Cable Management advice

[peonic]

My setup is a bit of a mess - cable spagehetti everywhere!

Whilst it hasn't happened yet - I do worry about cable snags.

I'm running a mini PC and PegasusAstro mini power box - currently both are velcro'd to the side of my mount. Ideally, I'd like to try and get these items both mounted above or below the scope, and then utilise short cables to try and tidy everything and limit the number of cables that need to run down the mount as much as possible.

I've seen a couple of YouTuber's using what look to be "equipment boxes" made out of dovetail plates, that provide a nice place to store electronics under the scope - but I can't find the required parts online (maybe I'm just not using the right search terms!).

 

Anyone done anything awesome to make their cables look pretty?

 

Chris

[scotty38]

Here's an old photo of my setup. Some of my kit has changed and I'm actually a bit tidier now with shorter cables but you'll get the idea of how I mounted things so just one way of doing it.

[peonic]

Cheers Scotty - I've got another dovetail on order - think I'll try with mounting on top first, then shell out for a huge losmandy plate if I can't get it to where I want with just a long Skywatcher dovetail.

 

Cheers,

Chris

[Budgie1]

I use valcro style cable ties to secure the dew heater cables for the main & guide scopes. These are stuck to the main scope tube, with an extra one for the USB & power cables from the main camera, which also have a short length of cable tidy wrap.

I still keep the Pegasus Power Box Advance valcroed to the side of the mount and if you can't mount everything on the dovetail, then this works well.

Sorry, no photos of the setup.

[Richard_]

On 10/08/2022 at 13:19, peonic said:

My setup is a bit of a mess - cable spagehetti everywhere!

Whilst it hasn't happened yet - I do worry about cable snags.

I'm running a mini PC and PegasusAstro mini power box - currently both are velcro'd to the side of my mount. Ideally, I'd like to try and get these items both mounted above or below the scope, and then utilise short cables to try and tidy everything and limit the number of cables that need to run down the mount as much as possible.

I've seen a couple of YouTuber's using what look to be "equipment boxes" made out of dovetail plates, that provide a nice place to store electronics under the scope - but I can't find the required parts online (maybe I'm just not using the right search terms!).

 

Anyone done anything awesome to make their cables look pretty?

 

Chris

I know this feeling and can fully emphasise with it! You're already off to a great start. When I bought my big refractor, I was setting up and tearing down every night and you can imagine how frustrating it was to have so many damned cables and remembering how to set it up (each night was a different iteration).

I set out on a journey of cable management to the point where my inner self has achieved a sense of calm. Here's a quick glimpse before and after some months of cable management with multiple iterations and changing equipment. Further below I've added some discussion and a link to the relevant products. Join me on the path to enlightenment. 

Before 

After

 

Before we start, I'd recommend reading this great information published by Pegasus with regards to cable management as that's where I started: https://pegasusastro.com//cable-management-recommendations/

I've mounted my mini-pc and Pegasus PowerBox Advance directly on the telescope. The only cables which dangle off my OTA is the 12V DC cable powering the PBBA and the USB EQDIR cable (pictured, it is coiled up in the mount carry handle, but when in use I uncoil it and let loose) from my PPBA. All camera cables, dew band heaters etc are connected to either the mini-pc or the PBBA. Meridian flips are sweet and never result in any snags. The mount is powered by a separate power brick so it's not connected to the PPBA. When I'm going to image, I roll out a four plug extension cord and plug my two power bricks in. 

The guidescope goes into the carry handle of the telescope, and on the side of the OTA rings are flat sections for mounting accessories. The PPBA and mini-pc are mounted to the rings using a WO DSD 210 and a Buckeye Stargazer 3D printed mount (PPBA and Mini-pc). Be careful with overtightenening the 3D printed thumbscrews, as I found out the hard way that they are not indestructible 

The next step is ensuring you have good quality cables of the right length! My 12V DC cables and dew cables were made to my specific length courtesy of Dew control (dew heaters and 12V cables). You can choose many different connector types (eg dew heaters with 12V DC if using with ASI Air, or the standard RCA if you use a convention dew controller or Pegasus products) and state a custom length for the cable. As the old saying goes "measure twice, cut once", its always a good idea to figure out how you want to set it up and when in doubt, always go a bit longer. Cables of the right length prevent sagging which can bind/snag during slewing and putting strain on electrical ports. They'll also reduce any electrial interference caused by coiling cables together, as stated in the Pegasus link I put above. I haven't bought custom length USB cables, as the Lindy chromo ones seem to work well for me but that might be my next step. 

Next up is cable management. I use velcro ties and cable management sleeves. The velcro ties are quite straight forward to use. If you look at my after picture you can see I placed one through the metal slot on the focuser and attached to my mini-pc and focuser cables to prevent sagging and catching in the focuser draw tube. I also velcro tied the PPBA power cable to the carry handle of my mount, with the power brick placed onto the accessory tray just below the handle. Keeping the cable affixed here reduces the strain from gravity and reduces the chances of snagging during a slew. This is well away from the EQDIR cable on the other side. You'll notice that I wrapped the super long EQDIR cable around the losbandy plate of the telescope to avoid strain on the PPBA USB port. 

With the sleeve, you need to be clever with this. If you bundle all your cables together, you could actually cause more of a sagging issue and more strain on your ports. If you look at my second "after" picture you can see I've placed a velcro tie around the extension tube in front of my filter wheel which is affixed to my cable sleeve. I've done the some up on top in front of my focuser. These attachment points keep the cable sleeve solid without any movement. When you wrap cables up in this, make sure there's enough slack on the camera side to prevent strain on the ports. 

There may certainly be better ways of doing this, but I don't have any issues due to equipment disconnections or snagging/binding cables so I'm happy with my result (so far). If you made it this far, thank you for coming to my TED talk 😂

[Synchronicity]

I don't have pictures but I use spiral cable wrap similar to below to loom cables together and feed them along the scope length and down.  With this it's easy to bring cables in and out of the loom at the right point and it can be tied to any handy support point to take the weight.  Just make sure to leave a big enough loop at rotating joints to allow full range of movement.

 

https://www.amazon.co.uk/AmazonCommercial-Cable-Tidy-Spiral-Wrap/dp/B08CFJ3T71/

[Corpze]

This is how I run my cables

/Daniel
 

 

[windjammer]

What's wrong with spaghetti ??

[Richard_]

16 hours ago, windjammer said:

What's wrong with spaghetti ??

😆

[tomato]

What's wrong with spaghetti? IMHO nothing at all. 😉

 

Seriously, short, tidy cables are nice, but I think we spend a lot of time on them in the UK simply because we can't use the set up in anger because of the clouds. Providing they can't snag then apart from the aesthetics what do neat and tidy cables do for your image quality? I just bundle them together and lash them near the COG of the rig with velcro straps and that's it.  The only cable failure I have encountered to date is a long ducted powered USB from the observatory to the warm room.

OK, If you have a well optimised scope set up that you never change, I can see the point in making a tidy, minimal cable run, but I re-configure my set up regularly so I would need purpose made looms for each configuration, and I'd rather spend the cash on processing software or something else that might improve my images.

 

 

[carastro]

I let it all hang out too and only tie back the immediate hangining cables.  a) change gear around a fair bit.  b) Had problems when attempting to tie back cables in the past and nearly caused cables being yanked out of sockets, so have never bothered since.

My rig at Kelling Heath a few years ago, and it hasn't changed much. this is a dual rig with two lots of imaging cables and two laptops.

  

Carole 

Edited January 4, 2023 by carastro

[Richard_]

57 minutes ago, tomato said:

What's wrong with spaghetti? IMHO nothing at all. 😉

 

Seriously, short, tidy cables are nice, but I think we spend a lot of time on them in the UK simply because we can't use the set up in anger because of the clouds. Providing they can't snag then apart from the aesthetics what do neat and tidy cables do for your image quality? I just bundle them together and lash them near the COG of the rig with velcro straps and that's it.  The only cable failure I have encountered to date is a long ducted powered USB from the observatory to the warm room.

OK, If you have a well optimised scope set up that you never change, I can see the point in making a tidy, minimal cable run, but I re-configure my set up regularly so I would need purpose made looms for each configuration, and I'd rather spend the cash on processing software or something else that might improve my images.

 

 

For me, the purpose was two fold. As you said, prevention of cable snagging is the main purpose for good cable management. Cables can snag on alt/az knobs, tripod accessory tray or power bricks so managing the routing of the cables can really help out. The second reason was to aid setup time. 

At the beginning of my astro journey, I used to set up and dismantle my setup at start/end of each session and bring everything back indoors. Having long, unruly cables everywhere made it a right faff to do each time so having shorter, well managed cables (also loomed together) really helped with setting up and seeing what went where. 

I didn't notice it with my set up, but some people can get issues with electromagnetic interference when long cables are bundled and bunched together. Having shorter cables or leaving everything dangle down can mitigate that issue. 

Plus, it just looks neat 😂

[tomato]

True, you don’t want to waste time untangling a rat’s nest of cables if you set up and take down each time but when I used to do that, I just colour coded the plugs. If each end was plugged into the right location, I didn’t care where they went in between. 
 

I’ve never suffered from electrical interference but I don’t have AC or high voltage anywhere near the rig, and I use decent quality cables.
 

For sure, if I had a fixed set up, I’d make them look nice, but for me it’s currently just wasted effort.

[ollypenrice]

Very tidy, bound and bundled cables are all very well till one of them packs up.  Sod's law tells you that this will happen within minutes of your setting up the system. Sod's law has a point! (I host 6 robotic setups...)

Products like the Pegasus offer a neat solution but they introduce another product to go wrong. One that I host found a short circuit in the mount and refused to power it up but, when the mount was connected directly to the mains via a 12V transformer, it worked fine.

On the setup in which I'm personally involved, we have no USB or power hubs. We drive every item from its own 12 volt transformer and all our USBs go into a desktop PC with sufficient USB ports to make this possible.

This is bliss.

lly

[wesdon1]

Personally, after one cable management disaster and a second near miss, I had to totally rethink how I do my imaging, thinking ahead to how far my mount will move during imaging, and arrange my cables so they have enough slack/room to move and not get snagged. I also made the most ridiculous of mistakes, basically "not seeing the woods for the trees" is a great analogy, but basically I spent weeks bemoaning the design flaws of my SW HEQ5 Mount, when in the end, it basically boiled down to me only needing to reverse the cable, so that the end with the ferrous magnet was connected to the handset, and not connected to the mount end! It was so basic and obvious, but in my anger/frustration, I just did not see it!? I'm still embarrassed after I created an entire post bemoaning the SW HEQ5 Mounts poor design, when all along I WAS AT FAULT FOR THE MOST PART!? LOL. 

( Please bare in mind I am a newbie to imaging, so my comments should not be taken as solid and trustworthy! I think you're best taking advice from the much more experienced members! I just felt that sharing my glaringly obvious mistakes might help you in some way avoid making similar mistakes in your astro-imaging journey! )

Edited January 4, 2023 by wesdon1
spelling mistake

[tomato]

58 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Very tidy, bound and bundled cables are all very well till one of them packs up.  Sod's law tells you that this will happen within minutes of your setting up the system. Sod's law has a point! (I host 6 robotic setups...)

Products like the Pegasus offer a neat solution but they introduce another product to go wrong. One that I host found a short circuit in the mount and refused to power it up but, when the mount was connected directly to the mains via a 12V transformer, it worked fine.

On the setup in which I'm personally involved, we have no USB or power hubs. We drive every item from its own 12 volt transformer and all our USBs go into a desktop PC with sufficient USB ports to make this possible.

This is bliss.

lly

Maybe it’s precisely because I always lash the cables in an untidy bundle that I have yet to encounter a failure in 3 years of running a dual rig. 
There, I’ve said it now…☺️

[Richard_]

52 minutes ago, ollypenrice said:

Very tidy, bound and bundled cables are all very well till one of them packs up.  Sod's law tells you that this will happen within minutes of your setting up the system. Sod's law has a point! (I host 6 robotic setups...)

Products like the Pegasus offer a neat solution but they introduce another product to go wrong. One that I host found a short circuit in the mount and refused to power it up but, when the mount was connected directly to the mains via a 12V transformer, it worked fine.

On the setup in which I'm personally involved, we have no USB or power hubs. We drive every item from its own 12 volt transformer and all our USBs go into a desktop PC with sufficient USB ports to make this possible.

This is bliss.

lly

I completely agree with your scenario Olly. When you're managing that many telescopes you are mostly interested in robustness and reliability. If it's a PITA to deal with 1 issue then dealing with 6 would be a nightmare! 

Regarding the Pegasus, I've purposely ensured the mount runs off a dedicated PSU rather than through the Pegasus for the reason you stated (plus potential under voltage if everything is working at once). 

14 minutes ago, wesdon1 said:

Personally, after one cable management disaster and a second near miss, I had to totally rethink how I do my imaging, thinking ahead to how far my mount will move during imaging, and arrange my cables so they have enough slack/room to move and not get snagged. I also made the most ridiculous of mistakes, basically "not seeing the woods for the trees" is a great analogy, but basically I spent weeks bemoaning the design flaws of my SW HEQ5 Mount, when in the end, it basically boiled down to me only needing to reverse the cable, so that the end with the ferrous magnet was connected to the handset, and not connected to the mount end! It was so basic and obvious, but in my anger/frustration, I just did not see it!? I'm still embarrassed after I created an entire post bemoaning the SW HEQ5 Mounts poor design, when all along I WAS AT FAULT FOR THE MOST PART!? LOL. 

( Please bare in mind I am a newbie to imaging, so my comments should not be taken as solid and trustworthy! I think you're best taking advice from the much more experienced members! I just felt that sharing my glaringly obvious mistakes might help you in some way avoid making similar mistakes in your astro-imaging journey! )

I remember reading that post. We've all made mistakes like that at some point or another so I wouldn't worry about it! 

1 minute ago, tomato said:

Maybe it’s precisely because I always lash the cables in an untidy bundle that I have yet to encounter a failure in 3 years of running a dual rig. 
There, I’ve said it now…☺️

Now you've done it, tempting fate like that 😁  On a serious note, if something works well for you then no need to change it!

[ollypenrice]

23 minutes ago, tomato said:

Maybe it’s precisely because I always lash the cables in an untidy bundle that I have yet to encounter a failure in 3 years of running a dual rig. 
There, I’ve said it now…☺️

Yer doomed!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

lly

[Alien 13]

OMG its easy to see why not many on here are aerospace engineers, had to take a tablet and lie down after flicking through this thread 😱

Alan

[TiffsAndAstro]

On 03/01/2023 at 22:16, windjammer said:

What's wrong with spaghetti ??

Mama mia!

[TiffsAndAstro]

On 04/01/2023 at 20:14, Alien 13 said:

OMG its easy to see why not many on here are aerospace engineers, had to take a tablet and lie down after flicking through this thread 😱

Alan

Probably Boeing 

[TiffsAndAstro]

I re adjusted my cables a bit, probably best I will do until I get a mini pc and power box. Tested it all in daylight no problems again.

Come darkness two days later, guide cam can't be found. Unplug and replug, reboot, etc, still can't be found. It can't be the usb cable, because it was fine 2 days ago. I remembered this forums warnings and general suspicion of usb cables and swapped it out just in case.

Of course it then worked perfectly

[david_taurus83]

I've tried a few different things like velcro straps, cable ties, those spiral type cable wraps. Best solution is the cable sleeves mentioned earlier as they allow the cables a little bit of movement in the sleeve itself. Also best if you can connect all your imaging train to a device (ASIAir, mini PC, Pegasus box, USB hub etc) on the scope or dovetail bar on the Dec axis as it stops everything getting wrapped around the mount. There's will always be the need for a power cable to go from source to device/mount unless your mount has through mount capabilities. I have a power cable and USB 3 from Pegasus UPB to shed through the pier. This is as tidy as I can get it.