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50/50 Roll off build


Yawning Angel

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On 13/05/2019 at 10:03, Yawning Angel said:

spur feeding the pier's 240V, but I've not tried getting that down the duct yet...I imagine it's going to take some effort

The twin and earth is in place - It wasn't too bad to pull except the obs was quite warm after a cloudless day. 

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IT and cabling installs are moving along. The comms cabinet has all its main kit in

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Top down:

12v psu / network switch 

PDU bar, surge suppressed

Brushed entry (tidy cables )

Network patch bar

Alexa went in too, To run the show, or at least play Spotify 😀

 

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On 29/07/2018 at 17:55, JamesF said:

Excellent :)

Personally I'd be tempted to remove those threaded rods and replace them with the shortest possible bolt that allows you to get a hand/spanner in for aligning the mount.  That should improve rigidity.

James

I replaced the lower end caps with normal nuts

once mount attached I went round each bolt in turn to lower the platform, then tightened the lower nots to secure.

if/when the mount hadn’t to come off, remove four lowest nuts and lift

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  • 2 weeks later...

23 days to go, for it to be a one year build!

  • All the cabling is in, although there remains some termination and the trunking needs it's cover cutting and fitting.
  • Warm room lighting it a length of LED strip resting on a shelf waiting on a proper plan, but it does the job. 
  • Could use a step outside - I have the bits, but spare daylight hours are in short supply at the moment, at its not urgent
  • A bit of extra painting
  • Infinite amounts of faffing

The main outstanding item is really the computer setup. Having mocked it up, it looks like there are far too many cables going from the control box to the scope. 3 12V power, 2 Dew power & 2 USB minimum.

I've decided to follow many previous examples, and put USB and 12V on the scope, and just feed those instead. I found a 7 port hub that'll take 12V DC, so the hope it to have just a single 12V feed plus a USB3 cable. There is some engineering involved, but cable ties and velcro might suffice in the short term

The control box has a 100mm space behind the peg board, when I'm mounting 240V and Ethernet, also hiding any power bricks. The face will have the PC and local USB3 hub, along with the 12V feed. I'm hoping to make it simple enough to swap scope from the ED80 to my C8 without a major rewire. The PDU circled in green is going on the scope. Circled in red is a little USB pass-through power monitor, as I'm curious what the draw is across a single cable

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I'm mounting the box next to the pier on a frame built using some left over Unistrut. That is taking shape and seems to be up to the job

Lets see if I can claim it finished in 3 weeks time?!

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The scope control box went in last night and the cables drawn up. Twin 240V socket and 2 x network ready to be terminated, along with the incoming 12V feed from a Nevada PSU in the warm room. 

The 12V will just pass straight through and up to the mount - I didn't see any need to add a join in the box space, but I'll coil some spare length in there just in case

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The wooden frame supports the PC's peg board, and is bolted in place using threaded wood inserts and M6 button head bolts. The whole thing is sitting on 44mm unistrut, and held in place with 3 x M10 stainless bolts

The rear cavity is about 110mm deep, and the front about 100mm. The box might need some vents for heat buildup, but that needs testing before I chop more holes in it

Out of the top comes a 25mm conduit carrying the 12V cable and a 3m USB3 up to the mount

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A bit of protection for the cables coming from the floor. 20mm in white with Twin and Earth, 12V and Network separate,  the odd one out is a 25 which I only had in black, for the HDMI...molded plug was just too fat for the 20mm. 

The LED lighting plus red floor tiles gives everything a warm pinkish glow:-)

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Hopefully the PC etc can go in this weekend and I can get it tested. I'll be using a remote monitor in the warm room and a wireless keyboard / mouse for any 'live' work. Otherwise, Remote desktop for keeping an eye on it

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Where did you get your enclosure, Alex?  I'm thinking something similar might work for me, as long as I can get one in the right sort of size.  Sadly my search skills are weak today.

James

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I could have got away with smaller too, now I’ve relocated some kit. Still, it’s in and wired up now

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USB hub should also be in there, but I let it in the house 😔️ 

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Scope side PC, monitor in the warm room, wireless keyboard / mouse. Rocking and rolling!

Starting to tidy up now. Cables need clipping in, trunking closing up and the like. 

Edited by Yawning Angel
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What's the PC inside the box?

I'm currently playing with an HP Elitedesk mini to see if I think it will be up to the job.  I'd guess it's pretty much the same form factor.

James

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9 minutes ago, JamesF said:

HP Elitedesk mini

Yep, it’s one of those👍🏻 The i3 with 8gig ram (maybe 16) and an SSD. Since it’s not doing any heavy lifting, its plenty spec. Most likely I’ll drop the capture files locally and sync the folder to a NAS

It was a simple thing, but the VESA mount screws nicely lined up on the peg board, so I didn’t have to drill. Sometimes you get lucky 😀

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I've ordered the 350x250 box, which I think should fit neatly on the pier and be large enough to hold the bits I need it to, especially if I do as you have done and add another board.

James

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20 hours ago, Yawning Angel said:

Yep, it’s one of those👍🏻 The i3 with 8gig ram (maybe 16) and an SSD. Since it’s not doing any heavy lifting, its plenty spec. Most likely I’ll drop the capture files locally and sync the folder to a NAS

It was a simple thing, but the VESA mount screws nicely lined up on the peg board, so I didn’t have to drill. Sometimes you get lucky 😀

Having some mesh wifi devices, I can get coverage to the pier form the house, so, just save images to a filled under onedrive so it synchs to wherever I need it

Images ore only 24-24MB so, it works reasonably well.

And, in case of "disaster" I have also run Cat 6 out to the pier too :)

 

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1 hour ago, iapa said:

onedrive so it synchs to wherever I need it

I'd love to use a cloud service, but sadly my broadband is the limiting factor. I need to handle the files locally for any usable speed. I'll have to settle for gigabit lan, external SSD's and a NAS

I do have a wifi access point in the obs, at the end of a buried CAT6, but that's more for Echo devices, tablet & phone - with the added advantage of giving good coverage for the garden

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  • 2 weeks later...

Last night saw the first run of the whole setup. There was nothing pretty about the cables, and the scudding clouds made getting any sort of alignment 'challenging', but SharpCap managed very well. 

There are i's to dot and t's to cross but I'd call that functionally finished. Pretty much a year start to finish

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First try with a Sony starvis doing it's thing. No IR illumination, midnight last night. The flicker comes from the blinking light on the focuser / camera on auto

Watching the live feed, it looks like it's doing some on camera stacking to get the sensitivity - there are trails anything fast moving, but then so would there be with an astro camera. Powered via poe and already in a dome. Just need to mount it now

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  • 1 year later...

Summer 2020 refresh:

  • Changed to a light grey to fend off some of the thermal load. I used methylated spirit to prep the old coating and then 3 coats over the top to cover it well
  • Added an AllSky camera, which has been fantastically handy enclosure from http://www.allskyoptics.com/ a spare zwo120mc-s. Uploads every 30seconds day and night and records a time lapse over night: http://allsky.alextronomy.com/

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I can say it's worked really well for the past year, and has been well worth the time and effort (and cost)

 

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