lukepower

Hi Michael, well, currently the mount is at work in Namibia, but I am planning to move the observatory into a dome where I will need a new fork mount. So yes, in theory the mount would be available from April 2022 onwards (!) if you are interested. I would service i, even if it works perfectly and has been upgraded to absolute encoders, just beccause once it is set up one usually won't touch it anymore

Still waiting for Baader to deliver it... Will be a L500 from Planewave installed in Spain

I know I'm late, but maybe this piece could help: I experienced a similar issue with my DDM60 back in august. Basically the logs were full of odd magnetic angles and high powers, with the mount not even moving anymore. The scope was perfectly balanced (it's a remote system). After much back and forth with ASA we decided to swap the circuit board. Not easy with Covid and everything going on, but I still made it down to Namibia and swapped that circuit (plenty of tiny wires to check, trust me). Okay so long story short, the swap didn't improve anything. I still had this weird issue. The solution was to reset the "Autofind" settings: I played around with the values, and basically reset them, and did a "manual" Autofind for each axis. And suddenly it worked again like a charm. Seems that for whatever reason the starting values were in such a wrong combination that it caused the Autofind, happening when you first power up the motors, to give bad values and lead to all sorts of issues (position errors, swinging motors, the likes). This might be completely unrelated, but maybe worth giving it a try. Btw, I will get my hands on a new direct drive mount from another Manufacturer (big US player) and I am eager to compare the performance with the ASA. I am still unhappy with the software, albeit having it run on a total of three mounts currently night after night.

Hi there, as I am pretty unsuccessful in selling my remote observatory located in Astrocamp, Spain, I am now considering to sell the single components. Maybe there is something for each of you ASA DDM85XL on bent pier with counterweights and original power supply; I would imagine to ask about 9.500 Euro plus shipping (original shipping cartons are ready). It's a 2012 version with relative encoders. FLI ML16200 with grade 2 CCD, bought in 2017: Asking for 4000 EUR FLi Filter Wheel including LRGB Ha7 OIII SII Baader round filters: 1500 EUR Optical tube: Newton configuration, 14.5" Alluna main mirror, ASA 3" Wynne corrector; customized focuser: Make offer The system is still running and usable remotely, so if someone would like to check the performance of the components I am willing to make a remote session. The components are working perfectly - well, maybe it would be time to make a new coating on the main mirror, after all it is running since 7 years. The prices I indicated are indicative, and I am gladly considering any offers. Maybe there is something for you among the stuff Best regards Lukas

I tried it a few years ago. The tricky thing is that you also need ASCOM to run under WINE, and also you need access to the serial port or USB-to-serial which is connected to your Linux machine. I can't remember how it ended but I did not further investigated it. YOu might be able to give it a try on a linux computer and see what happens

None are known...

It is basically a correction in the wrong direction. I have to try it again once I am there (it is a remote system), but it is weird... I am gonna try to do a comparison run with TPoint/TheSkyX as that might at least give me a pointer whenever it is an ASA issue or my own fault

Hi Mark, thank you for your kind answer. My issue is that, following the procedure (as you outline) I get a given error in Alt and Az. Then I center a star, hit "Move Now" so that Autoslew moves to the position the star should be, and do the adjustments with the baseplate. Once I have the star centered, and do a new clean pointing run for the polar alignment, my error in Alt and Az grows instead of becoming smaller Basically I am confused on whetever I am doing something wrong here

Hi guys, I have an interesting observation I made when trying to polar align my DDM60 mount in Namibia (southern hemisphere): Following the usual approach (Sequence take some points, then solve, and do the "Move star Now" to center the selected star with the mechanical dials of the mount) I noticed that I was somewhat moving the star in the exact wrong direction. It was like when recentering the star and doing a new pointing run the Polar Alignment error was doubled as compared to before. Am I doing something wrong? Maybe other users from the southern hemisphere can comment? Also, I seem to have issues getting the AutoPoint function to work properly within Sequence. Best regards Lukas

Hi Christer, I answered you through mail. For reference to the others, hosting in Nerpio costs depending on the scope size. With this system we end up at about 540 Euro /month VAT included. Cheers

Hi Guys, after more than 4 years of use, and now having two young daughters, I came to the conclusion that I have not enough free spare time to use my observatories at their fullest. So I decided to sell my system which is currently hosted in Nerpio, Spain. The system has the following components: custom made 14,5" f3.6 Newton Scope (main mirror from Alluna) ASA DDM85 mount on a bent pier FLI Microline 16200 CCD camera, with Baader LRGB Ha7, O3 and S2 filters Lodestar autoguider QSC focuser A new Intel i5 computer for controlling the whole system, with valid MaximDL, CCDAutoPilot5, FocusMax4 and PinPoint licenses A Pan-tilt webcam to check the system if needed one ethernet controlled power plug to power on/off the single components of the system A small rack with all power adapters and the computer itself, with a small display and keyboard in case there is a need for locally working on the system As I said, the whole system is working flawlessy and is located in the Astrocam remote observatories. Depending on the weather, the seeing is often very good to excellent (my personal best being several nights with 1.0" FWHM), mostly in the 1.3"-1.8" FWHM range. Their support is also very good, but - of course - it comes at a cost of monthly payments, which I happily paid but by using the system less and less might now become useless for me. I would be happy to find somebody who knows what he would get into - especially dealing with ASA mounts - and able to use the system at its fullest. I would be happy to show the capabilities of the system over a remote session, if there is any interest. If you have more questions please drop me a PM or email. I didn't specify a price as I am open to proposals. Thanks Lukas

Hi Adamo, don't get me wrong, but the price might be too high for a used mount. Just my two cents. You are about 800 Euro lower than a new version... Best regards

Yup should be a Ascom Hub

Christer, they are charging 2000 Euro a year, so it is pretty cheap. I've made a big wooden case (weight 400kgs!) where I put everything into, and shipped it via air freight to Windhoek. It costed about 2000 Euro including VAT and taxes. The farm owner then picked it up and drove it to the farm (another ~300 bucks). It was all surprisingly flawless, after 7 days it went all the way from here to the farm Best regards

Hi George, they have built two blocks, each with seven roll-off roof "boxes" in it (sized approximately 3m x 3m each). At the time I have been there, there was a smaller setup (my "neighbor") with a 110mm APO. I know of another group of astronomers who set up a system in the last month, so right now there are 3 systems installed. The farm offers very competitive pricing for the rental, but doesn't advertise it currently on any website or magazine - I found out by coincidence and by knowing the owners from a trip I've made there a few years ago. The nice part is that the rent includes the motorized roll-off roof - the owner is a very knowledgeable electrician who set up everything, and it works smoothly both from a mechanical standpoint as well as from the driver side (ASCOM driver). Also, they have an AAG Weather Sensor whose data is available, and an all-sky sensor. The only downside is the internet link, which is pretty stable, but a bit too slow should more telescopes come online. They are worink it out with Telecom Namibia, but it ain't easy... And well, the weather and seeing of this place are simply awesome: I went down to 0.9" FWHM one night (!), and mostly running around 1.2" FWHM. We are talking of about 300 photometric nights per year (!!), so one can definitively gather truckloads of data over a year Best regards

Hi George, I have to dig for a few images. The system itself is my "old" Cassegrain I used to have here in the Dolomites: 20" f/9 Cassegrain with ASA 4" reducer, bringing the focal length to about 3450mm FLI Proline 16803 CCD ASA DDM85 mount with absolute encoders Baader LRGBHa7O3S2 filter set The whole thing is connected to an industrial grade, fanless computer which runs Windows 10. A small ethernet switch and remote power switch complete the setup. I also have a small PTZ camera for checking the interior of the roll-off roof. I actually found some "features" (I'd call them bugs) in Autoslew which prevent it from parking the scope when starting from the wrong side, but luckily ACP handles it correctly anyway. The internet connection is a 4M/1M WIMAX connection over about 130kms to Windhoek, Namibia. Surprisingly, it works pretty well. The frames of eery night are automatically being compressed with 7Zip PPM, which reduces the size to about 45% of the original, and then transferred to a Google Drive, from where they land on my HDD Here some images I took while I was on site. Btw, the Farm is named "Hakos" and is close to the Gamsberg, which once used to be the planned spot for a big astronomical site for Europe before they moved to Chile...

Hi guys, I have been busy at work in the last months, but still managed to pursue a very special project for me: I moved my big Cassegrain scope (20") from my home in Italy to a remote farm in Namibia at the beginning of June. I managed to setup everything in three days and nights, and since this beast is working basically every single night like a swiss clock Well, long story short, here is a quick elaboration of IC4628 which was sort of my first target. The nights are completely automated, thus I am imaging several different targets per night and ending at about 1GB of raw data per night. Again, this image has been only calibrated and stretched with Pixinsight. It's LRGB with about 2 hours of data per channel. CS

Hi Max, not really, the driver is sending a shitload of data through the serial line, mostly status updates coming from the mount. I currently have no time to dig into this further. ACL might be an interesting way to go, and there seems to be an ASCOM driver already there: https://www.ascom-standards.org/Downloads/ScopeDrivers.htm Maybe somebody could give it a try?

Well, I did a first test, and am pretty sure it will be a hell of a work to do But anyway, basically we'd need to start with something that we can reproduce easily. I'd go for the classic startup sequence, so something like this would be a start: Start the USB sniffer (or COM port sniffer) software like Wireshark, and let it log all data sent and received on the mount's COM port. Start Autoslew Power on the motors Once the motors are powered on, power them off again Close Autoslew Stop the sniffer's logging, and send the log somewhere we can share it (like pastebin) A first test shows communication with short codes and numbers, which could mean anything. The next step would then be to correlate the data sent from Autoslew with functions/commands. Stuff like activating sidereal tracking, stopping tracking, goto a position etc. Could become interesting @Bernhard: Do you know if Wireshark is sniffing only USB or could it also log serial commands (data sent over a virtual COM port like used by Autoslew)?

Hi Max, I had a similar thought last night. What if we could reverse engineer the serial protocol Autoslew uses for communication? It shouldn't be too difficult, and if we would manage to write an open source driver for the ASA mounts, we could make our own "MLPT" or whatever, and maybe even get a Linux port going. I wonder if anybody is willing to log the data going over the (virtual) COM port Autoslew uses? Maybe with adding what operations have been done at the mount, so that we could check if there are any differences between different mount versions... Cheers Lukas

Any news about the INDI solution for controlling ASA mounts?

Hi, has anybody of you guys noticed the "Pro Settings" under the "Telescope" Menu item? Any idea what this is doing? It came up with the serial for an Absolute-Encoder DDM85...

Very very nice Antonio!

Hi Patrick, nice images! did you use on of the rental observatories at Tivoli? Best regards Lukas

Hallo Robert, I would also try to connect to another USB port on the computer side. I had once a situation where one port was fried by some static electricity and sporadically stopped working. Clear skies