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Thanks Brian.

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Is this doc wrong?? It's a PEMPro doc so it should be talking about RA.

GM8,GM8G, GM811G,GM811GHD

Stock

180

478.6893918

Yes

N/A

N/A

I should have been more specific.? What's the worm period for the GM811G RA?? The second doc infers 478.69 for the RA.? I will likely call Losmandy Monday and double check.

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From: Jim Waters via groups.io Sent: Sunday, June 28, 2020 13:59 To: [email protected] Reply To: [email protected] Subject: [Losmandy_users_io] GM811G Worm Period?

As the title says.? What's the worm period of the GM811G?

I have one doc that says its 239.34 and another that says?478.69.? What's the correct worm period?

EDIT - RA Worm Period

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I guess I never realized that when you get to dark-enough skies, you can almost make out what appears to be three faces looking down on you. ?;-)

On Tue, Jun 23, 2020 at 04:17 AM, Arun Hegde wrote:

Yeah, I am totally jealous of you Southern Hemisphere folks for objects such as this! The bulge of the Milky Way passes right through zenith there and makes for some spectacular images.

Here's a group shot pointed to the zenith this Friday night. 15s ISO 3200

So I had another fun night with my GM811G.
I wanted to try something out, and it turned into a lot of things over the night.
Like 1300 things. Like 13,000 seconds. Like 3.6111 hours. Like both unguided, and guided. And like "What Meridian?"

I decided to do 10 second exposures. The goal was to amass a lot of data, to let it build, so I could see an end result out at the end.
And in doing this long run, I could get something visual of the mounts behavior in a real world example. Not a graph, not a stat, but an image.

As I looked at the Southern Meridian in Stellarium I thought about Scott Losmandy, and his words about the RAEXT, which I got for the break down advantages, since I mule my mount out and back in most every night.
But I wanted to see if it could actually go through a meridian, and how far?
How far became a matter of how long, and of the Limit designed into the mount. Which I had set to my worst case scenario so my camera could never hit the mount. I reset the limit twice on the fly. And when I reached the point my object was about to disappear behind my roof, the beeping warning told me I was yet again reaching the limit. Just as I was calling it a night, at 13,000 seconds of images.

Sorry, nothing to complain about here. But maybe you'd like to see what 13,000 seconds of image looks like, 1300 individual images, 10 second exposures each image.
No Post processing, only a crop. Only filter was a Badder Moon and Sky Glow light pollution. I set the color adjust to a set point, and no Auto Adjust used.


1300th image, saved in TIF format, Guided in Pixels with PHD2. 13,000 seconds of stacked data. Unprocessed, but converted to jpg to crop.

I did screw up the first handful of my images. I forgot to start PHD2, so I had 10-15 unguided images in the beginning.
I thought about Brian and his unguided trials. And since the image being built looked ok to me, I just started PHD 2 and let things roll. I didn't start over.
Something I liked was how over the hours, the tiny distant stars began to emerge from the ink of deep space. Also how details emerged from the Lagoon Nebula itself.
And I think Meridian flips may have become something I can pretty much forget about.
Only watch for the limits and how physically close the moving elements are getting to the fixed elements of my mount.

I think this is a testimony to how great a Losmandy Mount can perform. I bought it for a lot of reasons, but imaging was my biggest one.
Tonight I hope to chose another object, and follow it as? the Earth's rotation carries it from my Eastward, through my Westward, Field of View.

I am having fun now. Attached is a copy of the original, and you are most welcome to play with it if you'd like.
I cropped away the edge artifact to present the above image. If someone could advise me how to improve the original as taken, like to get rid of that edge frame anomaly, I'm all ears.

Thanks for looking.
--
SonnyE


(I suggest viewed in full screen)

Hi again,
Just an afterthought,
If the desktop pc is new, (and under warranty) perhaps a service ticket with Dell, may be effective. After all, you would think that they should know more than anyone else, what devices and drivers should be natively on the PC and needed.

Hi Ron,?
Glad to hear the laptop is working.
On the desktop front, I am no security or even networking expert, but I have not found any "TAP" interface on any of my PC's, and I have quite a few.
After looking at your ipconfig file, you DO have IP6 enabled on several network interfaces. Unless you actually are using IP6, it may be a good idea to disable it.
By default, I disable IP6 on all of my pc's as I simply don't need it, and have not missed it.
I also usually disable everything in each of network properties dialogs EXCEPT for:
Client for Windows...
File and Printer Sharing...
QoS Packet Scheduler...
IP4...
Everything else, I disable, and my networking seems to work fine. (I DO NOT use DHCP on my networks, and because of that, have assigned static IP's to all my network devices)
I have found in the end, it has made my networking easier to manage and troubleshoot, (Devices stay (at IP addresses) where I put them, rather than where a router wants to fit them
in), Yes, I know there are methods to set up DHCP reservations and such, but for me, I chose the static IP assignment route.

Concerning TAP interfaces, I found:

and if it were me, and I had nothing critical on my desktop, I would probably pursue the link I included above, but again I am no security or networking expert.
If you are using any remote connect, VPN, or similar software mentioned in the link...
Also if you have virtual machine hypervisor installed on your PC (in Programs 'Features') and are not needing them maybe uninstall that.
As well as if you have IIS installed and are not using that, maybe uninstall that as well.

Many computers nowdays, still come with bloatware, and perhaps this (the TAP interfaces) are a byproduct of that.

Please remember that I am going out on a limb on this one and am no expert on these matters, but perhaps just adding a new NIC adapter may be a band-aid, instead of a cure.
There ARE other more advanced troubleshooting tools available (free) to aid in resolving this situation, such as WireShark for NIC troubleshooting, and ProcessExplorer, etc (systools)
to exactly identify what is going on, but they do require more effort than simply trying to get rid of the undesirable interfaces as described in the link.

In a worst case, possibly doing a windows repair (reinstall), MAY have a positive result, but that may be like using an shotgun to swat a fly.

Chip and Tim (and others), If you guys have experienced this, or have better advice, please chime in :)

Good Luck
Astronut Tim

Hi John you haven’t mentioned I fb you updated system location GMT offset and local time and mount parameters after a battery change. ? Gemini dtg is very different it’s:

yymm.dd: hh.mm.ss
See link here at bottom of the page ?

You may also find some hints on the Gemini

It’s quite odd for the battery to be “zero voltage” ? Is the new one you installed ok? ?What’s its voltage?

Also check that battery voltage is present at the SRAM by measuring it at the SRAM IC,

Also check your local time isn’t set to DST etc or is as supposed to. ? Most pointing errors are incorrect DTG or location positions. ?Google earth or a mobile phone can find your lay/long. ?

You can save your SRAM settings by using GEMINI ASCOM and re-import them after a battery change ? Look up Gemini ASCOM ! ?Makes it easy ?

Do get t back On these?

cheers

?

--
Brendan

--

Astronut Tim

I gather that the direct ethernet browser Gemini interface (192.168.1.110) IS working, but...
Is the Gemini.NET interface working as well now ?

• Yes, the direct ethernet browser Gemini interface (192.168.1.110) works perfectly with the Dell Laptop.

did you end up specifying the primary DNS server in your PC NIC properties?

• Yes, the primary DNS server was specified in the?Dell Laptop NIC properties.
• The Desk top PC has an ethernet port but is unusable. I will try an external NIC adapter as you did for the Desk top PC..?

Thanks for the IPCONFIG/ALL command prompt tip. Works great.
A copy of my IPCONFIG.txt file for the Dell Laptop is attached for reference (I think it's attached! )
Thanks for the help.
Ron M

First let me update readers with myself. I have a Losmandy G11 base with an older Gemini 1 Level 4 version 1.05 computer and have been using it for several years quite successfully. The G11 is firmly attached to a Wheely Bar and I have a smooth even floor from the inside of my house out to the place where I observe from. I roll the setup out and screw down the 3 leg screws into permanent indentations in the concrete floor and have 2 precision levels salvaged from old theodolites mounted on the G11 so in short I can usually do warm starts every time I use my set up and only do cold starts if I have reconfigured the dovetail plates for a different telescope or have done anything else requiring cold starts. I use a STAR GPS normally for every start then uplug it once the SRAM has updated. Everything works very nicely and my objects are always very near centered in even medium powered eyepieces. About 2 months ago the GPS was no longer being read properly and I got the "GPS timed out" message. Working with Chris at STAR we narrowed it down to the cable and I ordered one from him. It hasn't arrived yet. Then about 2 weeks ago I got a CMOS rest message on start up. The last cell change was 15 months ago so this wasn't unusual. The cell was down to 0.2v so I changed it. Realizing that I now had no GPS and had swapped the cell I assumed that I needed to start back from zero, (My manual states this as well). That is I needed to put in everything manually like coordinates, time, mount type etc so I did this and then started building my model from a cold start. Strangely when I put in my selected star the mount slewed to a completely wrong position! (even though I have my CWD position precisely marked and always start successfully from there?). I assumed that I had simply made an error so started again being very careful. The same thing happened two more times. I was dumbfounded and had no idea what to do so put the set up away and tried again the next evening. Always the same!

I then tried something that made no sense but being desperate I decided to do it anyway. Even though my manuals say that going to the cold start option erases all previous models and even though I had changed the backup cell I decided to try a WARM START. The mount slewed to a location very close to where I had expected!!! Then with a low power eyepiece and in the "OBJECT SEARCH" mode I found the star very quickly! This astonished me but even so I was happy so I continued on and got 2 more model stars in the East and one in the West and built a good model. I observed for several hours more and everything went flawlessly???? That was 3 nights ago. My GPS cable is still in the mail so I cant test it yet but I will try again tonight in WARM START and see what happens.

Can anybody explain what has happened here? One of the club members asked me how long I had the bad cell out before putting in the new one. It was a quick swap but even still, the old cell read very close to zero volts using my FLUKE 189 DMM so I cant see how the pointing model could have remained intack in the SRAM. Also I cant understand why it would not do a cold start correctly. I have my Counter weight shaft down position very carefully marked for that "sweet spot" so that should not have had anything to do with it.

I will try again tonight if the Sahara dust permits. The other night the Sahara dust gave me some very stable views of Jupiter and Saturn so the dust can actually help as it tends to stabilize the atmosphere. (As long as its not TOO dense)

I will keep everybody informed. Please note that over the years usuing the Gemini 1 I have ocassionally had bizarre behaviour but it has always self cleared so I pay no attention. Maybe this is such a case but the SRAM retaining old pointing model data after a battery change out is strange indeed. A capacitor hold up? Who knows?

Thanks for any input and ideas
John Van Allen
Losmandy G11, Gemini 1 V4 Level 1.05, TV NP127, TV 85, Questar 7, Questar 3.5, AstroTec AT72ED with CG4 base for grab and Go
Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic? ?

Hi Ron,
When I got a new Ethernet to USB adapter for my new Surface Book, I got similar results (a device did show up in the device manager without the warning bang symbol, but the connection did not work properly until I downloaded the ethernet mfgr's specific driver. Windows led me to believe it should have worked with it's built in driver, but it didn't. After loading the latest mfgr driver, the NIC adapter worked perfectly as expected.

I'm a little thick, and apologize if you already answered it from your last post, but I gather that the direct ethernet browser Gemini interface (192.168.1.110) IS working, but...
Is the Gemini.NET interface working as well now ?
(Also, just curious, did you end up specifing the primary DNS server in your PC NIC properties?)

Lastly, when multiple network interfaces exist on a PC (Wired, WIFI, etc) *sometimes* the settings may conflict with each other.
To get a overall view of your network settings on the pc,
You can launch a command prompt, <Windows Key>+ <R>, type in CMD, then from within the command prompt, type IPCONFIG/ALL and this will give you a summary of your PC's networking configuration.
You can even save a text file of this on the desktop by typing IPCONFIG/ALL >%userprofile%\desktop\ipcfginfo.txt
(the actual filename part ipcfginfo.txt doesn't matter and can be any valid filename)

Again, sorry to bother if everything is already working for you, just wanted to be sure all is really good in Gemini-2 land...
Thanks,
Astronut Tim

PS.
I couldn't read your network adapter names (you must be sure the adapter properties are for the right Network Interface.
(just unplug the cable from the pc and you will see the proper network interface show 'disconnected' to be sure it was the right one...)

Astronut
The Ethernet?Device?names are different between the Dell laptop and Dell desktop device manager?listing and network adapter interface as illustrated below. The Ethernet?TAP - Windows Adapter V9?as shown for the Desk Top computer is for VPN network connections to the internet. As far as I know, this is the wrong application to use for Direct Gemini 2 Ethernet Connection and cannot be changed. Please correct me if I'm wrong.
All the Gemini 2 settings used for the Dell laptop work as instructed by Brian's Direct Ethernet Video. The Gemini 2 built in software version of the Hand Controller works fine.

New Cat6 cables installed.
Thanks to all.
Ron M











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