Rob replied to the topic 'New Bahtinov Mask Assistant Tool' in the forum. 4 years ago

"I am a little short on time this week to develop, but hope to get some time for it next week.
There is not much logging in the code, I usually test it visually by aiming at a star"

You might consider making a simple artificial star. As simple as a light source in a box with a pin hole into some aluminium cooking foil. Along with a short telescope like a spare finder/guider scope or even a camera you now have a controlled source without the vagueries of the weather or indeed time of day since It is important to keep FL short if you need a short subject to camera distance for use indoors for example.

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Rob replied to the topic 'New Bahtinov Mask Assistant Tool' in the forum. 4 years ago

The Bahtinov tool in APT is a licensed version of Bahtinov Grabber. The original allows the bounding box to be freely sized. The tool in APT has a rather small fixed capture area. If this is imposed by ROI limitations is not known.
Having the bounding box scaleable is useful if zoomed in images.

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With the recent integration of Robert Brown's Myfocuser Pro2 into Indi and being a DIY kinda guy it would be my top pick. It has the option for a home switch and when installed works perfectly.
Only downside is If you want the nice looking cube form factor of the Pegasus or EAF then you will be out of luck with the naked stepper motor.
If electronics is not in your skill set Robert also offers fully assembled PCB leaving you to connect the motor of your choice and mount it. Or even the option to cobble off the shelf modules with no soldering required.
In terms of features and options offered I know of no commercial unit that comes close and should you have a question or problem he is readily contactable and ever helpful.

sourceforge.net/projects/arduinoascomfocuserpro2diy/

here's the motor/gearbox installed on my WO ZS126

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Rob replied to the topic 'DIY Flatfield Dustcover with RPi' in the forum. 4 years ago

Typical servos are designed with aircraft control surfaces in mind so are always limited in their range of motion to prevent linkage binding. There is however another class of servos designed for robotics and sail winches with 360 degree or even free motion. Might be worth doing a search using these search terms.
with such a large range of movement and direct drive you could bring the flap all the way parallel with the OTA to minimise windage.

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Not wishing to hijack here. You should contact the maker and suggest a combined USB 3 switcher and the raspi power button all on a board / hat to fit the raspi.

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Another to add to the wish list. A footprint for one of the many small buck converters to power a DSLR / mirroless at 7-8 volts via a dummy battery.
This is the one I have www.banggood.com/5A-XL4005-DCDC-Adjustab...rch&cur_warehouse=CN
The dummy battery is something like this. www.banggood.com/External-Power-Supply-A...601&cur_warehouse=CN
I managed to find a unit with no power adapter on fleabay for my Nikon

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Explaining computers did a quick test last week. www.youtube.com/watch?v=VJC6OpGpq0Y .
I would say however the second device where the heatsinks sandwich the board is a bit of a designers wet dream since the lower half is the most expansive but is not really thermally connected to the board only at the screw lugs to the top.
I prefer the Kodi branded unit since it performed better and totally enclosed the board.
Neither of course are suitable for a two layer stack but give insight into what works best. Use that knowledge to find other similar but taller solutions which no doubt will be available now or in the near future.
Personally I am using the Rock Pi 4 running a DIY Stellarmate install. They have a solution to house their board and an second layer and SSD. Rock Pi 4 sensibly placed the SOC on the bottom of their board making heatsinking much easier.

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Rob replied to the topic 'Stellarmate download' in the forum. 4 years ago

I was able to change release streams in the past by using the link in the original registration email.

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Active cooling is probably not required.
The RPI foundation have recently released a new firmware for RPI4 with better thermal management.
There are passive cooled cases which rival active cooling now available.
Ambient temperature outside at night works to reduce heating.
Finally, active cooling adds bulk and complexity.

I'd like to add a vote for focus motor driver be added

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Rob created a new topic ' Indi client server vs VNC' in the forum. 4 years ago

I notice a lot of Stellarmate users are connecting via VNC rather than the native Indi client - server option. With Kstars available on all major platforms I can see no reason for using VNC.
Anyone care to explain / enlighten on their preference for VNC?

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Stellarmate OS is an offering from Jasem the principal maintainer of Indilib. Just how far proceeds filter down to other contributors is a question for Jasem.

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