RamaSpaceShip

Hi Lukas, Have you tried wINDI ? It seems to fulfill your requirements without having to modify Autoslew.. Best regards. Bernard

Hi Lukas, I understand your point, but the main problem remains Sequence as it requires MaximDL and PinPoint, and there is no efficient replacement of Sequence under Linux, unless I miss something. By the way, Microsoft has ported a lot of .Net under Linux and made it open source. I would like to see if the port of Autoslew under Linux would be that complicated in these conditions. And if they open the Autoslew source, I will be the first to try the port. Best regards. Bernard

Hi Lukas, If you use a Windows computer to run Autoslew, then you can use VNC from Linux to control the whole pc. That's the solution I found as the simplest one, and that I use from my desk in the warm of my house. By the way, I would love to have a tiny box running Autoslew, and associated stuff (sequence, ...) and to control it from my Linux desktop I understood that this will be possible with Autoslew 2.0, but the lack of information about it leave room to too many dreams... Happy new year. Bernard

Hi Simon, There are several issues that can cause star trails. The most likely from your description is from cabling. If you have cables that do not go through the mount, they can make extra effort on the tube in certain positions that can cause start trails. The effect may increase with the cold in winter (if you are in the north hemisphere) as the cables become more and more rigid as the cold increases, and thus the cables have more difficulties to follow the mount movement. Whatever the issue is, you need to check the mount current logs to see if there is an extra current consumption. Best regards. Bernard

Hi John, My opinion is that absolute encoders remove the need to do a "home find". And, in terms of procedure, that's all. All the rest should be the same. Best regards. Bernard

Hi George, Congratulations for this discovery!!! Regards. Bernard

Hi Mike, Look at TeamViewer (www.teamviewer.com), you remote connect to your mini PC, and on your home desktop, you get the mini PC screen image in a window, and you can use your keyboard and mouse to control everything on the NUC and see what happens. Asking a question is rarely stupid, some answers may be.... Regards. Bernard

Hi Mike, Yes, WiFi is one way to go. Will your power be wireless also? (a battery?) If not, then "Power Line Carrier" is another way. Regards. Bernard

Lukas, You've got a wonderful image. The best of the Bubble that I have ever seen. Please continue this way. Bernard

Hi Uwe, It is wise to make a backup copy of your ASA configuration directory. It happens once to me that these data were obviously corrupted (but with a very different behavior than the one you've got). Wiping the configuration directory and puting back a working copy resets the correct behavior in a minute. It is a much simpler operation to reset the configuration from a working backup than reinstalling the whole stuff. Hope you wont need it anymore, but who knows!!! Best regards. Bernard

Hi Uwe, I see you have a RA/AZ calibration error.. If this error occurs before the homefind, then the homefind cannot behave correctly. You need to identify the cause of this first error, probably with help from ASA. Good luck. Bernard

If I understood correctly the ASA announcement, the new DDM60 will only need a browser, do they?

Hi Ian, I will try to be simple. You need to reason it terms of centre of gravity. The important thing here is that just the centre of gravity of the OTA matters. (This is static balancing, dynamic balancing is only needed when using high rotation speeds, and would be more complex). The goal of balancing the Dec axis is to put the centre of gravity of the whole OTA exactly on the RA axis. Nothing else is needed. To be able to reach that goal, you can, as a first step, put the centre of gravity of the OTA in the plane formed by the RA and Dec axes, so that sliding the OTA along its axis will allow to move its centre of gravity on the RA axis and thus realise the balancing. George's method replaces the RA axis by a thread for convenience, so that it becomes easy to show when the centre of gravity of the OTA is in the plane formed by the thread and the OTA axis. So yes, radial balance is sufficient. Hope you understand better. Bernard

Hi Ian, I had the same issue on my primary mirror two weeks ago. I use isopropyl alcohol. It is a very good solvant and dries quickly. It has no side effect on optical surfaces protection so you can use it on you corrector (or mirrors) safely. You can buy it in a drugstore by small quantites like 20 centilitres for ~10€, or buy a 2 litres bottle on the internet, like I did, for ~20€ !!! As Mark said, you need to soften the spots to be able to remove them. I used the following process: 1 put the corrector horizontal so that the solvant will not move away, 2 spray some solvant on the spots, 3 wait a while to leave time for the solvant to do its job, 4 put the corrector vertical to let the solvant go away, 5 dab with a rag while spraying the solvant 6 loop from step 1 until the spots are gone. Bernard

Hi Georg, It's a Dall Kirham, but the long tube, well balanced, will only have a lower acceleration, not a lower speed. The fact is that the balance error has much more impact on a long tube weighted far from the Dec axis, than on a DK weighted much closer from the Dec axis. The issue is that the weight at the end of a Newton tube creates a variable torque (unless it is well balanced like George did in the indicated thread), and this torque depends on the relative position of the tube. It is possible to model it, and the result is certainly very "chaotic", which can explain your strange behaviour. So, even if it appears painful, George's recipe is a reliable solution. Bernard

Hi Georg, You should read this thread, it will help you to find the perfect balance in Dec and RA. For Newton telescopes it is not really easy. But once this is done, you will be able to run at full speed on each axis. I have also an OTA of about 40kg on my DDM85 standard, and I have no problem to get a speed of 15 degrees per second. Bernard

Hi ASA, Thanks for the information, we were waiting for it since one year now.. But you understand that these promisses are not really sufficient, as we already got promisses from you last year, and are still waiting. As you can see on this thread, our patience is over. So you need to tell us more. You are changing the whole stuff, probably it was necessary. I still regret that you don't open the source. But once you tell us that big change, you need to tell us what will be the exact impact of the new solution for the current mount users: - will every mount be upgradable, and at which price? - what will be the detailed enhancements and new features? - what will be the third party software needed to use the new features I think we waited for too long, and deserve this detailed information. Regards. Bernard

Hi John, I fully support your questions. I would add a third one: 3. Does ASA consider opening the source of the software and the documentation as an option? Bernard

Hi John, I really understand your frustration, and the additional impact of the posted images. My comment was only to indicate that you threw stones at the wrong target: guys posting images. Whatever you think about their posts (and you are really completely free to have any opinion), they should not be stoned as they have nothing to do with the very bad ASA behaviour. There was no update of autoslew since two years now, if I remind correctly. The beta testers indicate since months that a great progress has been made on the software. So what is the obstacle for the beta to become a release? DDM users will all highly appreciate the fixed bugs and the new features that are available already in the beta. Of course, it is possible to ask to become a beta tester, but this would be counter productive: I want an official new release including all the benefits of the current beta. Best regards. Bernard

One year ago, there was a lot of traffic on this forum about getting an update for the mount software. After a month or two, we surprisingly got a few messages from ASA, telling that all should be fixed very soon. We are still waiting. I don't understand ASA behaviour and my guess is that there are some issues in their relationships with P. Keller, as this is the only thing I see that can explain such a result. Anyway, several people have posted their issues on this forum and, as far as I can see, they quite quickly got help from one or the other. And after a few iterations, it seems to me that a solution was found. So this forum does its job. One can complain that the are only a few ASA DDM users that contribute to help on this forum, and rarely, some ASA guy, but it may be because all the other DDM users either don't use the forum or do not think they can be of any help. The problem I see is that the ASA contribution is way too weak, not telling about the documentation of ASA products. A part of this forum is dedicated to images. If you don't like what is posted there, you can just ignore the posts in that area. Fair enough. Some people can really be proud of the images they made, and even more if they got an award from a magazine. They are just humans. And I am pretty sure that if you ask them some help on image processing, they would provide helpful answers. Really, the ASA silence is the issue. Hey, ASA team, do you hear us???

Hi Adam, Hermann is right, I forgot the "home find" step, probably because I always do it at startup. So the steps are: - put RA and DEC axis close to the reference marks (zenith for a DDM85, I don't know for a DDM60) and click the home symbol - do the polar alignment with a precision less than 1 arc-minute - create a pointing model with more than 40 stars and use it - point to a star, center it, and sync - click the button "set the new home position" And that's done. Bernard

Hi Adam, You need to: - do the polar alignment with a precision less than 1 arc-minute - create a pointing model with more than 40 stars and use it - point to a star, center it, and sync - click the button "set the new home position" The name of the button is confusing as the home position cannot be set: it corresponds to hardware marks. In fact, as far as I understood, the button associates the home position with the corresponding RA and DEC values in the current pointing model so that, once you have found the home position after startup, your mount is ready to point precisely to any position in the sky. Bernard

Hi George, Instead of adding weight, why don't you rotate the tube inside the rings so that the line and the cable are parallel? This would be a much simpler solution, providing of course, that you can do the rotation. Bernard

Hi Nigel, Can we assume that the place where you put the base plate of the pier was perfectly level? If this is the case, then you have to measure very precisely the height of the pier above this base plate at four points around it, and you will have to adjust so that the measured heights at these four points are all nearly equal. If the difference between the measures is less than a millimeter, the angle error is less than half a degree. If this is not the case, you can use a laser level to adjust precisely the level of the base of the pier. If you cannot get a laser level, you can draw leveled reference marks on the base plate, and do the measures indicated above from these marks. Hope this helps. Bernard

Hi Nigel, Can you try with a direct connection from the PC to the OTA hub? Best regards. Bernard