Author Archives: james

The joy of supporting filter wheels

Posted on October 22, 2014 by james

I’m working on support for filter wheels for oaCapture at the moment.  I’ve had a few hardware niggles that I’ll document separately, but just getting the code right is proving something of a struggle.  Every time I make a change … Continue reading →

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Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 5)

Posted on October 17, 2014 by james

Once the RA motor mounting was sorted I started on the DEC bracket which is somewhat simpler, being made from a section of 4mm thick aluminium angle. Again there’s only one bolt for fixing to the mount, so the bracket … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astronomy, Projects | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Still Life in Green and Black

Posted on October 17, 2014 by james

35mm, 27mm, 24mm and 19mm Tele Vue Panoptics, currently the physically largest eyepieces I have, next to a 5mm Baader Genuine Ortho. And something Green and Black for scale…

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Separated at birth?

Posted on October 8, 2014 by james

I’ve just watched the Horizon programme from a week or so back — “Is your brain male or female?” presented by Michael Moseley and Alice Roberts. My enjoyment of it was somewhat curtailed however because of Alice Roberts’ uncanny similarity … Continue reading →

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libudev to the rescue!

Posted on October 5, 2014 by james

Well, on Linux at least, for the moment… Some time ago when I was writing part of oaCapture I wanted to be able to tell whether the currently connected camera was a Philips SPC900. Ideally, given that I knew, say, … Continue reading →

Posted in Astronomy, Computing, Linux | Tagged , | 1 Comment

Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 4)

Posted on September 12, 2014 by james

My new drills have arrived and I’ve now drilled all the holes for the RA motor mount. It looks a bit like a Swiss cheese. This is the “outside” face, with holes for the motor flange, the four mounting screws, … Continue reading →

Posted in Astro Equipment, Astronomy, Projects | Tagged , | 4 Comments

Astro EQ conversion of EQ3-2 (part 3)

Posted on September 3, 2014 by james

My pulleys and drive belts arrived today. I removed the grub screws and drilled out the 48-tooth pulleys to 6mm (from 5mm) in the lathe to fit the worm spindles and the 16-tooth pulleys to 5mm (from 3mm) to fit … Continue reading →

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A new scope arrives

Posted on September 2, 2014 by james

No pictures yet, but last week a new telescope arrived. I’ve been promising myself an MN190 for some time if one came up second hand at a fair price and took the opportunity when it did having passed on several … Continue reading →

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Debugging FireWire on recent Linux kernels

Posted on September 1, 2014 by james

As part of the development of my planetary capture software I’ve been trying to sort out some problems with IIDC FireWire cameras. They’re not easy to get hold of these days. At least, not at “spare change” kinds of prices. … Continue reading →

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Resolved: Mythbuntu manual shutdown

Posted on September 1, 2014 by james

The last remaining issue I’ve had since my Mythbuntu upgrade a few days ago was that when the “exit and shutdown” option was selected from the frontends, nothing happened. This had worked without a problem on previous installs. I have … Continue reading →

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