PupCam

Anyone else here sick of the perpetual "We are very sorry but we are experiencing high call volumes at the moment"   nonsense when phoning, well, just about any organisation?

Me thinks I will be making regular use of this tool in the future because I don't believe it.  

If the call volume is perpetually high that means the facility lacks adequate capacity which means the bean counters need to find more money to employ more staff to operate their chosen "business model".  

I hope MSE are successful exposing and confirming what we already instinctively know.

That could be considered to be a rantette!

Morning All!

12 hours ago, Tony_S said:

Like Mondeo for instance, definitely longer than my Range Rover. 😇

3 hours ago, PhilJ W said:

 

The Mondeo is a direct descendant of the Cortina which was always a medium sized car between the Anglia/Escort and the Zephyr/Granada. Cars have grown bigger and fatter over the years (like their occupants?) and my newly acquired Nissan Note is a good example. My previous Nissan, a Prairie fitted comfortably on my drive, the Note is a tight squeeze but has a little less interior space.  

Not entirely accurate with respect to Monty as he's too old and there's no data on this website for the earlier model.    The other thing to note is  that the Range Rover is not only wider than the terraced housing I was referring to it's almost as tall!   (where's the tongue in cheek Emoji?).     Also none of the occupants in those properties appear to have lowered themselves to owning a Mondeo*.

* Monty is by far the best car I've owned.   It cost £6.5K in 2008 (I think), it's now done just over 197000 miles and still has the original clutch and exhaust.    No, I don't know how that works either other than I do know how to use the clutch properly unlike many who use them as a temporary brake on hills.   I've driven 173000 miles of that total.  It's had the usual consumables of course (tyres, pads, discs etc)  plus I think in total 6 !!!!! suspension springs which probably says as much about Ford's springs as it does the condition of the roads  

The most annoying fault it developed a few years ago was to suddenly cut out and stop with a completely dead instrument cluster.    Leave it for a period of time and then it would spring back into action for another 6 months as if nothing had happened.   No fault found on diagnostics.     Just after I retired the fault became hard and the RAC dragged it  home from whence it had come to a halt.     Two weeks of research on the web and poking about with an oscilloscope and a DMM on the Canbus finally revealed  one of the special fuses (slow blow / anti-surge or similar) had an  "interesting" failure mode.    Mr Ford supplied a replacement for IIRC £2.52 and it's worked perfectly ever since.    Of course two weeks diagnostics in a garage at £120/Hr or whatever it is would have written the car off - it's good to be technical 😃. 

Which reminds me.   The headlamp levelling system has just stopped working so I need to go and sort that out.

If anyone wants to idle a away a bit of time researching how cars are getting bigger then this might be useful.

This photograph appeared on Faceache a short while ago.   I love the irony! 

It shows the point has been well and truly missed and a brilliant concept has just morphed into a brand.

ION

BP much better this morning (it's within rather than below the normal band today)  so I'm feeling much better than yesterday.

A trip to Screwfix to buy some hardware for the Pergola re-build and a trip to a garden centre on behalf of the Head Gardner for some compost and other bits and pieces has been made.

A Mugofcoffee has been consumed so I suppose I'd better go and unload Monty.

TTFN

Evening All

17 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

One more... Why does every charging provider require you to set up an account with them and expect you to enter all your personal and financial details into them before you can use them?

 

Why can't you just use tap and go like petrol pumps have? 

 

Even the "Free" provider (Exploren) that the local council-installled chargers use requires you to have an account with them.. If its free why can't you just plug your car in anonymously? I don't need to download an app and register in order to put air in my tyres, why is this different?

11 hours ago, Barry O said:

If I could ever get hold of the eediots who invented apps for paying for parking (the one used by Leeds City Council doesn't work) and EV Charging I could end up in jail. Due to our "free market" in the UK we end up with lots of apps each intent on taking you money for poor services..

Yes and parking in the UK is going that way too and it really hacks this Puppers off.     IF* places are going to insist you pay for charging / parking or whatever then IMVHO there shouldn't be 36+ (I believe the number is) different parking Apps needed to park anywhere.   No; legislation and standards should be brought in that provides a common interface for "exchanging money for parking rights".     Companies should be free to provide whatever flashy Parking apps they wish.  The user should be free to chose and stick with whichever one takes their fancy and it should work at EVERY parking location that fleeces you for money.       The current system free-for-all joke is just plain stupid!

* Personally I think that the public should be encouraged to use public transport by making parking at, for example, railway stations free and don't even mention the huge tax on the sick and their families at hospitals which I think is verging on the criminal!

16 hours ago, Ozexpatriate said:

They are perfectly practical for city commuters who have a garage - like me. My driving pattern is not unusual.

But is far from the majority, at least in the UK.    

There is a huge proportion of housing in the UK which is not really suited to car ownership with on-street parking the only option and more so now the norm is 2 or 3 abnormally large, bloated SUVs let alone having a myriad of charging cables laying across the pavements from the houses to the parked vehicles!   The fact that the housing is not suitable for parking outside in older communities is no real surprise.  They were designed and built in a time when car ownership was generally unheard of so it wasn't a consideration.       The particularly appalling thing these days is that the modern rush to build 1000's of new homes is being done with no realistic regard to the amount of parking "needed"  by those properties.    This is something else that I think is verging on the criminal;  developers, councils etc pay lip-service to "meeting the needs of residents" (which generates no cash) but then squeezing in another 25% of properties on top of what is probably a realistic density does.      To go back to the original point; in my road alone (in a typical, smallish Bedfordshire village)   there are many terrace houses  that are not as wide as the Range Rover** is long (or even the Ford Focus) that is parked outside of it.   

This photograph illustrates the situation that is widespread in a significant  percentage of streets  in towns and cities in the UK.   It also happens to illustrate another modern problem; what to do with the wheelie bins when there is no direct access to the rear of such properties.

** Other large vehicles are of course available

16 hours ago, monkeysarefun said:

I assume that if an EV says you are going to come to a stop   50km from the nearest recharger, you really are going to come to a stop  50km from the nearest recharger.

I'm guessing 60km ....  😉

11 hours ago, Graham108 said:

A deliberate spelling mistake?

It wouldn't have been with me 🤣

ION

After the small Thrashette yesterday over to Pure Triumph in Woburn   I was going to join the chaps with a run over to the Danish Camp on the River Great Ouse east of Bedford.    Unfortunately when I woke up my BP was rather low so I decided against it.      When I finally perked up I was informed that a trip to St Evenage to visit some "Retail outlets" was required.     We were stunned by the level of traffic, it seemed more like rush hour on a Monday morning or going home time on the last day before Christmas.      Too many people,  too many vehicles .....   moving somewhere quiet with few inhabitants (or visitors) becomes ever more attractive!

Oh yes and I have been dining table chair repairing this afternoon.   The joints on one of the Carvers had  come loose so the front bar / stretcher or whatever it's called (you'll have guessed I'm not a furniture expert) was removed, the tongues and sockets cleared of old glue and then re-assembled with epoxy and all pulled together with ratchet straps.      Me thinks that the 40+ year old dining suite might be passed it's best and perhaps next time it will be time for a replacement (after all, it's hardly Chippendale).

TTFN

Even More Mount Mods

One of the many difficulties I struggle with using the Cheap-O-Scope are the dual purpose tube clamps which hold the tube in the required positions both longitudinally and in roll.     The trouble usually is that having got the scope balanced you then want to look at something which requires it to be pointing in a direction other than horizontal and when you've got it pointing in roughly the right direction you then find you need to be Harry Houdini to use the eyepiece.   So you loosen the clamps until you can rotate the tube at which point it slides down through the clamps aided by gravity which completely mucks up the balance.    Return to the start position, do not pass go, do not collect £200 .......

So I decided to get a Dovetail bar and clamps so that, once again, I can attempt to separate the two completely separate functions.    After a suitable perusal of various astronomy supplier's websites (most of which list loads of stuff not actually in stock) I resorted to the big A.   I plumped for this rail and these clamps.   I managed to find some suitable if not perfectly correct screws to bolt the clamps to the original head bracket and the rail to the tube clamps.    I have to say first impressions are how much better it is although I still have to add a couple of fixed bands to the tube that will prevent the tube from sliding through the clamps when loosened.   One thing is apparent though and that is the fact that there is not a lot of dovetail on the Arca-Swiss design and it is perfectly easy to undo the clamps sufficiently that would let the whole tube fall out if the orientation happened to be suitable.   That could really spoil one's day (or night!) so I'll have to watch-out for that.   I've got a feeling that the Vixen style has bigger Dovetails and that this may not apply in that case but I couldn't find any sensibly priced 400mm long Vixen bars.

Oh yes the clamps each have a couple of bubble levels built in.   Can't imagine why; they'll never be used perfectly horizontally or vertically so they are as much use as the proverbial chocolate fire guard!  

Angle of Dangle Device

The AoD device can be seen in the last photograph.   It's the black plastic box stuck onto the RA / Polar axis housing by means of the grey coloured clip (the clip is part of a savagely mutilated  Dyson vacuum cleaner accessory holder - it's the first time it and thus the Dyson vacuum cleaner has been of any use to mankind whatsoever.   You may gather I'm not a fan of Dyson ....

Anyway, the AoD device basically measures the angle of the RA axis which, as we know, needs to be set equal to the telescope's latitude  in order to polar align it.    The device is an Arduino connected to a little 3 axis IMU (accelerometers and gyros) module  which it uses to determine the angle of gravity (and thus by inference the AoD).  A tri-colour LED indicates when the axis is pointing too high (Blue = sky), too low (Green = ground) or precisely correct (Red).    The Blue/Green LEDs flashes at an increasing rate as the correct position is reached to give you a clue as to when you are getting close.

In order to calibrate it the tripod and mount are positioned  and levelled and the polar alignment is done in the traditional manner.   When this has been done a calibration button is pressed which records the IMU outputs when the position is correct.    The next time the scope is used the tripod is positioned and the mount is levelled.   The axis can then be adjusted to get the AoD gadget LED to show red and Hey Presto the angle should be set.    In practice it gets pretty close but generally requires a tiny bit of fine tuning.    Not unexpected I suppose as the IMU module was cheap and therefore not of the highest instrument grade accuracy or stability!

Software next time ....

Alan

1 hour ago, iL Dottore said:

@PupCam I sent you a PM but the system says you're not receiving messages!

 

What gives?

Test message sent ….

15 minutes ago, monkeysarefun said:

 

 

I took a quick shot of the  moon on Friday night (or was it Thursday?) while taking the rubbish out to the bin. Its only a hand-held snap though so its not the sharpest. I've also noticed that pictures posted here  lose a bit of clarity compared to the originals. 

 

That's good.   Perhaps I should just buy a camera and a decent lens? 🤣

Further Mount Mods

The bearings on the EQ2 mount aren't up to much (like any of it in reality) and after a bit of use the Right Ascension axis was particularly bad which of course is a bit of a problem as that's the axis that tracks.     I disassembled it and measured it up and found I had a couple of ball races that would fit nicely in and then turned up a sleeve to match the original shaft to the bearings.     This shaft had also had a hole bored in the end of it to match the shaft diameter of a an optical shaft encoder (more on that later).     The bearings were held in place in the housing using Loctite Engineering Adhesive and the whole lot re-assembled.    Overall, the head is still closer to a Sow's Ear rather than a Silk Purse but "Every Little Helps" as they say.  

Red Spot Finder Mount 

These budget scopes tend to come with  a Red Spot Finder (RSF) rather than a proper, optical Finder Scope (either of which are essential if you going to find what you are looking for in the eyepiece) because, yes you've guessed it they are much cheaper .   For those that don't know; the RSF is like a crude head-up display where a little red light dot from an LED is projected onto a small clear screen and once it has been set up (i.e collimated with the telescope's axis) allows you to position the red dot on the object of interest and with a bit of luck the object of interest should then appear in the eyepiece.  Well, that's the theory!    

It seems they take a bit of getting used to,  their use is  not helped by the close proximity of the viewing window to the telescopes tube and it can be quite awkward getting in just the right position to see the dot.    A friend kindly 3D printed a taller mounting bracket to get it further from the tube which worked well but .......

     ... after getting rather warm one sunny day the nice flat flange turned into a banana.    

The bent flange was cut from the upper and lower "lumpy bits"  which were slotted to accept a new flange cut from sheet 3mm aluminium.  The whole thing was then epoxied together and works well.   As mentioned elsewhere,  the new flange later provided a handy mounting point for electronics box for the focuser.

The Astronomy Gadget

Early on when I was trying to understand (and failing for quite a long while) how to use an objects RA & DEC coordinates to find them in the sky using the setting circles on the mount.      Perhaps I was being a bit dense (more than likely)  but I hadn't got to grips with the relationship between RA and Hour Angle (the relationship of a specific RA value (e.g. the coordinate of a celestial object) to "time now" where you happen to be.   Whilst the RA of an object doesn't change (to all intents and purposes) it's Hour Angle is constantly changing as the earth rotates.    This all seemed very complicated (well actually it is quite complicated) so I decided to build an Hour Angle calculator (and for those of you who know me you won't be surprised to find it's Arduino based).   The idea being you enter the RA of your chosen object and knowing it's time and position very accurately (it uses a GPS module) it tells you what the Hour Angle is and thus where to point your scope.   

The experienced astronomers amongst us will have instantly spotted the problem that the setting circles on cheap telescopes are mere ornaments; they lack the necessary accuracy probably by a couple of orders of magnitude and coupled with all those sloppy bearings, poor clutches/locks mean that you are not going to be onto a winner.   When I'd appreciated that little gem I hit upon the idea of using a couple of optical shaft encoders  These are available quite reasonably (~£20 a piece) and would provide a resolution down to ~0.3 degrees.    OK, still not really good enough but much, much closer and would get you somewhere near so you could start hunting.    So the Hour Angle calculator morphed into the Astronomy gadget which has a couple of displays showing where the scope was actually pointing and where it should be pointing for the OoI.  

This was quite a project and try as I might I couldn't do all that was necessary to keep track in real-time of two shaft encoder positions and do all the other stuff (calculating Sidereal time, HA, drive the display etc etc) so it ended up with one Arduino (a UNO IIRC) as the main processor and two Arduino Nanos, one to keep track of RA encoder movement and the other keeping track of the DEC axis using a full compliment of interrupts.   As the encoders provide a relative rather than absolute position you cannot afford to lose track of a single step (~0.3°) - you'll never get it back!    As I mentioned, it's quite well packed in the box with the 3 Arduinos,  the display, the rotary encoder for the control knob, the GPS module and some other little interface modules.     I thought I had photographs of the internals but they seem to have gone walkabouts for now.

At about the same time that all this was evolving I was taking my first steps with astrophotography using my son's Canon camera as seen earlier.    It very soon became apparent to this novice that you don't just take one photograph you need to take loads of photographs.   You also don't want to touch the telescope when doing so!    I found out that his camera has an IR remote trigger.   Thanks to the wonders of the internet I found out the IR pulse sequence to trigger a Canon camera.    An IR LED and yet more code was added to the Astronomy Gadget to provide an intervalometer function to trigger the camera.   Sure you can buy such a device ready made but where is the fun in that?    The LED is mounted in a bit of ali tube with a rare earth magnet set in the end so you can just stick it the telescope tube somewhere where the camera sensor can see it.      The software enables you to set the number of exposures, length of and the gap between exposures and also the mode (bulb or triggered).   It worked very well, the only thing to watch out for was to make sure that the time taken for the camera to store each image was less than the set gap between exposures!

Here is (almost) the end result

Funny enough, the gadget has fallen into temporary disuse.   I still haven't mounted the encoders on the mount yet so the pointing system is not yet operational and of course now I've started using the astro-camera  I don't need the intervalometer.  Oh well, never mind.

I think that just leaves the "Angle of Dangle" device (actually the polar axis angle indicator) which I'll briefly describe next time and then I'll mention the software I've found, used, rave over, given up on, as appropriate.

Alan

Crayford Focuser

Going back to the Crayford Focuser briefly.    

This little clip of the half-built focuser illustrates the basic principle of operation.    As you can see, its actually very simple.    Unlike a Rack and Pinion  version, as there are no gears there can be no backlash just at the critical point.    The focuser was hewn pretty much completely out of solid aluminium, machining the curved base was a slow job as there was a lot of material to remove but in deference to my venerable old Myford I only took very small cuts!   It's rather chunky and consequently heavy so introduces some scope balancing problems.   If I were making it again I'd do a Colin Chapman (Lotus cars) and try and "Add lightness" wherever possible.

The addition of the remote, electric drive was well worth it as it is impossible not to jog the telescope (budget mount don't forget) when doing it manually.    It also has the particularly useful characteristic of being able to focus the scope whilst sitting indoors in the warm 😀

These are the little 4 channel RF remote control modules I've used for both the focuser and the RA drive.     Can you believe it?    Five  pairs for £10 !!!!!     They have a multitude of uses including many on a model railway!   Dead easy to use if a little awkward to programme the mode and they work brilliantly

The electronics for the controller (Arduino Nano, the remote Rx, the stepper motor driver and four rechargeable AAA batteries) live in a little plastic box that has been screwed to the side of the Red Spot finder bracket.  Well it was handy and close by the focuser.     Battery powered means no trailing wire connected to the scope  which is good, but the batteries don't seem to last that long meaning focusing stops when the batteries are flat, which is bad!   There's already a cable going to the scope for the camera (and another if I venture into using the camera's guide output) so perhaps rather than banishing cables to the scope I should just concentrate on good cable management?

Platform

The next improvement to my budget priced scope is an extremely simple one.    A large flat ali plate sandwiched between the tripod and the mount.   This provides a platform to rest my phone on when using a suitable Spirit Level App to set the head level.    I quickly found out the tiny little, stick on, bubble levels are as much use in this application as a chocolate fireguard.   The plate really needs a little guide rail adding to positively set the phone to the telescope's bearing rather than just "Eyeballing" it but that's still on the To Do list.

I've recently found a useful little phone App;

      "NOAA Magnetic Field Calculator"

The primary purpose is to calculate the local magnetic declination but it includes a handy combined Compass and Spirit Level display that works well* with the phone sitting on the platform.     I haven't yet been able to set the telescope bearing accurately enough to magnetic north let alone compensate for the magnetic / true North error!

* Well, to be honest the compass bit only works "Wellish" because the magnetometers in the phone can be affected by the big lumps of steel in the mount.   

Sloppy Yoke

The Sloppy Yoke on my budget priced scope is not conducive to accurate Polar Alignment because as you tighten the locking screw it moves the axis in both azimuth and elevation.   Not a lot but it doesn't have to be a lot.    I was thinking about boring the yoke out and fitting two hunky ball races and a suitably chunky shaft.   So far I've gone with the much simpler interim solution of turning  aluminium bushes to fit in the yoke to take up the slack.  It's a big improvement but really needs the "Proper" solution.   Maybe one day if I don't suddenly decide to splash out and buy a complete new, much better scope and mount!

More another day ......

Alan

16 minutes ago, 25kV said:

Somewhat better than my pic of the same this evening!  😉  Got photobombed by our neighbour.

I spotted how close they are this evening!

It's very clear this evening, I should lug the kit out and have another crack but I'm just too tired.   Never mind.

Nice to see some interest in astronomy here though!   😀

Afternoon All

4 hours ago, jjb1970 said:

Funnily, since we are discussing the state of camera shops on another thread, I just bought a new camera. I have been wanting to change for a while and had my bonus in December, additionally I had a mountain of Singapore Airlines frequent flyer points which I can use via their payment app with local retailers (one of the ironies of frequent flyer programs is that after accumulating enough miles for good rewards I would rather not doing any more flying than I have to) which offset the cost significantly. Mrs JJB offered the sage advice that if I wanted a camera I would be better off buying one I really like than going for something cheaper and then not being that happy with it. So I bought an Olympus OM-1 with a very nice Olympus Zuiko 12-100mm lens (24-200mm equivalent), now I just need the weather to improve here so I can get out and about with it.

And there was me thinking you'd gone all 1980s!      Looks like a very nice bit of kit! 

Having dabbled in photography back in the '80s with a reasonably SLR I've toyed with the idea of moving properly into the digital age but the phone does most of what I need these days so I've resisted the temptation.

3 hours ago, tender said:

 

Mrs Suvvern tells me that there are a few on here that may be interested in my attempts at astrophotography. 

Here’s one I took last night during a rare break in the clouds for a change.

30min exposure (180x10sec) quickly processed with astrocooker and iPhoto.

If anyone wants more (photos or info) just ask.

IC434 Horsehead Nebula.

Very nice!   Astrocooker is a new one on me.    I feel some research coming on.

2 hours ago, Sidecar Racer said:

 Something for the sky photographers to dream about  .

 

 

 

That's clearly not taken from Luton ....... 🤣

ION

Two hours sleep yesterday afternoon and 10 hours (ignoring the usual interruptions) overnight and I feel better for it although I was still a bit "heady" this morning.     Whether it was the after effects of yesterdays big (for me) migraine (which usually are over and done with quickly and only effect my vision) or something else I don't know.   I'll have to see how I go.

A walk was walked over the frosty but not snow covered fields to the bakery in the next village for some crusty bread.      Just short of a 3 mile round trip i can confirm it's nippy in Puppershire but I'm very pleased to say nowhere near as nippy as up Norf!

I posted a summary of astronomy stuff over here which I'll expand on later.   I'm surprised there doesn't seem to have been much astronomy stuff posted on a dedicated thread over the years.   ERs seems to have the majority of it!

I've got those videos of Jupiter from the other evening to play around with and see if I can make anything out of them this afternoon.   Oh yes I noticed at 2:30am this morning that Orion was very nicely placed over the back garden and looking good when I looked out.    Funny enough I then went straight back to bed which seemed much more inviting than getting dressed, getting all the kit out and standing around in the sub-zero temperatures!

TTFN

On 07/10/2021 at 08:04, JZ said:

Over the last few months, my interest in astronomy has been rekindled and am now considering buying a decent telescope. In the past I was limited to a pair of Leitz binoculars and later my 500mm lens for my DSLR. Around 20 years back, I bought my son a 4" reflector for Christmas, but it was cheap, with a flimsy tripod and a drive that only worked if you had the telescope perfectly set on a N-S axis, but we were able to make out the bands of clouds on Jupiter and the rings of Saturn, albeit rather blurry. After reading recommendations and reviews, I am tempted by this Celestron offering, but still open to suggestions, should any be forthcoming. Budget is about £2K including all accessories/software. There used to be a good telescope shop along the road in Frome, MC², but they closed the showroom and went online only, but sadly, no longer appear to be trading. 

Did you ever take the plunge?    If so what did you get and how are you getting on?     Are you doing pure visual or have you put a toe in the complicated, murky waters of astrophotography with the new kit?

About 2 years ago, with an initial  budget just over 10% of yours I started as a complete beginner, knowing absolutely nothing, and as a consequence my basic apparatus is very cheap and cheerful - with all that entails.      I bought a Skywatcher 130  with equatorial mount including a single axis (RA) mount.    This choice was more by luck than judgement as I didn't appreciate the benefit of such a mount over a basic Azimuth & Elevation version at the time or indeed the necessity for it for astrophotography.    

Over the recent months I've posted quite a lot about my astronomical trials and tribulations over on Early Risers.     @Darlington_Shed requested some details of my astro-camera so I thought it might be an idea to come over onto this thread for a bit more nitty gritty.    I believe many experts suggest you should not attempt astro until you have established a degree of visual skill and suggest waiting for 2 or 3 years.    I have a lot of patience but not for that!

For my first attempts at astrophotography I made an adapter for my son's mirror-less Canon camera body.      It's a commercial adapter modified to shorten it by removing the eyepiece mounting and replace it with a sleeve that goes over the eyepiece tube.   This enables focus to be achieved without the aid of a Barlow lens (and hence the inherent magnification).

It seemed to work and I had a degree of success with this for both lunar and deep sky images.     Shortly afterwards some of the plastic teeth fell off of the rack for the sloppy plastic focuser.   I became aware of the much improved "Crayford Focuser" design and although you can buy such devices I had a crack at making one.   Here you can see it in place complete with the camera adapter and the manual focus knob.   It's basically an Ali tube sitting in a Vee of four ball races to allow fore & aft movement held in position and driven by a round, sprung loaded rod bearing down and gripping the top of the focus tube.      

Last year I bought a dedicated astro-camera and despite all of my recent experience with budget equipment I bought a budget colour camera.  It was about £130, which is about as cheap as you can get when astro-cameras typically cost £300+ and many are in 4 figures).    The camera is the AltairAstro GPCAM2 Colour camera and for a tiny, budget camera it sort of works OK for lunar, planetary  and deep sky work but much more of a challenge with deep sky because it's relatively insensitive so seeing what your photographing is much more of a challenge!

I've updated the Crayford to a stepper motor drive with an RF remote control so that focus can be achieved without touching the scope - a very big plus point that!    It uses a pair of very cheap 4 channel On/Off RF modules and an Arduino providing the drive signals to the little stepper motor drive board.  At the same time I've added a similar RF remote to the RA control box that came with scope.   In this case the RF module uses a transistor across the back of each button to simulate button presses.     I think Tx/Rx  modules were about £4 a pair and the stepper motor and driver board were equally as cheap.   Here's the updated Crayford with the dinky little GPCAM2 in this case in use with a reasonable 3X Barlow.   The Barlow cost about £100 and is far better than the very cheap and cheerful 2X version bundled with the scope.    A similar quality Celestron eyepiece from the same range has made a big difference too.  IT has much better eye relief which is much appreciated by this spectacle wearer.

And this is the mod to the RA drive box.   You can just about see the RX module standing on end next to the cable entry with the drive wires each leading to a transistor wired across the button connections.

I have learnt that the watchwords with everything related to astronomy on a budget appear to be patience and persistence.     If you buy budget you must put up with quite a lot of frustration which is not because you are necessarily doing anything wrong it's that in many cases the equipment just isn't up to it   e.g. sloppy mounts, wobbly tripods, sloppy focusers and a whole host of other things.   There are of course plenty of things to learn and perfect, particularly polar alignment which is tricky but essential with an equatorial mount (particularly for astrophotography), collimation of Newtonian reflectors and actually just finding the targets (although if you can't find the moon unaided you'd best give up now 🤣).

If you are the type of person who tries something and immediately gives up when it doesn't work first time and moves on to something new then astrophotography probably isn't for you but when you do make progress despite and not because of the budget equipment I have to say it's rather pleasing.   

So far my really memorable astronomical achievements/moments are:

     The first time I looked at the moon through the telescope  - Wow!

     EVERY time I look at Jupiter through the telescope - Wow squared and that doesn't diminish the more times I do it!

     The first time I looked at Pleiades through the telescope

     The first time I got a half decent, sharp image of the moon after getting the hang of some software (Registax IIRC)

     When I finally managed to extract some detail (not a lot I grant you) in the Orion nebula

     My recent exploits and improvements in imaging Jupiter with various software packages

     My first recent wobbly image of Saturn

In another post, if anyone's interested, I'll mention some of the other mods and gadgets I've concocted or used and also list some of the software packages I use to process images.  In the meantime I'll leave you with perhaps my best image of Jupiter to date complete with the Great Red Spot and its 4 Galilean moons. 

Alan