Hi again… time for an update.

I don’t feel like I got much done today… some tweaking and misc stuff…

I brought the red lights that I plan on putting in my observatory,  and kinda poked them around the perimeter of the wall. I have them about 4 foot up from the floor as putting them at the top of the wall might interfere with imaging and having them on the floor may cause them to get stepped on or snagged. I will leave them there until the finish of the project. I’m thinking that if you get LEDs, they can just stay turned on… otherwise do you have any ideas as to how to control them via computer? I thought maybe a simple timer that would turn them on at about 4PM and off at about 7AM every day may be better than nothing.

Logging into the PC, I always check for updates, and there were 3 so I went ahead and did those. I also had about 5 or 10 minutes where the computer monitor did all the flashing on and off that we had before… I have a video of it… later on it stopped doing that…. IDK!

I also experienced the monitor going to sleep and locking…. I had gone in and set it so that it wouldn’t, but something must make it default back. We dont want the monitor to shut off, because this will interrupt processes, such as imaging… also,  the screen locking will interrupt imaging. I’ve had that happen a number of times.

I then set up the new powered USB hub… it worked fine… no focuser issues at all. We need some velcro to start cable management… Now that the hub is in, I did hide all of wires from PC to mount except for the pier limit switch cable which is pretty thick.

I was happy to see webcam for use in monitoring the roof and pier as the observatory is opened and closed. It seems to pick up what we need to see when placed on the top right corner of the computer monitor. The red lights seem to give just enough light too… we need to test this at night as light kinda creeps in between roof and walls during the day. Also, we need a longer cable for the webcam as the cable kinda cuts between the operator and the keyboard.

I got the focuser working thru the new hub… so we can use the focuser hand controller at the mount for visual astronomy and use the computer for imaging… there will be more tweaking as it still doesn’t meet my expectations, but I’m thinking thats just learning curve and settings.

I was kinda dismayed in that I waited out the snow and drizzle to check cable length by opening the observatory and found that for some reason the dome driver didn’t automatically connect up… and today, the dome would open via the computer but wouldn’t close. Due to the snow, I didnt trouble shoot yet.

Do you have a storage area for the extra tripods and scopes and stuff? It would be great to clean house and hang the white board… we kinda need that hung to get the red lights permanently affixed…

We also had a couple of puddles of water on the floor… I’m not sure if thats a concern tho…

I have been in touch with a couple of the teachers and will be putting together a training game plan soon…

I’m thinking thats all for now…

Clear Skies!
Jeff