OTA Cable Dock - lose most of your cables!

[Omaroo]

Asterisk (Geoff) has just ordered a couple of these little units - a Targus laptop docking station that is 27cm long by 7cm wide. I plan to strap one to my OTA dovetail and run a short parallel cable from it to my SBIG ST-8, a serial shutter cable from the RS-232 port to my 350D, a USB data cable to my 350D, a short USB cable to my QHY5 - and ONE SINGLE USB cable back down to my lappy to control it all. Awesome! I can do away with 4 or five cables dangling down from above my EQ head to my laptop below - which will make the EQ head's movement more fluid in cold weather without the added resistance of a stiff frozen bundle of cables to move at all angles. It also means that I can leave all the cables connected permanently, and have just one USB cable to plug in when the OTA is up on the mount during setup back down to the laptop.

Description:



http://www.targus.com/pdfviewer/GeneratePdfSheet.aspx?regionid=10&sku=ACP45AU

$89.80 from here until the 15th: http://www.citysoftware.com.au/Promotions/enews_090612/enews.html You save $85.00 - and Geoff has just bought two. That leaves 20 in stock ....

Cheers Geoff! :)

[[1ponders]]

Ya can't pass that up. :eyepop:

I haven't bought anything astronomical for ages and ages.....this could be the first :)

[turbo_pascale]

I would add a word of caution.

Most Parallel ports on laptops (and I assume accessories like this) are probably "printer" oriented, and not fully bidirectional. I would be anxious to see if it actually works reliably with your ST8.

In addition, based on the experience of many here, USB<->RS-232 converters are a bit hit & miss.

Sounds good in theory, and $90 isn't too much to blow on a test, but I would wait until the "early adopters" have worked out the kinks before buying one ;-)

Turbo

[Omaroo]

Haven't come across a parallel port on any of my laptops or desktops (including my Fujitsu TabletPC dock) which hasn't worked with the SBIG to date. IEEE1284 has been the omni-directional standard for many years. Older parallel ports used to be unidirectional and capable of out-going comms (to a printer) only.

We'll see. It's a new device - so I'm hoping for full 1284 compliance.

[lacad01]

Targus is pretty reputable. Their USB-Serial adaptor works a treat. Sounds like a pretty neat solution :thumbsup:

[Terry B]

I had to buy a new second hand puter for my observatory and bought a HP desktop for ~$200. The parallel port on it worked for my ST9E but had lots of excess random noise. This would average out but made photometry difficult.
To get around this I bought a parallel port PC card and put it in the puter. It is recognised and works with my printer but the SBIG refuses to talk to it. It seems it only likes "0378" or "0278" as the address and the cards address is different to this.
Hopefully this device works for you as this would be a good option instead of another parallel port.

[Omaroo]

Terry - I currently use a cheap Chinese PCMCIA parallel card bought off eBay and my ST-8i works just fine with it. Check your hardware device settings and make sure that it is set to LPT1 with defaults for everything. If necessary, totally disable the built-in port as it will hog the 1st port assignment. I have no problems whatsoever.

[kinetic]

Chris,

great suggestion, even just purely on the cabling aspect!.

Modified webcams that use the parallel port also might not
work on this type of parallel port emulation...if I recall correctly.
FWIW.

Steve

[Omaroo]

I guess we'll get these two soon, so we'll let you all know what the results are :)

[kinetic]

Do you have any modded webcams Chris? I'd love to know the outcome
if you do.
Edit: I'm asking someone with 2 Taks and G11 if he has webcams <slaps head> :)

cheers,

Steve

[marki]

I tried one of these last year and just could not get it working with my laptop so ended up taking it back. Hope you guys have better luck as they certainly would be ideal for the job.

Mark

[Omaroo]

Mark - it'd be appreciated if you could elaborate. Could I ask what type of laptop it was, what OS version, what applications and what peripherals were you attempting to drive? By all accounts I've read, these units are very highly rated. Thanks :)

[AlexN]

I had a laptop docking station for my laptop that actually plugged into the laptop from underneith through this weird expansion port.. That provided me with a serial, 4 extra USB ports, a parallel port (which is what I needed it for for my long exposure webcam and the ST9E...)

A lot of people report having hardware conflicts with this kind of thing, however even running windows vista, I had no problems with using the dock and the ST9E... No random connection issues etc...

I like this idea for lessening the amount of cables running from the computer to the mount... Definitely avoids all the tripping hazards..

[marki]

Toshiba p60 , XP pro SP2. Did not get to try anything as it would not play at all. Took it back to the shop and they couldn't get it working either so they refunded the money. Probably just got a dud :shrug: but it was the catalyst that made me upgrade all my gear as I was sick of fighting cables all night and having issues with the seriel to usb drivers. Ended up buying a toshiba A200 (vista 32) and using Targus ACH81 AU docking station which is small and light with 7 USB 2.0 ports of which 2 are high powered. This was good to drive the DSI Pro II I was running at the time. I still plug my QHY5 into the HP ports and also run my focuser, QHY8 and mount off the hub. All operates through Maxim DL 5 with no lockups or any other hassles. Vista just seems to get on with the serial to usb drivers better than XP did so I have found having serial ports unecessary.

Mark

[[1ponders]]

Update:

well i ordered mine on the 12 June. Still hasn't arrived. Checked my account and it "appears" to have been dispatched today, 24th June. Not happy about that. Delivery requires a signature and i won't be at the delivery address when delivery is expected next week on the Tuesday 30th June.

I hope it works better than their dispatch and delivery systems. :mad2:

[[1ponders]]

Ok after a bit of a mix up with delivery, they eventually delivered it... to the wrong place. Why?

Them: "'cos thats where we deliver everything when we deliver there. (my work)"

Me: "Even when asked not to do that because it was a private delivery and had nothing to do with (my work) and given specific instructions where to deliver it?"

Them: "Yes!"

:screwy: Go figure. :screwy:

Anyway. Drivers installed np and the laptop recognized the docking station and seems to have installed the drivers correctly. Won't know for sure until I hook up with a Serial cable or a parallel port. Anyone got a modded ToUcam they want to lend to try it out. :P

Unfortunately I thought it came with video input (which is what I really wanted it for; to run G-Star, Mintron etc at workshops) but it doesn't have it. :(

It does put the laptop at a nice angle to type though. :P

[Omaroo]

I got mine a couple of days ago. I haven't had the time to do anything about it - but will this weekend.