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Today sees the start of something interesting...

Milamber

By Milamber
in DIY Astronomer

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Psychobilly

Psychobilly

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Gonna need a shedload of captive nut thingies for the rack-mount stuff - anyone?

Arthur

Should be able to sort you out some of them (about a doz max) - they are in the City center office though and they are closed until tuesday and I normally work from the factory which is a few miles away... and it will cost me a couple of quid to park...

If your in a hurry pack of 50 with the bolts and cup washers arent too bad...

http://www.network-cabling.co.uk/store/m6-cage-nuts-bolts-and-washers-pack-of-50-p-517.html?gclid=CJ7rwp7jr5oCFQFqxwodHzBMcA

Peter...

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Milamber

Milamber

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Just a quickie update for you... this is where I am at with the control system so far today:

WASPcontrol.jpg

So that's a five computer local network, all with remote access so I can use the Evo to control the four Equiums (still to add in is the four port KVM for the Equiums, the two-port VGA switch and another keyboard - which will make things easier I hope). Also note the network hub has an uplink port to which is fitted a Bluetooth/broadband WAP. There are 5 USB repeater cables for the five cameras (guidecam not shown) and various other wires - all cololur-coded! - and odds/sods to make the thing work. Under the keyboard/rollerball drawer is the power distrubution unit for the PC's and the monitor, can't see it in the first pic so here's another one!

draw.jpg

Should get a road test this weekend and maybe even get the mount plugged in and running from this pile of wires - on purpose I mean :cool:

Arthur

PS - gotta love that CD R/W with the built-in multi-card reader. Going to make life a whole lot easier than dumping data onto the house PC over the wlan...

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Milamber

Milamber

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Been having some serious hassles with vnc software so today decided to pack all that in and do a test pic... so here's the first shot - not from the "array" but with the OO 10" on the mount and using what will be the guidecam... a QC3K. Taken at about 7pm (pic time is UT) this evening, brilliant sunshine not a cloud to be seen! Lots of frames with WXcapture and screwed in Registax5

Not great, but first for the system so here it is

Moon_20090529_1812_030.jpg

Arthur

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Milamber

Milamber

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OK then, since yesterday and actually getting cameras and things going, it occurred to me that I had not actually confirmed the HEQ5 would be capable of taking the weight of the scopes/cameras/mounting gear necessary for this project. Sure, I had had all four scopes on there a while back but that was just the scopes... what about with the four scopes, four cameras, four sets of rings and four extra dovetails?

Thankfully, the HEQ5 is a bit of a beast really (despite it's size it does have a fair weight capacity) and with a sneaky mounting system that capacity can be used to the full. Looking at the pics note that the counterweight bar is not all the way out and both axes are loose. Balance is pretty good and I reckon there's scope (ha! see what I did there?) for a guidescope in the future to allow all four to be used for imaging.

The cams are red, yellow, blue and black - as are the PC's in the control box, the network cables, the scopes, etc. - I decided at the start that some form of ID'ing each line was needed and colours seemed best - can't read numbers from 20 feet and besides, colours look good. I do think I am going to have issues with focusing... the mount is, after all, 20 feet from WASP-central, but hopefully once focus is achieved I can lock down and pray it stays good! I also now have control of the mount from WASP-central, not got the bluetooth or the wireless control pad installed yet though...

On to the pics then... sorry about the dust!

wasp-ready-1.jpg

wasp-ready-2.jpg

wasp-ready-3.jpg

wasp-ready-4.jpg

wasp-ready-5.jpg

wasp-ready-6.jpg

Hopefully, Ron's fears about aiming all four scopes are put to rest now they are all ring-mounted :cool:

Arthur

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barkis

barkis

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OK then, since yesterday and actually getting cameras and things going, it occurred to me that I had not actually confirmed the HEQ5 would be capable of taking the weight of the scopes/cameras/mounting gear necessary for this project. Sure, I had had all four scopes on there a while back but that was just the scopes... what about with the four scopes, four cameras, four sets of rings and four extra dovetails?

Thankfully, the HEQ5 is a bit of a beast really (despite it's size it does have a fair weight capacity) and with a sneaky mounting system that capacity can be used to the full. Looking at the pics note that the counterweight bar is not all the way out and both axes are loose. Balance is pretty good and I reckon there's scope (ha! see what I did there?) for a guidescope in the future to allow all four to be used for imaging.

The cams are red, yellow, blue and black - as are the PC's in the control box, the network cables, the scopes, etc. - I decided at the start that some form of ID'ing each line was needed and colours seemed best - can't read numbers from 20 feet and besides, colours look good. I do think I am going to have issues with focusing... the mount is, after all, 20 feet from WASP-central, but hopefully once focus is achieved I can lock down and pray it stays good! I also now have control of the mount from WASP-central, not got the bluetooth or the wireless control pad installed yet though...

On to the pics then... sorry about the dust!

wasp-ready-1.jpg

wasp-ready-2.jpg

wasp-ready-3.jpg

wasp-ready-4.jpg

wasp-ready-5.jpg

wasp-ready-6.jpg

Hopefully, Ron's fears about aiming all four scopes are put to rest now they are all ring-mounted :cool:

Arthur

Yes, true to your word Arthur. Quite a wide degree of movement available to each individual imager too. Alternatively, a hell of a lot of stacking data for the same target if necessary, in a fourfould reduction in time too.

Ron.

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Milamber

Milamber

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Fun starts now, aligning the four scopes/cameras to all point somewhere close to the same direction... Right-image diagonal in one scope with a cam in another, cheat and use GuideMaster to nudge things around. Rinse and repeat, as they say.

aligning-wasp-1.jpg

aligning-wasp-2.jpg

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Milamber

Milamber

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I have been having a few issues (to say the very very least) trying to get remote (vnc) access from the Evo to the other individual Equium PC's and struggling for a week against pointless MS-enforced XP Pro security systems - to such an extent that yesterday I called it a day and resigned myself to slower access via the Belkin four-port KVM instead. This would have been fine for LE imaging but for planetary I really needed that instant access to all four PC's. Today, I decided to try once more and DL'd an older version of Tight-VNC. I knocked one of the Equiums out of the system giving me three plus the Evo for control (I figure the Evo can handle the mount/guiding/planetarium while the other three just image) and somewhat amazingly, everything worked first time woohoo.gif

Allonatlast.jpg

That's three remotes (black, blue and yellow), with CdC and GuideMaster on the host - one hell of a relief, the problems have been getting to me, dragging me down and even making me resent starting the whole project... but now I feel can get going again, there's a light at the end!

Arthur egypt.gif

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Milamber

Milamber

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Ahem... whistle.gif

Moving swiftly on - scopes pretty much aligned and all looking good so far. Bit hard to tell but prognosis seems pretty much dandy! All cameras reporting in, update a little slow but I can live with it since it is much faster than the KVM's two second flip. Much more of this and I am going to have to start taking some proper piccies...

sorted.jpg

Arthur - in smug git mode banana.gif

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Milamber

Milamber

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Yup, first first first first. Just ran the beastie in anger... 640x480, each camera strolling along at 15fps, for about 60 secs. Over 3Gb, (yup, that's right - 3 Gigabytes of data in one minute), no dropped frames. I may need a bigger hard drive... :icon_salut:

I may be some time processing - but will it be worth it I wonder? Bearing in mind it's not dark yet I am not expecting perfection right away...

Arthur

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Milamber

Milamber

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OK people, here it is then. Considering the data was acquired pretty much in daylight so contrast was always going to be an issue, and also that I have to try to focus four scopes, and get them aligned, and it was a hot day, and I've not been well, and there was an M in the month, and there was an earthquake, and little green men landed in the field out back... it turned out not too bad! I left the image un-cropped so you can see how badly-aligned the scopes were with each other - major pain sorting that in the final stack but there you go.

What is it? Well, four avi's of around 980 frames each taken simultaneously through four Celestron C102 refractors with four QuickCam 4000 webcams running in 640x480 mode at 15 fps through four seperate PC's in around 60 seconds. Registax 5 sorted the avi's down to around 700 frames each and then stacked those into four bitmap images. These were dropped into Maxim DL and aligned used the two-point manual alignment. From there it was back to Registax with the single image for final wavelet tweaking before a quick polish in PI to the image you see here - including a 120% increase in size which I am none too sure about.

lunar-comp-j.jpg

Obviously this is a jpg image and so has a certain degradation but overall, for a quick 60 second burst on a hot evening nowhere near full dark when the atmosphere was doing a manic bellydance over the target I think the system did OK. Enough at least to allow me to go directly on to the next stage - finding a few MX5's to plug into the system. With these fast scopes planetary is not really an option, as you can see from this pic...

Arthur

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Milamber

Milamber

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... to allow me to go directly on to the next stage - finding a few MX5's

Of course, there is another option. Only look at the picture if you can keep a secret! One down, three to go... can you tell what it is yet?

one-down.jpg

I may rename this thread "Today sees the start of something Expensive". I've asked Andy at Astronomiser to sort me a suitable synchronised control system - I have every confidence :icon_salut:

It may now be that I no longer need the WASP control... but only if I get hooooge cards for the cams, which will be pricey... so the PC's may just become glorified offline storage - apart from driving and guiding the mount that is.

Arthur

PS - for gawd's sake don't tell the wife!

PPS - I now have four QC Pro 4000's for sale with 1.25" adapters - all have CCD sensors and are excellent planetary cameras... open to offers.

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