8 replies to this topic

[riosouza]

Hello everyone,

I apologize if my post isn't in the appropriate forum category.

In the last three months, I've gained a wealth of knowledge from this forum. The people here are fantastic, sharing tons of valuable information. While I'm still relatively new and don't have much to contribute yet, I'm eager to learn more.
 

Living in Colorado means being prepared for rapid weather changes. Even with a clear sky forecast,  I worry about rain damaging my gear in the middle of the night.

Recently, I found Govee's WIFI water sensors for my home. They've been like a cheap insurance policy, preventing major damage twice already and saving me a lot of money and headaches.
 

With my concerns about rain affecting my telescope at night, I've started using one of these sensors regularly. They're super sensitive to water and immediately alert my phone at the slightest hint of moisture. Plus, they have a built-in alarm that's loud enough to be heard from inside my house.

While I'm not sure if this information is relevant to everyone, I think it's worth sharing as my two cents back to the community. Hopefully, it can be helpful to others dealing with similar worries.

This is the system I have: https://amzn.to/4abrwSd 
They have other packages: https://amzn.to/4bvHbwR


Cheers!
Wilson

[Notdarkenough]

Sounds intense. Check out Telegizmos 365 covers:    http://www.telegizmos.com/

[afd33]

I bought these shortly after I bought my house. Luckily I've only had them trip twice for a bit of water in my unfinished basement. I never thought of using them as a rain detector for my telescope, great idea.

[mgCatskills]

A moisture detector might work in CO, but we get serious dew all the time here in the mid-Hudson valley.

 

+1 on the Telegizmos cover.  I don't leave the scope out all the time, but I have no hesitation to doing so if I expect there will be an observing opportunity the following night.  It fully protects the scope from rain, though I will always look at the forecast and will bring the telescope in if winds are forecast.  I don't trust the cover in rain-driven wind, mostly because I don't normally seal the bottom tight and would worry about a wind-driven storm.

 

In addition, all of my power connections, the mesh router, and my power supply are sealed in waterproof boxes with gaskets for the cable intrusions.  So they'll run happily all night despite heavy dew or rain.

 

Two nights ago there was an early morning rain storm with my telescope out on the pier under the cover.  There was about a 1/4" of water I had to shake off the top of the plastic storage boxes.  But the the miniPC had happily run all night and the telescope was bone dry.

[gun4hire]

I don't have the.....parts...to dare go to sleep and leave the scope running. It took be a bit to even trust remoting into my rig from inside the house!! I have stopped runaway slews and other oddities while sitting right there next to the scope and mount. I have had very few issues with better mounts as I have upgraded.

 

nope... I will probably never go to sleep with imaging!! rain or shine!

[mgCatskills]

I don't have the.....parts...to dare go to sleep and leave the scope running. It took be a bit to even trust remoting into my rig from inside the house!! I have stopped runaway slews and other oddities while sitting right there next to the scope and mount. I have had very few issues with better mounts as I have upgraded.

 

nope... I will probably never go to sleep with imaging!! rain or shine!

To be clear, I'm not observing when the miniPC is running overnight.  During the winter, I leave it on so the Pegasus Powerbox mini keeps the dew heaters going.  That plus the heat from the PC itself, underneath the cover, acts as a heater and keeps the humidity low and temps above freezing. 

 

Now that it's spring, I leave it on so I can transfer image files from the miniPC to my Mac Mini using WRD's copy and paste function.  I like doing it the first thing next morning so I don't have to walk outside and reboot the miniPC.  Each file takes a couple of minutes to find in my SharpCap Captures drive, copy, and paste, and I'm often too tired to do it at the end of an observing session.

 

The next evening, even if everything has been on for 24 hours, I do a cold restart for the entire system:  mount, camera, and PC.

 

That said, "real" AP'ers often leave telescopes capturing overnight, and NINA supports superb capture automation.  The NINA advanced sequencer provides automated meridian flips, pausing and refocusing in the middle of a session or based on temperature fluctuations, integration with a horizon file so it will shut off capture when the target goes behind an obstacle, etc.  You can even program it to capture a DIFFERENT target while the first one is behind an obstacle, and return to it when it reemerges.

 

In that context, assuming it can distinguish dew from rain, a rain alarm might be useful to rouse you in the middle of sleeping to cover the telescope.

 

But I don't do any of that... I observe SharpCap in the approved EAA fashion almost all of the time.  It seems like any time I leave SharpCap to run on its own (say to heat up my dinner) I find that FWHM or brightness filtering goes haywire in my absence.  It's like it KNOWS I'm not watching it.  So I'm superstitious about leaving it unattended for more than a few minutes.

Edited by mgCatskills, 10 May 2024 - 01:07 PM.

[riosouza]

Sounds intense. Check out Telegizmos 365 covers:    http://www.telegizmos.com/

Thanks for the suggestions, I have seen them before. But I assumed it would only be useful if you are taking exposures of one specific target during the night and not send commands to the mount to park after it's done.
Will this cover prevent the mount/scope to move around to different targets without issues?

[BrentKnight]

 

I don't use the "tripod" covers, only the cover for the mount head and OTA.  I leave my rig out like this full-time and have done so for a year without any issues.  The iOptron Tri-Pier has some adjustment knobs that have started to rust and I'm replacing them with ones that should do better, but other than that I've had no issues with the mini-PC or the mount or the OTA (a 130mm refractor).  Without this setup, I'd not be using the rig nearly as much.

 

If I'm understanding your question correctly, you must remove the cover to use the rig.  You still need to keep an eye on current weather conditions, but if things take a turn for the worse it takes about 5 minutes to get everything back under the cover...

 

Thanks for the suggestions, I have seen them before. But I assumed it would only be useful if you are taking exposures of one specific target during the night and not send commands to the mount to park after it's done.
Will this cover prevent the mount/scope to move around to different targets without issues?

[riosouza]

To be clear, I'm not observing when the miniPC is running overnight.  During the winter, I leave it on so the Pegasus Powerbox mini keeps the dew heaters going.  That plus the heat from the PC itself, underneath the cover, acts as a heater and keeps the humidity low and temps above freezing. 

 

Now that it's spring, I leave it on so I can transfer image files from the miniPC to my Mac Mini using WRD's copy and paste function.  I like doing it the first thing next morning so I don't have to walk outside and reboot the miniPC.  Each file takes a couple of minutes to find in my SharpCap Captures drive, copy, and paste, and I'm often too tired to do it at the end of an observing session.

 

The next evening, even if everything has been on for 24 hours, I do a cold restart for the entire system:  mount, camera, and PC.

 

That said, "real" AP'ers often leave telescopes capturing overnight, and NINA supports superb capture automation.  The NINA advanced sequencer provides automated meridian flips, pausing and refocusing in the middle of a session or based on temperature fluctuations, integration with a horizon file so it will shut of capture when the target goes behind an obstacle, etc.  You can even program it to capture a DIFFERENT target while the first one is behind an obstacle, and return to it when it reemerges.

 

In that context, assuming it can distinguish dew from rain, a rain alarm might be useful to rouse you in the middle of sleeping to cover the telescope.

 

But I don't do any of that... I observe SharpCap in the approved EAA fashion almost all of the time.  It seems like any time I leave SharpCap to run on its own (say to heat up my dinner) I find that FWHM or brightness filtering goes haywire in my absence.  It's like it KNOWS I'm not watching it.  So I'm superstitious about leaving it unattended for more than a few minutes.

Thanks for sharing, Michael!
I've been using a miniPC with NINA's sequencer to manage various targets throughout the night.
I also utilize NINA's robocopy feature to transfer files every 60 seconds from a USB drive to my main office PC, and then park my scope pointing North to avoid the rising sun from hitting the camera sensor through the lenses which I believe would damage it, tell me otherwise.

Starting from scratch as a beginner was quite a learning curve, but I've become familiar with my modest setup, the terminologies, and NINA's capabilities, which blows my ASIair Plus in terms of features and device compatibility, including the $80 Gemini EAF that I recently tried out.

I still have much to learn about Astrophotography, and EAA has made the journey enjoyable without requiring me to stay up all night like an owl, with all due respect those who enjoy doing so. It's a wonderful hobby for friends and families to enjoy together, and it reminds us of how vast and fleeting our existence is compared to the vastness of the universe.
 

I'm grateful for the support from the community and for the brilliant developers behind NINA and ASCOM. While I appreciate their work, I think ZWO should also acknowledge their contributions, by showing some appreciation. However, this might not be the right forum for that discussion, especially coming from someone like me who's just starting out in this hobby.