A moderately successful evening

[JamesF]

The forecast was for a clear night tonight, but clouds clearly can't have read it because they've just turned up en masse.  I did at least get two hours or so of clear sky and used it to have another go at polar alignment, which I wasn't very happy with when I tried it a few days ago.

I'm using Kstars and Ekos, which has a nice little polar alignment tool, but last time I struggled with it.  This time I set everything up on my laptop and also installed a local copy of astrometry.net with all the necessary index files.  That seemed to make a big improvement over online solving as I typically had a solution within a couple of seconds rather than having to wait a minute or more.  I found it relatively straightforward to get both NEQ6s to within a claimed arcminute of the pole, though I was chasing gaps in the clouds for the second one.

I was going to leave the first mount (ED80 and ASI174MM) running unguided, collect subs of M27 just for something to do whilst I worked on the second mount, but INDI crashed when I tried to use it with an Altair camera so I had to stop everything after only a few subs and move the 174MM over to the Photoline 72ED on the second mount.

I'm happy to have the two mounts properly aligned now though.

It has left me with a few jobs for this week, such as finding out why the Altair camera doesn't work, making up some power cables for the mounts and cameras of the right length rather than using the long ones I bought from FLO with the mounts and having them trail everywhere, fitting appropriate length USB cables between the mounts and the pier computers and working out what extensions I need to get focus with different cameras (I had to use a fair size extension on both OTAs with the 174MM).

It's also given me a deep dissatisfaction with the alt adjustment method on the NEQ6, to the point where I'm not confident that the mounts will hold their alignment in the medium term.  Once I get a bit further through setting the observatory up I may well take one apart and see what can be done to improve it, perhaps at the same time as doing a belt mod.

James

[Pete Presland]

Sounds like a successful evenings work, still so windy last night at times! 

[StarDodger]

7 hours ago, JamesF said:

The forecast was for a clear night tonight, but clouds clearly can't have read it because they've just turned up en masse.  I did at least get two hours or so of clear sky and used it to have another go at polar alignment, which I wasn't very happy with when I tried it a few days ago.

I'm using Kstars and Ekos, which has a nice little polar alignment tool, but last time I struggled with it.  This time I set everything up on my laptop and also installed a local copy of astrometry.net with all the necessary index files.  That seemed to make a big improvement over online solving as I typically had a solution within a couple of seconds rather than having to wait a minute or more.  I found it relatively straightforward to get both NEQ6s to within a claimed arcminute of the pole, though I was chasing gaps in the clouds for the second one.

I was going to leave the first mount (ED80 and ASI174MM) running unguided, collect subs of M27 just for something to do whilst I worked on the second mount, but INDI crashed when I tried to use it with an Altair camera so I had to stop everything after only a few subs and move the 174MM over to the Photoline 72ED on the second mount.

I'm happy to have the two mounts properly aligned now though.

It has left me with a few jobs for this week, such as finding out why the Altair camera doesn't work, making up some power cables for the mounts and cameras of the right length rather than using the long ones I bought from FLO with the mounts and having them trail everywhere, fitting appropriate length USB cables between the mounts and the pier computers and working out what extensions I need to get focus with different cameras (I had to use a fair size extension on both OTAs with the 174MM).

It's also given me a deep dissatisfaction with the alt adjustment method on the NEQ6, to the point where I'm not confident that the mounts will hold their alignment in the medium term.  Once I get a bit further through setting the observatory up I may well take one apart and see what can be done to improve it, perhaps at the same time as doing a belt mod.

James

There are still some known issues with Altair cameras and INdI, this has been ongoing for a while now, and it seems to come down to two things.

1. There were problems with the SDK for Altair and Jasem had issues getting it sorted because they are Chinese re branded cameras and the manufactures were reluctant, or at least very slow to help (not Altair as they just re brand them) I think he did manage to get some in the end, but not sure it was exactly what he needed.

i think on the whole it’s now sorted to an extent. 🤔

2. Power was the next issue and as these Altair camera are unregulated, it seems that you need at least a 3 amp supply for the rpi, and if not already doing so using a powered hub with these cameras, again with a good 3 amp power supply, the issue some people had with using two Altair cameras, one for imaging and another for guiding, are still, AFAIK, still going on...apart from with the very latest AA cameras..

HTH

[JamesF]

3 hours ago, Pete Presland said:

Sounds like a successful evenings work, still so windy last night at times! 

Fortunately the observatory is quite sheltered from southerly and south-westerly winds, so it wasn't too bad for me at all last night.

James

[JamesF]

40 minutes ago, StarDodger said:

1. There were problems with the SDK for Altair and Jasem had issues getting it sorted because they are Chinese re branded cameras and the manufactures were reluctant, or at least very slow to help (not Altair as they just re brand them) I think he did manage to get some in the end, but not sure it was exactly what he needed.

This sort of issue doesn't seem to be restricted to Altair (or their supplier, Touptek).  Development of the QHY SDK appears to have been quite chaotic, too.  My gut feeling is that the manufacturers don't see non-Windows development as something worth committing much time to.

I wasn't best impressed that support for one of the older Altair GPcams has been quietly dropped from recent versions of their SDK though.  Especially as it still appears to work (I, err, hacked the binariy to make it recognise the camera

James

[Dragon_Astro]

7 hours ago, StarDodger said:

There are still some known issues with Altair cameras and INdI, this has been ongoing for a while now, and it seems to come down to two things.

1. There were problems with the SDK for Altair and Jasem had issues getting it sorted because they are Chinese re branded cameras and the manufactures were reluctant, or at least very slow to help (not Altair as they just re brand them) I think he did manage to get some in the end, but not sure it was exactly what he needed.

i think on the whole it’s now sorted to an extent. 🤔

2. Power was the next issue and as these Altair camera are unregulated, it seems that you need at least a 3 amp supply for the rpi, and if not already doing so using a powered hub with these cameras, again with a good 3 amp power supply, the issue some people had with using two Altair cameras, one for imaging and another for guiding, are still, AFAIK, still going on...apart from with the very latest AA cameras..

HTH

 

7 hours ago, StarDodger said:

There are still some known issues with Altair cameras and INdI, this has been ongoing for a while now, and it seems to come down to two things.

1. There were problems with the SDK for Altair and Jasem had issues getting it sorted because they are Chinese re branded cameras and the manufactures

2. Power was the next issue and as these Altair camera are unregulated, it seems that you need at least a 3 amp supply for the rpi, and if not already doing so using a powered hub with these cameras, again with a good 3 amp power supply, the issue some people had with using two Altair cameras, one for imaging and another for guiding, are still, AFAIK, still going on...apart from with the very latest AA cameras..

HTH

I use two Altair cmos, you saying they’d run better plugged into a powered USB hub rather than straight into the laptop?

Download speeds can be a lil “flakey”.

[StarDodger]

9 minutes ago, Dragon_Astro said:

 

I use two Altair cmos, you saying they’d run better plugged into a powered USB hub rather than straight into the laptop?

Download speeds can be a lil “flakey”.

No we were talking about using INdI with a raspberry PI...not Cameras connected directly to a laptop..

Edited August 11, 2019 by StarDodger

[Dragon_Astro]

11 minutes ago, StarDodger said:

No we were talking about using INdI with a raspberry PI...not Cameras connected directly to a laptop..

Aah I see  👍🏻