a 1333*768 screen.  (But that doesn't matter)

 

Rather than rely on the internal battery on the laptop, here's an alternative

https://www.coywood.co.uk/lenovo-car-charger-universal-51996-p.asp

I've got 2 of these, one for a MacBook Pro (MagSafe2) and one for my HP Pavillion.   With these, I don't need to worry about the laptop running out of juice.   My Leisure battery has all the power that I need.

 

In addition to the laptop I also have one of these.

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Port-Industrial-USB-3-0-Hub/dp/B00V6ADRQC/ref=sr_1_9?ie=UTF8&qid=1528755597&sr=8-9&keywords=startech%2Busb%2B3%2Bhub&th=1

It's a bit on the expensive side for a USB hub.  That said, it works perfectly powering all my kit.  I'd recommend this as it can also be powered from a leisure battery.

 

In total, I've got my laptop running the following kit.

1. Telescope (USB to Serial adapter)

2. Starlight Express SuperStar (Guide camera)

3. ZWO ASI-290MM (Imaging camera)

4. ZWO Filterwheel

5. USB GPS adapter

 

In addition to all of that lot, I connect the laptop to a WIFI router, which means I can run a remote desktop session from my MacBook means I can sit in the warm whilst running the scope.

For software, well, it's listed in my sig.

 

The rational behind the laptop that I have is as follows.

 

I5 Processor - Overkill for the job today, but it gave my headroom to add more features later. Platesolving wasn't in my mind when I got it, but I'd imagine that could use quite a bit of horse power to do a blind solve.

8GB Ram - my normal MO is to go for as much RAM as I can get hold of, I tend to load PC's to the max and make them work for me.   This time, I knew that I wanted to be able to run PHD2, and CDC, didn't think of SGPro at the time, I'm still not maxing the RAM, which is good, as this means the machine runs efficiently.

256GB SSD - I wanted fast disk access, so the SSD was an idea choice.  256GB is plenty of room for Windows 10 and all the astro software that I need.  There's still some room left for a few capture sessions.   If I wanted more storage, I'd simply add an external drive to the hub, or plug one in when I needed it.

I did note that it uses a 45W power supply.  When I'm running the laptop, with a full battery, I have measured the power it pulls being on a par with my telescope!   So there's no worries about running out of power.

 

So for the type of machine that you get for your scope, that's entierly up to you.  Gina for example as gone the Raspberry PI route.    I'm happy with my setup and it's feeling a huge amount better than my first attempt.

[brrttpaul]

Thanks for the very detailed reply it is much appreciated, I doubt very much if I will be running a scope/mount  just the asi camera mainly for timelapse and perseids, though I may go all out and do the "buy just incase" route. rather than not buy it and need it sometime

thanks

Paul

[geordie85]

I'm watching this thread with interest. I'm after a new laptop for imaging and stacking/ processing as my current laptop is very slow. But I really don't understand all the numbers/ letters jargon so not sure if a laptop is powerful enough or not.

I've been trying to research the Dell alienware laptops as I've heard a gaming laptop will do the job nicely, but which one? Plus I really like the look of them.

[Kev M]

You dont need a gaming laptop as these are used mainly for the advanced graphics to play the latest games.

Pretty much any laptop capable of running windows 7 or 10 should be fine for your needs.

I would concentrate more on screen size ( for portability if required ) .

 

 

[geordie85]

I have a laptop running Windows 7 and it's far too slow for my needs.

[cjdawson]

There were a number of questions that I asked myself when I was deciding on the laptop to get.

These were roughly as follows.

1. How much equipment will I be controlling?

2. How much electric power will I have available?

3. Will I be processing the images on the laptop, or on a different machine?

4. Will I be using the laptop for anything other than as effectively my telescope's control system?

 

Here's how the answers to those questions helped me to make a choice on the laptop.

 

1. How much equipment will I be controlling?

Scope, GuideCamera, Main camera (DSLR at the time)

 

2. How much electric power will I have available?

I've been using a leisure battery for most of the time and I'm happy with that.  More recently, I've got main power available if there's a way to hook up.  So, thinking about running on the leisure battery, let's try to keep the power requirements down.

 

3. Will I be processing the images on the laptop, or on a different machine?

I'll be using a different machine (Have a desktop and a MacBook pro, both capable of doing the image processing stuff).   This means that I don't need "powerful" graphics processing.  All I need is to be able to display the images as they come out of the camera, for focus and framing.

 

4. Will I be using the laptop for anything other than as effectively my telescope's control system?

No, this laptop is strictly for Astronomy use only.  This means that I only have to load on the software that I'm going to use to control the scope cameras and anything else that I need whilst at the scope (including skycharting software)

 

So, the figures the key figures that I picked for my laptop were as follows...

Intel I5 processor,   This means it's a quad core processor without hyperthreading.  OK, that's techie, what does it mean?  quad core, means that I can run 4 things at the same time without any clashes.  Downloading images from Guiding with one core, imaging with another, skychart with no.3 and windows itself on no.4   That's in very simplistic terms.  Windows is a multi tasking operating system, so in reality, you can run several programs on the same processor core, windows will switch tasks as needed to get them all done.   I7 processors are Quad Core with Hyperthreading, this means that Windows see's 8 cores to use, it can potentially run 8 programs at a time without clashing.  I3 processorss, tend to be Dual core, that means 2 programs at the same time.       But again, windows is able to divide up each processor core so that more than one program can make use of it over time.

For me, having 4 cores means that I know that I can run the software that I wanted without any chance of the programs fighting each other.   Dual core would probably be sufficient. But as I said, I wanted to have some room to do more stuff that I'd not thought about.  Specifically Plate solving (which I'm now getting going)

 

Ram 8GB.  Windows at a minimum will run on 4GB of ram.  But that's just the operating system.  Once you start loading programs it fulls that ram up.  I'm sure that you could run PHD2 on a machine with 4GB Ram, But I know I wanted to run lots of programs at the same time - scope control, 2 cameras (now possibly 3 cameras) Star charting software.    So I wasn't happy to have 4GB.  I'd much rather have the 8GB and have lots of ram to spare.  If I needed to, I think I can upgrade my laptop's ram to 16GB, so there's even room for upgrade here, should I ever need it.

 

256GB SSD, I wanted an SSD (Solid State Drive) over a HDD (Hard Disc Drive) for two reasons.  First is speed.  I use computers every day in my job, and at home.  They all have SSD's in them, I like the speed, and will have them as choice over a HDD any day.  Secondly, No moving parts.  This gives the advantage that the laptop needs less power to make the drive work, no need to spin a disk, secondly if the laptop gets dropped, there is no chance of the drive heads crashing.  I still don't want to drop it, but accidents happen, so let's lower the risk a bit.

 

Graphics - Finally, at the moment there are three main kinds of graphics cards to look out for Intel, AMD and NVidia.  AMD and NVidia are high power graphics ideal for gaming and other things.  Programs like Photoshop and lightroom can also benefit from having powerful graphics available.  Programs like Deep Sky Stacker, do not currently make use of the graphics card when doing it's work.   The software that we use for image capture and scope control again do not make use of the power available in AMD or NVidia cards, so bottom line is they are a complete waste of money in this scenario.     That's why I'm happy with an Intel graphics.

 

This is how I made my choice of laptop.

[cjdawson]

11 hours ago, brrttpaul said:

Thanks for the very detailed reply it is much appreciated, I doubt very much if I will be running a scope/mount  just the asi camera mainly for timelapse and perseids, though I may go all out and do the "buy just incase" route. rather than not buy it and need it sometime

thanks

Paul

I'm surprised that you say you'll not be running the scope/mount, when you have SGPRO in your tagline.   I'm looking forward to this season as I'll be using it to platesolve, trigger PHD2, and capture the images.  Basically it'll do everything except focus.

[brrttpaul]

well I have two things in mind first is the perseids so looking at just using the zwo camera with its lens to do a timelapse, 2nd is Im on a two day metal detecting rally in September up in Oxford so thought I would  take it along and have a play with it there, my scopeis on a pier mount though I still have the tripod legs here, its just a case of do I take everything or keep it simple

[cjdawson]

Just now, brrttpaul said:

well I have two things in mind first is the perseids so looking at just using the zwo camera with its lens to do a timelapse, 2nd is Im on a two day metal detecting rally in September up in Oxford so thought I would  take it along and have a play with it there, my scopeis on a pier mount though I still have the tripod legs here, its just a case of do I take everything or keep it simple

sounds like you are trying to solve a very very different problem to the one that I solved.

 

How about this for a thought....

Raspberry PI3!

you can get them to run for hours off a power bank.  It's possible to get them setup to do a time lapse.    I don't know about how to do it.  That said, I'm sure it's possible.

and at £30 for one, might just be worth a punt. ?

[geordie85]

31 minutes ago, cjdawson said:

There were a number of questions that I asked myself when I was deciding on the laptop to get.

These were roughly as follows.

1. How much equipment will I be controlling?

2. How much electric power will I have available?

3. Will I be processing the images on the laptop, or on a different machine?

4. Will I be using the laptop for anything other than as effectively my telescope's control system?

 

Here's how the answers to those questions helped me to make a choice on the laptop.

 

1. How much equipment will I be controlling?

Scope, GuideCamera, Main camera (DSLR at the time)

 

2. How much electric power will I have available?

I've been using a leisure battery for most of the time and I'm happy with that.  More recently, I've got main power available if there's a way to hook up.  So, thinking about running on the leisure battery, let's try to keep the power requirements down.

 

3. Will I be processing the images on the laptop, or on a different machine?

I'll be using a different machine (Have a desktop and a MacBook pro, both capable of doing the image processing stuff).   This means that I don't need "powerful" graphics processing.  All I need is to be able to display the images as they come out of the camera, for focus and framing.

 

4. Will I be using the laptop for anything other than as effectively my telescope's control system?

No, this laptop is strictly for Astronomy use only.  This means that I only have to load on the software that I'm going to use to control the scope cameras and anything else that I need whilst at the scope (including skycharting software)

 

So, the figures the key figures that I picked for my laptop were as follows...

Intel I5 processor,   This means it's a quad core processor without hyperthreading.  OK, that's techie, what does it mean?  quad core, means that I can run 4 things at the same time without any clashes.  Downloading images from Guiding with one core, imaging with another, skychart with no.3 and windows itself on no.4   That's in very simplistic terms.  Windows is a multi tasking operating system, so in reality, you can run several programs on the same processor core, windows will switch tasks as needed to get them all done.   I7 processors are Quad Core with Hyperthreading, this means that Windows see's 8 cores to use, it can potentially run 8 programs at a time without clashing.  I3 processorss, tend to be Dual core, that means 2 programs at the same time.       But again, windows is able to divide up each processor core so that more than one program can make use of it over time.

For me, having 4 cores means that I know that I can run the software that I wanted without any chance of the programs fighting each other.   Dual core would probably be sufficient. But as I said, I wanted to have some room to do more stuff that I'd not thought about.  Specifically Plate solving (which I'm now getting going)

 

Ram 8GB.  Windows at a minimum will run on 4GB of ram.  But that's just the operating system.  Once you start loading programs it fulls that ram up.  I'm sure that you could run PHD2 on a machine with 4GB Ram, But I know I wanted to run lots of programs at the same time - scope control, 2 cameras (now possibly 3 cameras) Star charting software.    So I wasn't happy to have 4GB.  I'd much rather have the 8GB and have lots of ram to spare.  If I needed to, I think I can upgrade my laptop's ram to 16GB, so there's even room for upgrade here, should I ever need it.

 

256GB SSD, I wanted an SSD (Solid State Drive) over a HDD (Hard Disc Drive) for two reasons.  First is speed.  I use computers every day in my job, and at home.  They all have SSD's in them, I like the speed, and will have them as choice over a HDD any day.  Secondly, No moving parts.  This gives the advantage that the laptop needs less power to make the drive work, no need to spin a disk, secondly if the laptop gets dropped, there is no chance of the drive heads crashing.  I still don't want to drop it, but accidents happen, so let's lower the risk a bit.

 

Graphics - Finally, at the moment there are three main kinds of graphics cards to look out for Intel, AMD and NVidia.  AMD and NVidia are high power graphics ideal for gaming and other things.  Programs like Photoshop and lightroom can also benefit from having powerful graphics available.  Programs like Deep Sky Stacker, do not currently make use of the graphics card when doing it's work.   The software that we use for image capture and scope control again do not make use of the power available in AMD or NVidia cards, so bottom line is they are a complete waste of money in this scenario.     That's why I'm happy with an Intel graphics.

 

This is how I made my choice of laptop.

Thank you, that was extremely informative and I understood it which is even better.

As for the questions, these would be my answers. 

1. I'll be controlling mount, polemaster, guide camera, cooled cmos camera, stellarium and platesolving. 

2. I use mains when I'm at home but use a 22ah tracer battery and a 17ah skywatcher power tank (just for the mount and dew heaters) when I'm "out and about"

3. I'll be doing everything on my laptop from data capture with APT, stacking with AstroArt 6 and processing with Photoshop mainly.

4. Astrophotography will be the laptops main concern, but will use it for other odd jobs now and again.

[cjdawson]

2 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

Thank you, that was extremely informative and I understood it which is even better.

As for the questions, these would be my answers. 

1. I'll be controlling mount, polemaster, guide camera, cooled cmos camera, stellarium and platesolving. 

2. I use mains when I'm at home but use a 22ah tracer battery and a 17ah skywatcher power tank (just for the mount and dew heaters) when I'm "out and about"

3. I'll be doing everything on my laptop from data capture with APT, stacking with AstroArt 6 and processing with Photoshop mainly.

4. Astrophotography will be the laptops main concern, but will use it for other odd jobs now and again.

From your answers, the main thing that I'm seeing as a difference is that you'll be doing the processing on the same laptop.    Photoshop does make use of the capabilities of graphics cards.  Here's a link that explains how it benefits.

https://helpx.adobe.com/photoshop/kb/photoshop-cc-gpu-card-faq.html

I'm looking at those features and thinking that most of them probably won't be used in astro work.  Also some of the features work with some of the Intel graphics cards too.  So maybe there's still no need for NVidia or AMD gaming level graphics cards.

 

The next thing is that as you'll be doing your processing on the same machine, you'll be working with lots more data.  This may sway you when it comes to the storage.  Currently I'm seeing the trend to be either an SSD that's normally 256GB, but you can get bigger.  Or a large HDD normally 1TB or more (4 times the size of the SSD).    You could always use external storage for your images.  The advantage is that you are not stuck to having data on one machine.  The Disadvantage is that's it's another thing hanging off your machine, and drawing power.

[MrGold]

I am partial to the Lenovo work series laptops. Especially the t series. Built like tanks, long lasting battery and pretty carryable. especially the 14 inch models. Just don't get anything with dedicated GPU.

[brrttpaul]

Thanks guys quite a bit to take in, I will prob just be using it to power the camera running firecapture, saying that if i could load eqmod and run sgpro I may take the heq5 mount with me and the ED 80 or the MAK

[cjdawson]

16 hours ago, brrttpaul said:

...saying that if i could load eqmod and run sgpro I may take the heq5 mount with me and the ED 80 or the MAK

See if you have the cash, leave yourself headroom for "more"

[DCBassman]

On 12/06/2018 at 11:51, geordie85 said:

I have a laptop running Windows 7 and it's far too slow for my needs.

What's the model number? It may be more capable than you think. Instead of buying new, an SSD and maxing out the RAM can transform even an ancient laptop into something very usable.

[geordie85]

44 minutes ago, DCBassman said:

What's the model number? It may be more capable than you think. Instead of buying new, an SSD and maxing out the RAM can transform even an ancient laptop into something very usable.

[cjdawson]

That machine should be up to the task.

I'd suspect that you are running low on Ram rather than anything else.   So here's my thoughts, run the laptop up, open task manager and watch the amount of RAM that's in use.  You'll most likely find that it fills up to 70%, then the hard drive light goes on solid and it pretty much is always on.    That's what happens when you need more RAM.

At a mimumim I'd recommend having 8GB in a computer running a 64Bit OS.   4GB is the max that a 32Bit OS can use, so anything more is a waste.

 

There's a couple of ram upgrades worth thinking about...

1. insert a single 8GB Memory module.

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/aspire-es1-520/CT7919592

This will boost your laptop up to 12GB.

 

2. Insert a matched pair (removing the existing 4GB memory module)

http://uk.crucial.com/gbr/en/aspire-es1-520/CT7919589

This will max the ram that you can have.

 

The second option will also bring a feature called dual channel into play which allows the two memory modules to worth together and work faster.

 

That said, you are talking about £68 or £150 (respectively) on a RAM upgrade.

 

Also double check if you look at what I posted to make sure it's the right memory that I linked too.   I'd use the system scanner on the machine and the website should tell you for sure what you can have.

[geordie85]

I really wish this had been posted yesterday. I just bought an Alienware M17x r2 , Full HD, 8core I7 , 16 Gb DDR 3 , 1TB HDD, AMD HD5870

I guess it's going to be over kill but I really like the look of them and it should be very future proof.

[RayD]

19 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

I really wish this had been posted yesterday. I just bought an Alienware M17x r2 , Full HD, 8core I7 , 16 Gb DDR 3 , 1TB HDD, AMD HD5870

I guess it's going to be over kill but I really like the look of them and it should be very future proof.

Very nice machine.  As I'm sure @Alien 13 will testify, you pay a bit, but you get what you pay for 

[Alien 13]

25 minutes ago, geordie85 said:

I really wish this had been posted yesterday. I just bought an Alienware M17x r2 , Full HD, 8core I7 , 16 Gb DDR 3 , 1TB HDD, AMD HD5870

I guess it's going to be over kill but I really like the look of them and it should be very future proof.

Nothing like an Alienware, mines the 15 r2 with SSD and HDD and Nvidia GT970M.

Alan ?

[geordie85]

11 minutes ago, Alien 13 said:

Nothing like an Alienware, mines the 15 r2 with SSD and HDD and Nvidia GT970M.

Alan ?

Very nice. I'll be buying an SSD to put in it at some point in the future.

[Buzzard75]

I have a Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with an i7, 8GB RAM, and a 256GB SSD with another 256GB microSD card. I use it for both data acquisition and processing. Gathering data is no problem at all. Note that it only has one USB plug though. Right now I'm not using it to run a mount or a guide camera, just capture images from a single camera so one is all I need. It's a little slow at processing the data (stacking, editing, etc.), but it's not painfully slow. I'm sure a higher end laptop with a faster processor and more RAM would chew through it quicker, but it does the job. Best of all it's light weight and extremely portable. The surface pros aren't cheap for what they are, but I really like mine and use it for everything. Well worth the money spent.