Had to replace my imaging laptop!

[UlteriorModem]

Well my old Dell inspiron laptop that I have been using for astro imaging for the last 4 years crapped out.

Had to run a system reset on it just to get it to boot. That of course means ALL of my software, settings and configuration were lost!

Ended up getting a new laptop because I dont have a lot of faith in the old machine now.

So had to start from square one. I am really taken back but what all goes into configuring a new laptop for imaging. All the drivers software configuration etc etc.

One thing that really had me scratching my head was that even though I installed the ASCOM Celestron telescope interface driver it refused to connect! Found out you also have to install a prolific USB interface driver in order for it to communicate with the hand controller!

I would be I put over 8 hours into getting things configured and working together!

SGP, PHD2, ANSVR, drivers for imaging camera, guide camera, telescope control and on and on. It really is alot of stuff to configure and since I had no access to my previous settings had to do a lot of research. Fortunately I did have a cheat sheet for things like camera specs image scale and stuff like that.

Just a quick reminder for you folks! Back up your stuff!

[UlteriorModem]

Well amazingly I got a chance to check out the new setup last night for a couple of hours.

It went surprisingly well! Most everything connected and worked as expected. Only thing I overlooked was Plate Solve 2 setup but the blind fall over worked quite well. Guiding worked pretty well except I dont have a dark library for it yet. SGP interfaced flawless, slewed, centered, settled guiding, and acquired some 180 second frames. All as expected (except for the warning that plate solve 2 was not configured). I did not get to see it pick up a new target or do a meridian flip because it was getting late and starting to cloud over. But dont expect any real issues with that.

The new laptop is nicely responsive and download times for image files is much quicker than before. USB3 I guess! It also seemed like plate solve resolutions and centering targets worked faster / better.

Zero issues with software working with windoze 11!

All in all pretty pleased with it. Probably should have done this a year or so ago when I still had access to the previous settings

[bobharmony]

Sorry to hear about the issues, Tom. Interesting, when I booted my Inspiron yesterday it went through a disk repair routine before coming up. Time to get the Seagate drive plugged in for a backup right now! A timely warning from you.

Also happy to hear that the first session went well for you. On Windows 11 I have read that automatic updates to the Prolific driver can cause issues connecting to Celestron, just something to keep in mind. I am still on Win10 and the Prolific updates that come along haven't broken anything for me (yet!).

I am going to start backing up my session data to DVDs and removing it from the laptop. I have about 90G left on a TB drive and 630G of astrophotography data. I'm hoping to get some relief from that.

Good luck on getting fully engaged with the new PC!

Bob

[UlteriorModem]

Also happy to hear that the first session went well for you. On Windows 11 I have read that automatic updates to the Prolific driver can cause issues connecting to Celestron, just something to keep in mind. I am still on Win10 and the Prolific updates that come along haven't broken anything for me (yet!).

Actually this turned out to be a real head scratcher. Even though the ASCOM Celestron Telescope control was installed SGP would not connect to it. Nor would it show any com ports.

After alot of head scratching and hair pulling I looked at devices in device manager and for the hand control it actually said "Please install prolific driver" or some such.

Went and got the Prolific driver and manually installed it and well what do you know it connected (Com 4) on first try.

So many little gotchas to consider! For instance had to change what the laptop does when the lid is closed. Disable USB power down (that has burned me on previous installs). Lots of little moving parts!

Dont forget to back up all the settings found in the "Users/appdata... etc" folder. Those are key! A reset wipes it all out.

Fortunatly none of the actual image data was wiped so at least I have that. But of course that is the one thing I did have backed up

[Gordon]

There are so many pieces of software that we use for our astrophotography work! Keeping them updated and running is hard enough. Starting from scratch and building it to a point that everything works as expected can take a lot of time!

I'm glad you were able to get things working as quickly as you did!

[SkyHiker]

Well amazingly I got a chance to check out the new setup last night for a couple of hours.

It went surprisingly well! Most everything connected and worked as expected. Only thing I overlooked was Plate Solve 2 setup but the blind fall over worked quite well. Guiding worked pretty well except I dont have a dark library for it yet. SGP interfaced flawless, slewed, centered, settled guiding, and acquired some 180 second frames. All as expected (except for the warning that plate solve 2 was not configured). I did not get to see it pick up a new target or do a meridian flip because it was getting late and starting to cloud over. But dont expect any real issues with that.

The new laptop is nicely responsive and download times for image files is much quicker than before. USB3 I guess! It also seemed like plate solve resolutions and centering targets worked faster / better.

Zero issues with software working with windoze 11!

All in all pretty pleased with it. Probably should have done this a year or so ago when I still had access to the previous settings

It's too late now but next time when Windoze does not want to boot and you need your old files, put Linux on a USB stick and boot off it. You can see all your files, no passwords asked - at least that works with Win10, it's such a glaring security hole that I don't know if this trusty trick still works with Win11. Now of course you wiped all your files by resetting Windoze so, too bad.

[UlteriorModem]

Yea it was totally bricked would only boot from a usb media disk. Pretty sure the fixed disk is on its way out. Was windoze 10 btw.

I did plan on just yanking the drive out of the machine and put it in a docking bay I have. Wish I had done that but it's too late as you said.

[UlteriorModem]

There are so many pieces of software that we use for our astrophotography work! Keeping them updated and running is hard enough. Starting from scratch and building it to a point that everything works as expected can take a lot of time!

I'm glad you were able to get things working as quickly as you did!

No kidding. I was actually expecting my first run of an imaging session to be a cat herding experience but was pleasantly surprised when it all worked together as expected.

What got me was when going to install I think the autofocus routine You need to install ASCOM drivers first, go get the ascom drivers, You need to install some other thing before you can install ASCOM!

Anyhow I think it was about 6-8 hours of work all told. Left me mentally drained and fatigued but it worked!

[Gordon]

There are so many pieces of software that we use for our astrophotography work! Keeping them updated and running is hard enough. Starting from scratch and building it to a point that everything works as expected can take a lot of time!

I'm glad you were able to get things working as quickly as you did!

No kidding. I was actually expecting my first run of an imaging session to be a cat herding experience but was pleasantly surprised when it all worked together as expected.

What got me was when going to install I think the autofocus routine You need to install ASCOM drivers first, go get the ascom drivers, You need to install some other thing before you can install ASCOM!

Anyhow I think it was about 6-8 hours of work all told. Left me mentally drained and fatigued but it worked!

Try running an Astronomy Forum.....

[UlteriorModem]

Well pleased to announce that last night I finally got a chance to run an entire dusk to dawn sequence with 5 targets without issue.

Happy to see "Sequence Paused, Captured until time limit" this morning!

There were intentionally a few targets with meridian flips, some targets to the north, some to the south, kind of a 'stress test' and it came through with flying colors!

In fact the equipment connections seem to work better more reliable, and image download is significantly faster!

I was not able to sit up and 'witness' most of the sequence, nor have I reviewed the log files, but it did get frames for all targets.

Only thing is I need to tweak PHD2 a little as it was a bit ragged and took longer than normal to 'settle down'.

Shame it was a Moon flooded night but still it was a good test all systems nominal! Now all I have to do is wait at least another week or two for it to clear again!

[UlteriorModem]

And so the saga continues.

Not sure what happened last night first target went fine, even witnessed an automated meridian flip which resolved quickly.

It went to start the next target and it would not center. It was off by some crazy number like 31,000 pixels. It would try again and be off by the same amount! Over and over. Other targets would center right away!

This is pretty odd since it shot some 30 frames on that target the previous night!

Also having some issues with communication to the mount / handset. Once in a while it will come back with an "Unable to synch mount".

I am blaming the prolific USB to serial driver! Although I did note this morning that the telescope settings for the Celestron ASCOM driver were not configured. I have that configured now and will try again tonight.

Thing about the prolific driver is I can only find the 'latest' version 4.10. Could not find a previous version. Tried to roll back to the version that came with the Windows 11 install and it doesent work. Says something like "Please install the latest drivers" or something.

[UlteriorModem]

And again another odd failure. This is really starting to whip my butt! Any ideas or suggestions would be appreciated!

It was working fine acquiring images and guiding well. About 15-20 minutes before the meridian flip the mount just stopped moving. Lost guide star long star trails in the image preview. Of course it could not recover from that. So I aborted the sequence warmed the cam parked the scope and called it quits.

Here is a link to the log file.

https://www.dropbox.com/s/onmsu7zmnvf9l ... 3.log?dl=0

[JayTee]

When weird things like that happen, I always check / replace the cables.

[turboscrew]

Funny, I noticed this thread just now.
For nice little distro for fixing windows and/or rescuing the data from dying disc, this is good. Salvaged quite some systems with it. A bit old, but works fine. And it's free.
https://trinityhome.org/

It runs from a ramdisk, and doesn't touch your hard drive, except when you tell it to read from it or write to it.
Check about ddrescue, and don't forget to give it a logfile.
In a tough case, the fridge-thing really works.

Basically the disc rescue is reading the raw disk to a file on external HD, then reading the file and writing it on the new disc (as raw). It makes a bit-by-bit copy.

You can also do it one partition at a time, and it doesn't usually matter if the boot sector is bad.

And if the stuff on the new disk is still too corrupted to boot, you may be able to fix that with this:
https://www.ultimatebootcd.com/

[UlteriorModem]

Funny, I noticed this thread just now.

Thanks for the input, appreciate it, however it is kind of too late as I already have the new machine more or less configured, issues aside. But the issues are turning out to be mechanical and interface things.

I did determine what happened the other night when it was going along fine and all of a sudden it stopped tracking and sequence fail.

It seems I had set the RA limits East and West to +5 or 5 degrees BEFORE meridian. It should have been -5 or 5 degrees AFTER Funny how a +/- sign can ruin the whole night

Now that I know what that issue is of course have to deal with cloudy skies for several days before I can get a chance to try again.

[turboscrew]

Well, at least you have tools to deal with a situation that the disk gets bad.
Note, however, that rotating rust is better, since it usually starts to act up well before all is gone. Not sure if SSD can be salvaged. With any tools. I guess, with SSD it's usually all or nothing. The chip(s) probably break before the writing count is full. If it's just the writing count, then, maybe. But the fridge-trick won't work with SSDs. It only works with magnetic media.

[UlteriorModem]

Im actually in the process of re-configuring the failed laptop for imaging as a 'back up'.

That and if the connection issues with Win 11 persists I will have a win 10 machine to fall back too.