Daily frustrations

[TheCrazedLog]

Hey all:

Slight rant/request for help/sympathy.

For the second time in a row, I've pulled out all my gear, set it up and been thwarted by computers. For a guy who's job is in computers (sysadmin) you'd think I'd have it under control. Regrettably it is not so.

I've got an EQ-6 with EQMod connected to an XP laptop running Stellarium, Stellarium Scope, Alignmaster, a GPS that think its a mouse (seriously: I plug it in and 50% of the time the pointer goes ape) and a canon 40d, with a DSI2 as a guide camera.

The first night on a HP 6930p running XP, the video drivers and stellarium didn't get on and they both crashed, taking things with it. THe backup computer (my old mac) had an enter key failure and its now permanently retired.
The replacement laptop, an IBM T61, worked fine right up to the point i plugged in the Canon and while Windows would see the camera, APT and EOS utility would not. After trial and error I've figured out that it has something to do with the USB ports on the T61: everything else works fine on the desktop at home.

My questions are:
- Is EQMod temperamental for anyone else? I seem to have it crash at least once every two sessions. It'll lock hard and I have to start again.

- Stellarium/Stellarium Scope: What is the stability like for others using these products? I like them, but I'm not sure where the system instability is coming from?

- Has anyone noticed any major difference in stability moving from XP to 7? Sure, 7 is newer, but anyone who's been around a while in IT knows straight away that just because something is newer doesn't make it better (Windows ME, Windows 8.0, the list goes on)

- Apart from the software listed here, what other suggestions do people have? I've got Astroplanner, but in terms of presentation and ease of use, Stellarium for me gives much better situational awareness. Maybe Carte Du Ciel (how do I spell that...?)

- I'm considering breaking out functions on to separate computers: One for imaging, one for scope control. Any thoughts?

Thanks

Anthony

[mldee]

I finally got my old XP SP3 PC working well last night, after a 3 year break to build a new house. No room for full obs shed, so just installed a pier in the backyard about 6m from the PC location on the house back deck. The PC uses a 4yr old Gigabyte VM900M motherboard with 4Gb RAM and a misc old Pentium CPU and a TP-Link WiFi dongle.

It connects to the pier via a single ATEN 5m active USB extender cable, with two hubs at the pier, one for the power-hungry USB DSI guider and one for everything else. I disconnected the red 5v wire at the first hub to prevent 5v feed back to the PC. There are twin 12vdc heavy cables run underground to the pier for all power, no 240vac!

After a couple of initial hardware hiccups, it finally all came together yesterday and worked perfectly for 7 hours, with all equipment connected and running, including a 2 hour imaging/guiding test last night. I'm very pleased to see it all happening using XP on a single computer with a single USB 2 connection.

Pier setup is azeq6 running EQMOD via Dontronics ftdi cable, DSI II Pro mono guiding camera and QHY 8 Pro OSC imager, mounted on an ONAG guider. Test image of Eta C last night ran well with 20 x 5min exposures showing round stars. We'll start to get more ambitious tonight!

Software is PHD2 for guiding (reliable and has a good polar alignment wizard), CdC for star selection, and Nebulosity 3.2 for imaging. All on the one PC.

After the test last night, also connected the PC wirelessly via my Nexus 10 tablet using Microsoft remote desktop for Android, worked perfectly, with all programs running. Neat to be able to stroll down to the pier and still see/control the PC. Great for manually focusing.

Hope this info might be of some help in getting your setup going. It can be done!

[TheCrazedLog]

Hey:

Thanks for that. I'll replace the serial cable which is showing some external damage to the sheath (its come out of the plug, however the data portion looks fine IIRC).

I think I'm using a prolific chipset USB-serial adaptor, I've no idea if that is an issue.

[traveller]

Hi Anthony,
Some tips from my limited experience.
1. Use a EQDIR cable to connect the mount with the laptop.
2. Make sure you map the COM port of the EQDIR cable and stick to that port each time (or map the COM port each time, your choice :))
3. Fire up Stellariumscope , connect to mount (I do Stellarium auto start from Stellarium scope).
4. Map your bearings and save the site as a default.
I have the same sequence on my old xp and my new(er) Win7, both works fine.
I also recommend Backyard EOS and a game controller (I use an old PS2 wired controller via a USB converter).
Now just waiting for clouds and rain to go away :lol:
Hope that helps
Bo

[traveller]

Also this
http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/faqs/alignmaster.html
Bo

[alistairsam]

hi,

Probably try running eqmod in xpsp3 compatibility mode.
I run it on win7 64 bit and have no crashes or hangs.
yeah, tell me about software frustration, I'm in IT and its so annoying when things play up.
I'm going to make a ghost image of a fresh win7 install with all the updates so I can just restore and re-install the apps.

one laptop should be fine, but I would avoid the usb-serial converters. just get the usb2eq6 cable. that works great.

stellarium does hang up a lot on me. it sometimes doesn't detect the scope and I have to configure it all over again, it sometimes hangs, so I switch between CDC and stellarium. CDC is quite reliable and I use it for my sync's and goto but stellarium is good for visualizing where the target is.

I have a laptop on a docking station in a box next to the scope with everything connected. once I finish, just undock it and take it indoors.

I use maxim for almost everything, so start up with stellarium scope, connect in maxim, goto in stellarium or cdc cause CDC has this very neat feature where you can list all the objects that are in the window, in a table and it shows the magnitude, type of object, even when it rises, sets, transits. I find that invaluable.
I use astroplanner on another laptop.

I also have a fits viewer on the scope laptop so I can quickly stretch the image if needed just to see what it looks like, I hate maxim's image display.
ccdstack is perfect for that.

Then focusmax for autofocus. I rarely use PHd, for me its been pretty unreliable. maxim's guiding is quick and easy and its all integrated, so works well with dithering.

I do need to find that script that can turn the cooler off for a CCD.
I normally set my sequence in maxim, then in eqmod, set the timer to park after the exposures, and a $5 electrical timer turns off power at 6am to everything, laptop is set to hibernate in 15 minutes on battery.

edit: oh and tick the boxes in eqmod to save and load sync points on startup and park. that's invaluable.

Cheers
Alistair

[ZeroID]

I'm looking to do two PC's in the Ob. One for Guiding, one for imaging. Bit fed up with phd or EQMOD crashing and having to do all the imaging setup again. Also probably less likely to crash in the first place.

But I've got a source of free PCs to rebuild and reload so hardware is not a problem. :thumbsup:

[MrB]

Can't comment on XP, but I've not had a drama with the following;
Cheap little 10" netbook with AMD E450 APU,
Win 7 Home Premium,
ASCOM 6.1,
EQASCOM(EQmod) thru Cartes du Ciel,
USB to RS232 thru synscan and PC Direct mode,
PHD with QHY5,
BackYard EOS.

I've not used BYE much, only the trial, I was using APT(Astro Photography Tool) to control the camera but I was having dramas with it, tho it didn't affect Ascom or EQmod. I'm back to using an intervalometer.

[gbeal]

Well, for an anti-PC sort of person, I must be blessed then.
I run a PC (the only one I own, apart from that I am completely Mac). It is solely for imaging etc, and is a "re-boxed" desktop, attached to the pier.
It has Win7 on it, and I run EQMOD etc on it without any issues whatsoever.

OK, there was an issue, it related to the DMK camera I had and the fact the PC has an AMD processor. Sold the DMK, got a Point Grey and never looked back.
Gary

[Eden]

Sorry to hear of your frustrations Anthony.

Windows XP was a great operating system for a long time. As you're probably aware, Microsoft concluded their support for it earlier this year. Since that time, a number of serious exploits have surfaced which specifically target Windows XP and thus make it less than ideal for use online. Although a lot of people continue to find it perfectly suitable for their specific requirements, I wouldn't recommend staying with it as you will only experience more frustrations down the track as astronomy tools change and hardware vendors move away from providing drivers for the OS.

The other problem with XP is that a lot of the Astronomy tools are written using the .NET Framework. Windows XP supports .NET Framework up to 4.0 -- although a lot of software vendors have been kind enough to the XP community to write their products so that they build under 4.0, it's only a matter of time before people move away from it and onto 4.5, leaving XP out in the cold.

I've been running EQMod on Windows 7 since the start of the year and have had no issues with it. I also run Stellarium and StellariumScope alongside it with no issues.

Stellarium seems perfectly stable from what I have seen. If I am not mistaken it renders using OpenGL as opposed to DirectX and some video cards are not particularly hot when it comes to their support for it. StellariumScope is a bit hacky and may not work as reported with the absolute latest version of Stellarium -- to get it working I had to fiddle around with it a bit and it kept complaining about the configuration file not being correct because of the newer Stellarium version. Aside from that, it works fine. I'm looking at writing a telescope server in the near future, to do essentially the same thing as StellariumScope but with tighter integration with Stellarium.

I would stick to the one machine, but move to Windows 7. It has slightly higher memory requirements but aside from that will run fine on machines that were originally shipped from the OEM with XP installed.

The prolific cable might be giving you issues, I know that other EQMod users have had problems with it. Shoestring do one, you might like to give that a go.

[mithrandir]

One of these days ATI might come up with some good OpenGL drivers. Until then I'll stick to NVidia cards. Stellarium is really good at finding faults in OpenGL drivers.

[TheCrazedLog]

Hey all:

Thanks for the comments/suggestions. The evening of the day I wrote the post I took everything outside again and this time had one computer doing guiding etc and one doing APT. The 6930p recognizes the 40D, the T61 doesn't crash in Stellarium. I even got the wife to help out connect things up and help me align things!

Part of the problem of the night was a lack of preparation: its all very well to think you've got everything installed, right up to the point you plug in the DSI and realise that you've no idea where the hell the drivers are and oh look at that, neither does windows (".... what is this dude? Some kinda scanner?" "No its a camera" "Nah.... s'not a camera").

The second night everything went perfectly, apart from me not understanding how APT works and figuring out that on the fly. That and having trouble with a guidestar.

I think the two PC approach will stand atm. It lets me monitor the EQMod guidance commands (I love graphs....) as well as control the camera.