Laptop To Drive LXD75 Mount

[dennisjames1]

Hi Everyone

I have been absent from this wonderful hobby forever, back now hopefully for a long while and seriously.

I want to drive and image with my scope using a laptop, it's a 8SCT on the LXD75 mount i think i have what's needed, apart from the laptop.

Could i please get a recap of what is needed e.g cables etc.

I have The SkyX Serious Astronomer Edition and Meade autostar suite.

and the laptop anything special there ? What do you recommend?

Cheers

Dennis

[mldee]

I don't consider myself an expert, but a good, cost-effective laptop brand that has good warranty etc is the Dell series, available on line. Since you'll probably finish up using the screen for a lot of astro purposes, including camera, imaging, mount and scope control etc, consider screen size in any evaluation.

[pmrid]

Hi Dennis,
you say you want to drive an LXD75 mount (I have one of the same) and no doubt you'll want to guide with it and image through your SCT.
Let's talk about guiding first. You can guide in 1 of 3 basic ways:
1. Using a guidescope and guide camera that is either piggy-backed onto your main scope or mounted in a side-by-side configuration. Since your question was only about cables, I won't get bogged down in the debate over piggyback vs side-by-side or in the bits iof kit you'd need for either or both. The guidescope needs to have reasoble aperture to be able to get a decent look at stars in parts of the sky where they aren't always that numerous. So 70mm would probably be about the minimum and because light-grab decreases wit f-ratio, I'd suggest sticking wit a guide scope that was f/=5 to f/6 or so. The guide camera should be something like a QHY5 or Similar.
2. Using an off-axis guider. This is a device that sits between your scope and your imaging camera and has a small peripheral prism that diverts light up at right angles to the optical path of the main scope and into either a guide camera or (if you're an absolute masochist) an illuminated reticle eyepiece of aout 12.5mm focal length (with a x2 Barlow if yoiu want to be very fine). The same sort of guide camera is needed. This design has the advantage oif avoiding the necessity for a guidescope and all that goes with it (weight, differential flexure, cost);
3. Buying one of the new breed of CCD camera that both image and guide. These are not cheap and since I don't have one, I'll let others talk about them.

The compouter power you need will depend on how much or little of the above you want to do.
A basiuc setup with, say a Canon 1000D DSLR camera with Live-Focus would involve a USB cable to the camera from your laptop and, if you want toi do exposures lionger than 30o seconds (which you certainly will sooner rather than later) you'll need some for of shutter release device such as a DSUSB from Shoestring astronomy.
For thius you'll just n eed 2 x USB2 ports.
For the guiding, however, you'll need a USB port to take the video from the QHY5 camera at the minimum. The LXD75 mount doesn't have a dedicated guideport (like the EQ6 mount does for example) so you have to take the camera signan into the laptop using the USB cable that came with the camera. Then, you'll need PHD Guide (a freeware guide program) plus either a GPUSB from Shoestring astronomy (another USB poirt required) or a serial port (or another USB plus a USB/Serial converter) plus a Meade #505 cable to plug into your #497 Autostar handpiece or, if you want to use the Aux port on your mount, you'll also need a Meade #909 box. And since Meade don't make them any more, you'd better get the ones made by Gene Chimausky who you'll have to Google to find an address.
So you can do it. I do. I've found the LXD75 mount is OK for imaging but not perfect by any means. I'm in the middle of installing a Warpsdrive kit to eliminate a lot of the backlash and periodic error in the gears Meade use in their drive chain. When that's done I expect the mount will be pretty darn schmick.
To handle both guidjng and imaging, you'll need a pretty good CPU and plenty of RAM. A dual-core OPentium 2.6 plus and mimimum of 2 gig RAM and use XP not Vista.

Hope that helpd.

Peter

[renormalised]

As per Peter, above, the Meade #909 clone site...

http://home.comcast.net/~lynol1000/as_909/as_909_clone.htm (http://home.comcast.net/%7Elynol1000/as_909/as_909_clone.htm)

[pmrid]

Dennis, you haven't come back to this thread and I'm wondering whether I may have unintentionally discouraged you by swamping you with too much info in response to your original post. Wouldn't want to discourage your re-entry into this hobby.
I see you're in Toowoomba. There are quite a few amateurs not too far away (myself included) who I am sure would be happy to assist you if you need it, or to offer you the opportunity to link up with one of the semi-regular dark-sky nights around the place, either at Cambroon, Barambah, Ten Chain Hill etc etc.
Feel free to ask.
Peter

[dennisjames1]

Not at all Peter thank you for the detailed response , i am a carer and just haven't had a chance to get back to it all.. cheers :)

[dennisjames1]

Oh i should add that i have a meade deep sky imaginer II the colour ccd model. I bought all this at one time a couple of years ago ready to go with it and did nothing. So not wanting to spend too much more just yet. I really need that Laptop and then i will get into it and see what i need from there.

[White Rabbit]

I use an asus eee pc with a 10 inch screen. 1.6 atom processor with 2 gig of ram and it handles my canon dslr software Starry night 6 and PHD guiding as well as running the dslr and the my guide scope which is a DSI 2. Handles it no problem. I saw one the other day in a pawn shop on King st Newtown for $350 but you can by them new for about $700/800.

[toryglen-boy]

i did use an Acer Aspire One, but the resolution on the screen wasnt very forgiving.

I use a HP6220, 1Gb, 14" Screen, Pentium M 1.73Ghz, and that has enough poke to handle the guiding, the Camera software, and the VNC encryption etc. at the same time, it has 3 USB ports, and i use 2 of them.

works for me !!

:thumbsup: