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bkushner
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/26/06
Posts: 1728
Loc: Audubon New Jersey
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Does anyone have problems leaving computers running in their observatory with temperatures in real cold or hot weather?
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Orion XT12i
Meade LX200 ACF
Mallincam Hyper Plus
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dbeckstrom
super member
Reged: 10/29/06
Posts: 169
Loc: Andover, MN
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We've discussed that topic here in other threads. You may want to do some searched.
Cold won't hurt the computer, disk drives or monitor. They'll be fine.
Too hot could hurt your computer if you don't have the setting in your BIOS set to power down the computer when its getting too hot.
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My Observatory build with photos http://www.observatorycentral.com/index.php?showtopic=435
Domed 12/17/2006
12.5 RCOS
Paramount ME Mount
Pilot's Cross Observatory
45° 15'48.85"N, 93° 21'30.91"W
"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Star Trek
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rodney
Vendor - Explora Dome
Reged: 03/08/05
Posts: 812
Loc: Asbury, NJ
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Brian,
I have had my desktop installed in my OBS since April of this year with no problems. One night this fall the fog was bad and the monitor had some dew on the screen, but that was after I used the PC all night. Since then I have the monitor enclosed. I see you are in NJ, are you down near Runnemede? What type of OBS do you have?
Clear skies,
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Explora Dome information can be found here:
www.exploradome.us
Rodney
Meade 10 SCT
AT 8/F4 imaging scope
13 Truss
C8-NGT
Orion 80mm/F11
Canon 300D
Canon XSi
Two AS-GT mounts
Extremely happy Explora Dome home observatory owner
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bkushner
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/26/06
Posts: 1728
Loc: Audubon New Jersey
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I just found the long thread on this and was returning to delete my message. Sorry about that.
Brian
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Orion XT12i
Meade LX200 ACF
Mallincam Hyper Plus
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bkushner
Carpal Tunnel
Reged: 11/26/06
Posts: 1728
Loc: Audubon New Jersey
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Quote:
Brian,
I have had my desktop installed in my OBS since April of this year with no problems. One night this fall the fog was bad and the monitor had some dew on the screen, but that was after I used the PC all night. Since then I have the monitor enclosed. I see you are in NJ, are you down near Runnemede? What type of OBS do you have?
Clear skies,
Hello: No OBS yet, in thinking of getting one. The property is in Williamstown, about 30 miles North of Atlantic City.
BRian
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Orion XT12i
Meade LX200 ACF
Mallincam Hyper Plus
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rodney
Vendor - Explora Dome
Reged: 03/08/05
Posts: 812
Loc: Asbury, NJ
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I am over near Phillipsburg off 78. Skies are rather dark here when clear, not nearly enough. We are in a valley which shields the Phillipsburg lights about 12 miles away.
Clear skies,
--------------------
Explora Dome information can be found here:
www.exploradome.us
Rodney
Meade 10 SCT
AT 8/F4 imaging scope
13 Truss
C8-NGT
Orion 80mm/F11
Canon 300D
Canon XSi
Two AS-GT mounts
Extremely happy Explora Dome home observatory owner
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stevecoe
"Astronomical Tourist"
Reged: 04/24/04
Posts: 2648
Loc: Arizona, USA
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I am in Phoenix, Arizona...so I'll bet that I win the heat contest;-)
I had a 700 MHz Athon in the observatory for about 4 years and had little trouble, I passed it on to my neice and she is thrilled to have her own computer. I replaced it with a 2.7 GHz Pentium with 250 GB HD and a Gig of RAM. I am very happy and once I get the whole thing together I will post a report.
I sold off the 8 inch SCT that was in the observatory and now am replacing it with a Nexstar 11 that I used to take into the field.
My plan;
Steve Coe
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TeleVue 102 refractor on CGEM mount
10 inch f/4.7 Newtonian
Author "Deep Sky Observing" Springer-Verlag
Author "Nebulae and How to Observe Them" Springer
Canon Xt astrocamera with Hutech modification
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Spaz
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/19/07
Posts: 758
Loc: New Zealand
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Quote:
Cold won't hurt the computer, disk drives or monitor. They'll be fine.
Not necessarily true, unfortunately.
Yes, processors, motherboards, memory and hard disk drives are okay in low temps, but I've had other components and equipment fail at -15 °C (5 °F) and below. (We routinely get below -25 °C here, in deepest, darkest winter.)
For instance, two DVD-RW drives (different models and brands) have not withstood the test, which isn't surprising since they aren't designed to withstand such conditions. Check the manufacturer's specs.
Keep equipment not designed to be frozen (or even cooled) in a warm room if you have one, otherwise in an insulated enclosure of some kind.
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dbeckstrom
super member
Reged: 10/29/06
Posts: 169
Loc: Andover, MN
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Quote:
Quote:
Cold won't hurt the computer, disk drives or monitor. They'll be fine.
Not necessarily true, unfortunately.
Yes, processors, motherboards, memory and hard disk drives are okay in low temps, but I've had other components and equipment fail at -15 °C (5 °F) and below. (We routinely get below -25 °C here, in deepest, darkest winter.)
For instance, two DVD-RW drives (different models and brands) have not withstood the test, which isn't surprising since they aren't designed to withstand such conditions. Check the manufacturer's specs.
Keep equipment not designed to be frozen (or even cooled) in a warm room if you have one, otherwise in an insulated enclosure of some kind.
I built a PC into my truck with an 8" touchscreen monitor molded into my dash. It can be -20 below zero and it still works fine...DVD drive and all. Sometimes the flat screen monitor take a little while to warm up and brighten up, but it works.
I'm not sure why you ran into problems. Most people don't. What went wrong with your DVD drives?
mp3car.com has a ton of discussions about PCs in the cold. I've never had a problem with the cold.
--------------------
My Observatory build with photos http://www.observatorycentral.com/index.php?showtopic=435
Domed 12/17/2006
12.5 RCOS
Paramount ME Mount
Pilot's Cross Observatory
45° 15'48.85"N, 93° 21'30.91"W
"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Star Trek
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Spaz
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/19/07
Posts: 758
Loc: New Zealand
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Quote:
I built a PC into my truck with an 8" touchscreen monitor molded into my dash. It can be -20 below zero and it still works fine...DVD drive and all. Sometimes the flat screen monitor take a little while to warm up and brighten up, but it works.
I'm not sure why you ran into problems. Most people don't. What went wrong with your DVD drives?
mp3car.com has a ton of discussions about PCs in the cold. I've never had a problem with the cold.
A PC in a vehicle is usually better protected from the cold than one in a dome, or exposed in a roll-off roof enclosure.
Our automatic weather station computers are mini-ITX based and absolutely bare-bones. They've withstood the cold fine so far.
However there's a lot of thermal and mechanical stress placed on components with fine tolerances (such as optical drive mechanisms) and which aren't generating their own heat (unlike a hard drive or CPU).
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dbeckstrom
super member
Reged: 10/29/06
Posts: 169
Loc: Andover, MN
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Spaz,
My truck sits outside all the time. The PC is the same temperature as the outside air. Many new vehicles with built-in NAV systems use DVD drives. No problem.
In my experience, DVD drives work fine in the cold.
Disk drives have much tighter tolerances than a DVD drive. The heads on a disk drive are less than the thickness of a human hair away from the platter.
A DVD drive uses a rubber belt drive to spin the DVD. It may start a little slow in the cold, but works fine. Light is used to read the data off of the DVD. No tight tolerances there, either.
--------------------
My Observatory build with photos http://www.observatorycentral.com/index.php?showtopic=435
Domed 12/17/2006
12.5 RCOS
Paramount ME Mount
Pilot's Cross Observatory
45° 15'48.85"N, 93° 21'30.91"W
"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Star Trek
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Spaz
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/19/07
Posts: 758
Loc: New Zealand
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Quote:
Spaz,
My truck sits outside all the time. The PC is the same temperature as the outside air. Many new vehicles with built-in NAV systems use DVD drives. No problem.
In my experience, DVD drives work fine in the cold.
Disk drives have much tighter tolerances than a DVD drive. The heads on a disk drive are less than the thickness of a human hair away from the platter.
A DVD drive uses a rubber belt drive to spin the DVD. It may start a little slow in the cold, but works fine. Light is used to read the data off of the DVD. No tight tolerances there, either.
I've been a tech in the IT sector since the '70s, before it was even called the IT sector and I'm pretty intimately familiar with the hardware.
Depending on usage, some parts of the system will tolerate extreme conditions and other parts won't.
A DVD drive is used only rarely, compared with a HDD. The thermal stress on such a device which is only intermittently active is severe.
A busy hard disk drive is great at generating and retaining heat, as is, of course, a processor. It's why we actively cool them. A DVD and similar components (e.g. printers, etc) do not retain heat, even when working hard.
Put them in a large and mostly-empty space (or indeed, almost outside, as with a roll-off roof building) and they cool very rapidly. If the ambient temperature is very low, they will reach equilibrium with it quickly. Optical assemblies and printer drive mechanisms don't like being frozen.
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dbeckstrom
super member
Reged: 10/29/06
Posts: 169
Loc: Andover, MN
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Quote:
Quote:
Spaz,
My truck sits outside all the time. The PC is the same temperature as the outside air. Many new vehicles with built-in NAV systems use DVD drives. No problem.
In my experience, DVD drives work fine in the cold.
Disk drives have much tighter tolerances than a DVD drive. The heads on a disk drive are less than the thickness of a human hair away from the platter.
A DVD drive uses a rubber belt drive to spin the DVD. It may start a little slow in the cold, but works fine. Light is used to read the data off of the DVD. No tight tolerances there, either.
A DVD drive is used only rarely, compared with a HDD. I've been a tech in the IT sector since the '70s, before it was even called the IT sector and I'm pretty intimately familiar with the hardware. Some parts of the system will tolerate extreme conditions and other parts won't.
Spaz,
I've been a computer systems engineer for 27 years as well. I also live in Minnesota where its colder than heck. We're not having problems. If you are, then I'd like to know why.
Problems from the cold used to occur with older technology. These days, no problem.
If you can find some web sites where people report problems with DVD drives in the cold, please post them.
There is a lightweight grease used to lubricate the rails for the tray. Its possible some brands may use a grease that gets stiff. But with thousands of DVD drives built into automobile NAV units, and CD drives in car stereos and CD changers in cars for that matter, its unlikely anyone uses the wrong grease during manufacturing. Cold is expected in these environments.
Its easy to take a DVD drive apart and re-grease them. I've done it.
--------------------
My Observatory build with photos http://www.observatorycentral.com/index.php?showtopic=435
Domed 12/17/2006
12.5 RCOS
Paramount ME Mount
Pilot's Cross Observatory
45° 15'48.85"N, 93° 21'30.91"W
"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Star Trek
Edited by dbeckstrom (01/06/08 03:07 AM)
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Spaz
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/19/07
Posts: 758
Loc: New Zealand
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Quote:
Spaz,
I've been a computer systems engineer for 27 years as well. I also live in Minnesota where its colder than heck. We're not having problems. If you are, then I'd like to know why.
Problems from the cold used to occur with older technology. These days, no problem.
If you can find some web sites where people report problems with DVD drives in the cold, please post them.
I'll send you the contents of our junk box. Will that do?
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dbeckstrom
super member
Reged: 10/29/06
Posts: 169
Loc: Andover, MN
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Quote:
Quote:
Spaz,
I've been a computer systems engineer for 27 years as well. I also live in Minnesota where its colder than heck. We're not having problems. If you are, then I'd like to know why.
Problems from the cold used to occur with older technology. These days, no problem.
If you can find some web sites where people report problems with DVD drives in the cold, please post them.
I'll send you the contents of our junk box. Will that do?
LOL! Good humor, but please don't! I have a 19" rack with 7 Dell servers and two T-1s in my house and a room full of boxes of drives, fans, cards and other hardware. If I bring any more into the house, the wife will toss me out! As it is, we heat the basement with the servers. 
--------------------
My Observatory build with photos http://www.observatorycentral.com/index.php?showtopic=435
Domed 12/17/2006
12.5 RCOS
Paramount ME Mount
Pilot's Cross Observatory
45° 15'48.85"N, 93° 21'30.91"W
"Time is the fire in which we burn" - Star Trek
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Spaz
scholastic sledgehammer
Reged: 01/19/07
Posts: 758
Loc: New Zealand
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Quote:
LOL! Good humor, but please don't! I have a 19" rack with 7 Dell servers and two T-1s in my house and a room full of boxes of drives, fans, cards and other hardware. If I bring any more into the house, the wife will toss me out! As it is, we heat the basement with the servers.
Been there, done that!
I had a huge cull a few years ago and have been much happier for it! There's 128 square feet of bench top in my home workshop and for years there wasn't enough room to even put a cup of coffee down!
Now we are down to one rack, and one rack only! I love my tidy, clutter-free workspace.
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