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Saturday morning: 41F, cloud and thick mist. From the comfort of indoors I cleared off all additional imaging software on the laptop.
Now I am back in the cold and damp observatory from where the AWR electronics cannot be easily removed to play indoors. Everything in the building is covered in condensation or dew!
Now I am back in the cold and damp observatory from where the AWR electronics cannot be easily removed to play indoors. Everything in the building is covered in condensation or dew!
I have uninstalled C-Du-C, Registax, HitechAstro focusing, PHD2 guiding & SharpCap. The intention is to add one software at a time until AWR-ASCOM breaks. I don't have a target for the AWR Goto drives. So I can only start from the parking position with a fresh Calibration/Sync. The USB/serial cable has been inserted directly into a laptop USB3 port instead of a brand new, 4x USB3 hub. The hub is presently providing ports for the wireless mouse and keyboard dongles. I need one of each and there will be no spare USB ports on the laptop. More importantly, I didn't want anything to interfere with the signals along the serial cable.
Let's start with C-Du-C: 4.2.4046 from Source Forge. NOT A GOOD START!! AWR-ASCOM does not exist! When I repaired the AWR-ASCOM driver and downloaded a new version of C-Du-C it crashed repeatedly. I can't close C-Du-C except via a full Windows restart. C-Du-C cannot connect to AWR-ASCOM. I have re-selected AWR-ASCOM Telescope after it disappeared from the Choosing list. "Empty string."
1pm. As a subscriber I have a link to the Tigra download of the AWR-ASCOM driver. 2 hours and much button pressing later, C-Du-C finally woke up and spoke to me! In a woman's voice. Some messages seem to be cut off at the beginning. Which makes life very confusing. I haven't found the off button to shut her up yet.
I'd like to Sync on the sky but can't without any sun. I have re-entered my observatory site coordinates which seems to have become corrupted during the new C-Du-C download. C-Du-C has changed and lost some familiar buttons. The important button to confirm a slew has actually landed on an object has gone. A right click offers options. I do prefer the new mouse dragging effects. It was a constant struggle to avoid a circular sky before the new download.
3pm, 43F and I'm still hoping to get a glimpse of the sun despite the endless cloud. I have downloaded Autostakkert to avoid having any more problems with Registax. Perhaps I ought to do the same with FireCapture to avoid the crashes with SharpCap?
BTW: I am running a fully up to date, Asus W10 laptop with 8GB of Ram, 256GB onboard SSD and several USB3 and USB C ports. I back up regularly to an external 1TB SSD when I found a 500MB SSD filled up too quickly for backup during an all day, solar imaging session.
From doing some homework about the fast, large chip, ASI174 camera I would be better off with a dedicated imaging PC. One with lots of USB3 ports. Each with individual PS/controllers. Masses of RAM and a big onboard SSD. Some imagers use a gaming laptop. They also leave out antivirus software to avoid slowing things down. I use a dedicated USB3 port for the camera. Even the little ASI120MC didn't like going through the 4xUSB3 hub. The ASI174 is much faster with a much bigger chip. So much more demanding of USB power and sheer machine and memory speed.
I could swap the onboard SSD for a much bigger one and might be able to add more RAM. Though that still leaves the USB3 ports as a potential limitation.
I tend to blog and browse [wirelessly] in the observatory while waiting endlessly for cloud to pass over. So security is probably worth having. Unless I use something else for the Internet and keep a dedicated imaging machine isolated. Or even air-gapped. I noticed that Google backup was slugging 8.5% of my CPU when I checked.
The Mercury Transit is now only 2 days away on Monday the 11th of November 2019. I shan't be happy if I can't capture some videos and images. Not that the weather is cooperative. Solid cloud is promised by one forecast service. Showers and sunny periods by another. Quite windy too from the SW. Which is the direction of the sun after lunch when the transit starts at 13.35 [CET] locally.
Let's start with C-Du-C: 4.2.4046 from Source Forge. NOT A GOOD START!! AWR-ASCOM does not exist! When I repaired the AWR-ASCOM driver and downloaded a new version of C-Du-C it crashed repeatedly. I can't close C-Du-C except via a full Windows restart. C-Du-C cannot connect to AWR-ASCOM. I have re-selected AWR-ASCOM Telescope after it disappeared from the Choosing list. "Empty string."
1pm. As a subscriber I have a link to the Tigra download of the AWR-ASCOM driver. 2 hours and much button pressing later, C-Du-C finally woke up and spoke to me! In a woman's voice. Some messages seem to be cut off at the beginning. Which makes life very confusing. I haven't found the off button to shut her up yet.
I'd like to Sync on the sky but can't without any sun. I have re-entered my observatory site coordinates which seems to have become corrupted during the new C-Du-C download. C-Du-C has changed and lost some familiar buttons. The important button to confirm a slew has actually landed on an object has gone. A right click offers options. I do prefer the new mouse dragging effects. It was a constant struggle to avoid a circular sky before the new download.
3pm, 43F and I'm still hoping to get a glimpse of the sun despite the endless cloud. I have downloaded Autostakkert to avoid having any more problems with Registax. Perhaps I ought to do the same with FireCapture to avoid the crashes with SharpCap?
BTW: I am running a fully up to date, Asus W10 laptop with 8GB of Ram, 256GB onboard SSD and several USB3 and USB C ports. I back up regularly to an external 1TB SSD when I found a 500MB SSD filled up too quickly for backup during an all day, solar imaging session.
From doing some homework about the fast, large chip, ASI174 camera I would be better off with a dedicated imaging PC. One with lots of USB3 ports. Each with individual PS/controllers. Masses of RAM and a big onboard SSD. Some imagers use a gaming laptop. They also leave out antivirus software to avoid slowing things down. I use a dedicated USB3 port for the camera. Even the little ASI120MC didn't like going through the 4xUSB3 hub. The ASI174 is much faster with a much bigger chip. So much more demanding of USB power and sheer machine and memory speed.
I could swap the onboard SSD for a much bigger one and might be able to add more RAM. Though that still leaves the USB3 ports as a potential limitation.
I tend to blog and browse [wirelessly] in the observatory while waiting endlessly for cloud to pass over. So security is probably worth having. Unless I use something else for the Internet and keep a dedicated imaging machine isolated. Or even air-gapped. I noticed that Google backup was slugging 8.5% of my CPU when I checked.
The Mercury Transit is now only 2 days away on Monday the 11th of November 2019. I shan't be happy if I can't capture some videos and images. Not that the weather is cooperative. Solid cloud is promised by one forecast service. Showers and sunny periods by another. Quite windy too from the SW. Which is the direction of the sun after lunch when the transit starts at 13.35 [CET] locally.
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