ASA DDM85 adventures

[Datalord]

So, as some will know, I ended up purchasing the last ASA DDM85 they will produce. It arrived at E-Eye in mid May and I managed to go there to set it up in the beginning of June.

And what a mount it is. It is beautiful. It is bloody heavy. It is silent. And it has very complicated software.

I went so I had two nights, but the only fully clouded night in 2 months happened on one of them, so I effectively only had one night to do my thing. That turned out to be a problem, because the nitty gritty of making the software work is not simple. You need to have 4 different applications work in sync, so you have automated focusing, platesolving, pathing etc.etc. working in one coordinated effort. Fighting that while panicking over losing time well into the 5AM in the morning meant I messed up my polar alignment completely. And I went home on the flight. I considered staying another night, but it turned out to be a good thing I didn't.

Well home, I kept fighting the software. Learning, plate solving, automating. Trying settings, failing, retrying. The manual is decent, but not everything is clearly stated. The forums are dead and not many people own one of these. Rupert helped me out on mail and offered to log in to the system, but I managed to get past all the issues. And last night I will declare was proper first light.

Now, when I said horrible bad PA, I meant it. I have an error of -48 AZ and 120 Alt. Unusable. Despicable. Ugly. So I hope I can get some help from the the onsite crew to tune it in a bit better. And yet, look at this...

Yes, it has all the rotation in the universe right there, caused by the bad PA. But check the stars in the center of that rotation...

This is 2400 seconds unguided. 20 bloody minutes and it manages to give me these.

On a 300 sec bin2 Ha of M27 I had this:

Rotation still present, but 300s unguided is pretty decent with that horror PA.

In short, this mount is not for the faint of heart, but I'm already declaring it a success. Until I can either get down there or have a lucky PA by the crew, I can reduce my exposures. I shall update the mount adventures when I get it tuned better.

[DaveS]

Hi

Good to see that you've got your mount, still waiting for Rupert to contact me, also waiting on house sale completion to have a financial buffer (Can afford it now, but don't want to deplete my funds).

Yes, agree with your comments Re: weight, even my "little" DDM60 is a bit of a lump, but at least the 85 breaks down into two parts, and the ASA forum is very slow. @Waldemar has a DDM 85, so he may be able to give more mount-specific advice. Agree also that getting all the software talking to each other can be a bit of a faff at first, but it *does* all come together in the end. I have Autoslew, Cartes du Ciel, Maxim DL and Sequence open over two monitors, and even then things get crowded.

Noting that you have the "Basic" (Basic, yeah, right) with similar PA adjustment to the  60, it took me several iterations to get the PA spot on, but I think that was due to axis conflict due to not having a dead level pier to start with.

 

Will follow your adventures with interest, stay tuned for my saga!

[Waldemar]

Hi Datalord, good to hear you are pleased with your ASA. Yes, it is a beautiful monster and it performs incredibly. 
The fast and silent slews are dangerous, though. Be careful!
The software is a bit tricky but not that bad and it is kind of a nice challenge to get it all right. It works very well with SGP if Sequence is a bit hard to start with.

The forum is not dead at all, it is just quiet in summer time. I haven't seen you there, yet, did you subscribe allready?

2 hours ago, DaveS said:

Noting that you have the "Basic" (Basic, yeah, right) with similar PA adjustment to the  60, it took me several iterations to get the PA spot on, but I think that was due to axis conflict due to not having a dead level pier to start with.

The pier does not have to be at 'dead level', about right is good enough. As long as you got enough room to polar align,
I see you have a "rat cage' construction to mount the ASA on. You may find the ASA does not like that. It may start making vibration noises, If so, realise that the rat cage is the cause. That kind of construction tends to amplify vibrations on its resonance frequency and the mount reacts on that.
The resonance frequency depends on the lengths of the used threaded ends and the mass of the load. Just so you know that may be the cause if the mount makes weird sounds and is not responding well on the PID settings. If you really need the rat cage construction, keep the threaded ends as short and thick as possible, that will make a difference. 
Have loads of fun with that great piece of equipment!!

edit:  I just realised the mount is in a remote hosting facility... do they host more ASA's  there?

Edited June 15, 2019 by Waldemar

[Datalord]

54 minutes ago, Waldemar said:

That kind of construction tends to amplify vibrations on its resonance frequency and the mount reacts on that.

Wow, thanks, this is exactly what happened. I managed to get out under control with tuning, so it is very rare now. 

 

57 minutes ago, Waldemar said:

do they host more ASA's  there?

Yeah, there is quite a few. 

[DaveS]

In my conversations with Rupert it appears they have quite a DDM "farm" there. Just a pity that I can't afford the rent.

[Waldemar]

36 minutes ago, Datalord said:

Wow, thanks, this is exactly what happened. I managed to get out under control with tuning, so it is very rare now. 

The best way to get it under control is to avoid rat cages... Yours has quite long threaded ends in the picture. Making them shorter and filling the threads up with nuts will make a huge difference

Another real important issue is radial balancing, so not just RA and DEC, but also radial. If radial balance is not ok, it will be impossible to get a good overall balance in every position, and the mount will use more power and may stop

That is so critical that a focus motor on one side of the scope which is not compensated by a counterweight on the other side, will cause problems...

39 minutes ago, DaveS said:

In my conversations with Rupert it appears they have quite a DDM "farm" there. Just a pity that I can't afford the rent.

I can't either, but I would not anyway, I am kind of a perfectionist, so I want to be able to improve constantly.... for me that is a big part of the hobby and sometimes quite a frustration 🤬...  😂

[MarsG76]

WOW, that is one awesome mount...... well done.. feeling slight sense of jealousy.....

[Datalord]

8 hours ago, MarsG76 said:

WOW, that is one awesome mount...... well done.. feeling slight sense of jealousy.....

You can also feel a slight sense relief on your bank account. But, I now have a mount where I can double my instrument weight, so it's somewhat future proof. 

[Datalord]

On 15/06/2019 at 18:04, Datalord said:

20 bloody minutes and it manages to give me these.

Math is hard. That was 40 minutes unguided...

Aaaaanyways, Still having severely bad PA issues, since I can't just go into the backyard to fix it. So last night I postponed the fun with the advanced unguided software and plugged in PHD and just guided it.

Well. That worked. With the Celestron I used to be lucky to have <1.0" total RMS. Last night I had down to 0.32" total RMS. That's, uhm, good enough. What a glorious mount this is...

[DaveS]

Good to see you're getting somewhere with it, but it will be even better once you have the PA sorted (Is there tech support at e-EyE who can tweak the PA?) and can start using the MLPT abandoning guiding altogether. I've seen encoder guiding over 2 hours get down to <0.2"PP and 0.1" RMS

[Datalord]

7 hours ago, DaveS said:

Is there tech support at e-EyE who can tweak the PA?

Yeah, they even sorted it faster than I could imagine. Last night they had actually already fixed it, but I didn't know, so I was using an old config. This is what I got from a new config tonight:

I promised them beer, wine and whisky next time I visit.

[DaveS]

That's looking good, you'll get good encoder guiding with that.

I've just got in from doing the PA on my DDM60 after getting it set up again, and after the long delay with the weather.

Just need to do the whole sky model now.

[Datalord]

14 minutes ago, DaveS said:

Just need to do the whole sky model now.

Mine is running right now. It's not going too great. The plate solving is still giving me grief. Even at "just" 2400mm it is very unforgiving to solve. I probably need to figure out a different catalog than GSC.

[andrew s]

9 hours ago, Datalord said:

Mine is running right now. It's not going too great. The plate solving is still giving me grief. Even at "just" 2400mm it is very unforgiving to solve. I probably need to figure out a different catalog than GSC.

The GSC does not have enough stars when the field of view gets small. I got the SB data base add-on to reliably solve with The Sky X and my ODK 16.

Regards Andrew 

[ollypenrice]

15 hours ago, Datalord said:

 

I promised them beer, wine and whisky next time I visit.

That's not going to do much for the next customer's PA... 

Not being into IT, I'm following this thread with a mixture of awe and dread!

Hope you get it sorted. Remote imaging is the hardest kind, I think, in the early stages at least.

Olly

 

[Datalord]

5 hours ago, andrew s said:

SB data base add-on

Can you give me a bit more information on this? Are you using PinPoint and/or using an ASA mount and software?

8 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Not being into IT, I'm following this thread with a mixture of awe and dread!

Hope you get it sorted. Remote imaging is the hardest kind, I think, in the early stages at least.

Yeah, no lies there.

The good news is that I have it set up well enough that it literally would make no difference whether my mount was in my living room, backyard or in Spain. This software is incredibly demanding on the exactly right parameters everywhere and the documentation and forums are virtually dead. I just now read a thread from 2016 where an ASA representative was quoted to say that he didn't understand why users who have used the mounts for years needs better documentation. I now understand why they are leaving the amateur segment...

Meanwhile I could just flip the table on the software and just guide it better than I have ever had any mount guide before. 🙄

[ollypenrice]

1 hour ago, Datalord said:

Can you give me a bit more information on this? Are you using PinPoint and/or using an ASA mount and software?

Yeah, no lies there.

The good news is that I have it set up well enough that it literally would make no difference whether my mount was in my living room, backyard or in Spain. This software is incredibly demanding on the exactly right parameters everywhere and the documentation and forums are virtually dead. I just now read a thread from 2016 where an ASA representative was quoted to say that he didn't understand why users who have used the mounts for years needs better documentation. I now understand why they are leaving the amateur segment...

Meanwhile I could just flip the table on the software and just guide it better than I have ever had any mount guide before. 🙄

Well, as a remote imaging host I've come to suspect that not guiding is a lot more trouble than guiding...

Olly

[andrew s]

1 hour ago, Datalord said:

Can you give me a bit more information on this? Are you using PinPoint and/or using an ASA mount and software?

Yeah, no lies there.

The good news is that I have it set up well enough that it literally would make no difference whether my mount was in my living room, backyard or in Spain. This software is incredibly demanding on the exactly right parameters everywhere and the documentation and forums are virtually dead. I just now read a thread from 2016 where an ASA representative was quoted to say that he didn't understand why users who have used the mounts for years needs better documentation. I now understand why they are leaving the amateur segment...

Meanwhile I could just flip the table on the software and just guide it better than I have ever had any mount guide before. 🙄

I have a Paramount ME II and use the native The Sky X plate silver. I don't thing you could use it. I was just pointing out the need for a large database of stars to reliably plate solve.

Regards Andrew 

[Waldemar]

As far as I know the largest and most up to date star catalogue is the UCAC4 (about 12 Gb)

If you can't get it downloaded (you will need a really fast connection), I can send you a copy by mail from the original NASA release, which they sent me in 2014. (2 discs)

Edited June 21, 2019 by Waldemar

[Merlin66]

The Gaia is the latest detailed catalogue with millions, millions of stars.

the CDC webpage gives all the necessary details.

 

Edited June 21, 2019 by Merlin66

[Datalord]

On 20/06/2019 at 23:56, Datalord said:

This is what I got from a new config tonight:

As an example of the things I face, this turned out to be a fluke. For whatever reason, having 15 points in the sky, it decided on this one occasion to give me this PA error. I still had some issues with the images with rotation I couldn't understand, so I ran another set and suddenly I'm 93 arcmin off. Full of bewilderment, I go back to this set, load this error file and it tells me I'm 80 arcmin off.

Thing is, I can literally do the same action multiple times and get a different result every time. The absolute definition of madness.

[ollypenrice]

45 minutes ago, Datalord said:

 

Thing is, I can literally do the same action multiple times and get a different result every time. The absolute definition of madness.

The absolute definition of IT in the real world, in my view!

Olly

[DaveS]

I have often found the PA error reported from a whole sky model to be scary. I *think* it's because the Autopoint model runs both sides of the meridian, while PA modeling, with just 3 or 4 points is one side.

But don't take my word for it, Waldemar will know better than I, hopefully he'll be along to give his input.

[Waldemar]

The problem maybe cone error. (or maybe flexure)  I used three OTA rings on my TEC to prevent flexure.
The real problem is that you can't acces your scope being in a remote position...
Not being able to fine tune things yourself and being at the merci  of somebody elses technical skills and knowhow can be very frustrating.

Running SMTP may give you some more insight.

B.t.w., thank you for your kind words Dave, but I am not a specialist either.

Edited June 23, 2019 by Waldemar

[Datalord]

Well, I'm going to declare success. The good gents at E-Eye did an adjustment and this time it hit the nail for real. Tonight I managed to get a full 71 point autopoint run to resolve all points in the sky and give me this:

At 5:54 local time Spain I captured the proof in this unguided 1200s exposure:

I can't find fault with it. While I'm happy I finally got it, I'm so tired with the journey so far to really celebrate. But in fairness, this is amazing and bodes extremely well for the future.