Camera for the Dob

[GasGiant]

Hi folks

 

Here's a question for you 🙂

 

At the moment I have an S23 ultra which I fit to the chosen lens on my dob via the usual clunky metal mount you get for this setup.

Setting it up is  real pain, and I have had only any real success with imaging the moon. As the phone/camera has multiple lenses, it switches between them when I try different zoom ratios and the images disappears.  Its then a mission to try line something up again, usually without any luck I might add. I end up getting frustrated and giving up. 

So, is there a camera that I can fit to the scope ( and here is the important bit ) that I can link to my phone via cable,hopefully with dedicated software for android ?  At this stage I don't want to go through laptops etc 

What choices do I have ?

I have a T mount setup for my DSLR but looking for something more convenient 

Thank you

 

Carl 

Edited February 10 by GasGiant

[Guest]

Not a whole lot of choices unless you put a PC of some kind in the loop.

 

However, I think zwo still maintains an Android app where you can connect to their cameras via an otg USB cable and view on your phone or tablet.  It may be the android version of asi studio.  Give a search on the zwo site for Android software and see.  Then you can use one of their cameras with an appropriate adapter.

There is also a product sold by one of the members here called astrowl that has a 4 inch screen and you can do basically planetary and do live stacking and view on the screen. It basically has the computer built in and has adapters for telescopes and Canon lenses I believe.

The only issue I see is field of view.  You will be imaging at basically prime focus, and depending on your focal length it may be difficult to find targets.  With your phone, you were imaging afocally, that is, through the camera lens which in turn looked through the dob optics.  That allowed at wide angle lens settings a wider field of view, kinda like using wide angle eyepieces.  With prime focus, the field of view is determined by the imaging chip size, which is usually pretty small.  Just something to keep in mind.

 

[GasGiant]

Great info, thank you. 

so confusing looking at what there is and what it does ! 

Instead of laptop can an Ipad be used ? I guess it can 

[Guest]

Problem with iOS and Android devices is they don't generally support the Astro software to connect to Astro cameras and mounts, that is ascom or indi based drivers.  Ascom is for windows devices only while indi is for Linux only.  So you're stuck with those two operating systems essentially.  There are apps like those from zwo that can run on Android or iOS and talk natively with their cameras but other than those and maybe webcams I'm not aware of any other Astro cameras that can do that.  There are some DSLR control apps for iOS and Android so if you want to go that route that is another option.  There is one for Android I like called openlivestacker.

 

[AstroKeith]

I use the ZWOASI android app to view images from my ASI Camera. I dont believe there is a iOS equivalent (which I would have preferred)

It works quite well.

[John_D]

15 minutes ago, AstroKeith said:

I use the ZWOASI android app to view images from my ASI Camera. I dont believe there is a iOS equivalent (which I would have preferred)

It works quite well.

Can I ask where you got the ZWOASI Android app from? It seems to have disappeared from the Google Play Store.

[AstroKeith]

You're right - it's gone. Strange.

[Guest]

I would say do a search on the zwo software page.  They often release their own apps there including betas, and it is kinda dodgy imo but I sorta trust them?  I know skywatcher does this too sometimes. I don't know if they have issues with Google play policy or what.

[GasGiant]

Thanks folks

 

Im going to try the live stacker 

[Artik]

Regarding iOS - it does not allow direct access to USB like Android - so developing an app that can access different kind of cameras is just impossible. On Android it is simpler (but also not straight forward)

OpenLiveStacker supports ZWO, ToupTek, DSLR/DSLM and USB Video Class cameras. So you can connect the camera directly and do live stacking on your Android phone or (better) tablet.

I suggest go over manual: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual/

Disclosure: I'm the author of OpenLiveStacker

[John_D]

15 hours ago, dciobota said:

I would say do a search on the zwo software page.  They often release their own apps there including betas, and it is kinda dodgy imo but I sorta trust them?  I know skywatcher does this too sometimes. I don't know if they have issues with Google play policy or what.

Thanks, I'll have a look and report back.

[John_D]

On 11/02/2024 at 16:06, dciobota said:

I would say do a search on the zwo software page.  They often release their own apps there including betas, and it is kinda dodgy imo but I sorta trust them?  I know skywatcher does this too sometimes. I don't know if they have issues with Google play policy or what.

I couldn't find it on the ZWO website so I contacted them directly and got the following response:

Hi thanks 
 
sorry we don't  have this available any more - its no longer supported or available unfortunately 
 
thanks
 
Simon 

After some more digging it is possible to find the APK of the latest version ( 2.0.5 ) on various Android archive websites. I guess it depends on how much you trust a random website not to inject malware. I certainly wouldn't install it on my phone but I have an older tablet that I would mind testing on. The trouble is that it isn't USB 3 and I don't have a suitable OTG cable for it so it's currently low priority. 

[Guest]

Man that sucks.  When I tried it it worked pretty well.  I wonder if the reason they abandoned it was to push folks to the asiair ecosystem.  Too bad.

[John_D]

1 hour ago, dciobota said:

Man that sucks.  When I tried it it worked pretty well.  I wonder if the reason they abandoned it was to push folks to the asiair ecosystem.  Too bad.

Could be but any released software comes with maintenance and support costs. My guess is that a bean counter with a spreadsheet said "no" so that was the end of it ☹️