Remote Turn On/Off 10Micron GM1000 HPS · Jerry Gerber · ... · 52 · 1424 · 8

John Hayes:
I was going to make this same point.  For observatories that run from solar recharged batteries, you should completely power your equipment down each day to reduce the load on the electrical system.  And after a long stretch of cloudy weather, leaving equipment on 24/7 will just draw the power down until the sun comes back out.  This happens about once per year at Obstech in Chile and the administrators have to  ask everyone to power their equipment down until they can bring everything back on line.

John

Hey John:

What did you do when you were at DSW--especially during the summer "monsoon" season? I've found that it's not unusual to have stretches of cloudy, rainy weather where humidity climbs into the 80s and 90s at night. Looks like we might be headed for a stretch of that this week:



When I first got out to DSW last July, I used to turn everything off every morning or for days at a time during long stretches of rain. I went out there about a month later to deal with a camera issue, and the weather was wet and humid at the time. When I uncovered my OTA, I saw that water had accumulated inside the dew shield next to the objective (thankfully, it wasn't quite deep enough to have reached the glass yet). That was when I decided it might be best to stay powered up through such periods. And Lloyd told me he would just leave everything powered up all the time 24/7/365. I haven't seen any more water accumulating since I have kept everything on. DSW is a very different environment from Obstech, both weather-wise, and also from the standpoint of how the observatory is powered.

Since you're the guy who literally wrote the manual on best practices for remote imaging (an incredible document, btw), I'm definitely interested in your thoughts on an environment like DSW. I'm still relatively new to all this, so my opinions and practices are not even remotely steeped in experience or deep knowledge and should always be taken for what they're worth, which ain't a whole lot.

I do have more than 40 years' experience in IT, managing businesses with large server rooms and the like. At one point, we had an old Novell server that had been up and operating continuously for more than 14 years. And any time our servers had power turned off for any reason, it was an all-hands-on-deck moment. So I know that electronics can be designed to stay up and running continuously for years, if not decades. That makes me tend toward what Ed Thomas says in the 10u forum thread @Ruediger posted about power cycling things. Still, a dedicated server room in a secure facility with its own HVAC system and power fail-safes is one thing. An unsealed metal Quonset hut sitting in the New Mexico desert is quite another.

CS,
Tim

Timothy Martin:

John Hayes:
I was going to make this same point.  For observatories that run from solar recharged batteries, you should completely power your equipment down each day to reduce the load on the electrical system.  And after a long stretch of cloudy weather, leaving equipment on 24/7 will just draw the power down until the sun comes back out.  This happens about once per year at Obstech in Chile and the administrators have to  ask everyone to power their equipment down until they can bring everything back on line.

John

Hey John:

What did you do when you were at DSW--especially during the summer "monsoon" season? I've found that it's not unusual to have stretches of cloudy, rainy weather where humidity climbs into the 80s and 90s at night. Looks like we might be headed for a stretch of that this week:



When I first got out to DSW last July, I used to turn everything off every morning or for days at a time during long stretches of rain. I went out there about a month later to deal with a camera issue, and the weather was wet and humid at the time. When I uncovered my OTA, I saw that water had accumulated inside the dew shield next to the objective (thankfully, it wasn't quite deep enough to have reached the glass yet). That was when I decided it might be best to stay powered up through such periods. And Lloyd told me he would just leave everything powered up all the time 24/7/365. I haven't seen any more water accumulating since I have kept everything on. DSW is a very different environment from Obstech, both weather-wise, and also from the standpoint of how the observatory is powered.

Since you're the guy who literally wrote the manual on best practices for remote imaging (an incredible document, btw), I'm definitely interested in your thoughts on an environment like DSW. I'm still relatively new to all this, so my opinions and practices are not even remotely steeped in experience or deep knowledge and should always be taken for what they're worth, which ain't a whole lot.

I do have more than 40 years' experience in IT, managing businesses with large server rooms and the like. At one point, we had an old Novell server that had been up and operating continuously for more than 14 years. And any time our servers had power turned off for any reason, it was an all-hands-on-deck moment. So I know that electronics can be designed to stay up and running continuously for years, if not decades. That makes me tend toward what Ed Thomas says in the 10u forum thread @Ruediger posted about power cycling things. Still, a dedicated server room in a secure facility with its own HVAC system and power fail-safes is one thing. An unsealed metal Quonset hut sitting in the New Mexico desert is quite another.

CS,
Tim

**Any server is not astrophotography rig. They have to run non-stop. Question is that do people leave professional telescopes and associated rigs powered up 24/7? 
CS!

Armen

Timothy Martin:

Jerry Gerber:
At DSP Remote I don't think the humidity gets very high, but I could be wrong.  I was told I would not even need dew heaters, but that may be only for summer months. Here's a chart showing highest humidity in August reaching around 56%.

Interesting that it would be that different for you from what I see. But I guess being 200 miles north of you up on a mesa in the mountains is a significant shift. As you can see from the chart above, we're expecting over 90% humidity at around 1:00am early tomorrow morning. Again, I kind of go back to what your DSP guy, Ed Thomas, said in that thread--that power cycling electronics is generally harder on it than running it all the time. But your ambient temps during the summer may also be higher than mine, too, which is definitely a consideration. I think the lesson in all this is that if you ask five people this question, you'll get forty-three different opinions. I haven't yet seen anything in this thread that compels me to make a change from what I'm doing. But my mind is open. Time will tell.

Maybe Ed is right, but it may be different for different situations.  I've managed an electronic music studio for decades and always shut everything off before going to bed.   On average my DAW (digital audio workstation) runs flawlessly for 8-10 years, as does all the other peripheral equipment, and that's with daily power-up and power-down cycles.  But the equipment is always indoors with almost always very mild temperatures. 

Chris, the chief tech at DSP Remote, says he leaves everything on and never powers down and he's had no problems, although I don't know for how long he's been doing that.   Temperatures are getting hotter and hotter, and scarier too, we were supposed to go imaging north of San Francisco this past Friday for 3 days but we cancelled the trip as the temperatures there were up to 114F.  Palm Springs, California got up to 124F the other day.   And it's going to continue to get hotter as the fossil fuels companies (and all of us, really) are continuing to thicken the atmosphere.

Timothy Martin:

John Hayes:
I was going to make this same point.  For observatories that run from solar recharged batteries, you should completely power your equipment down each day to reduce the load on the electrical system.  And after a long stretch of cloudy weather, leaving equipment on 24/7 will just draw the power down until the sun comes back out.  This happens about once per year at Obstech in Chile and the administrators have to  ask everyone to power their equipment down until they can bring everything back on line.

John

Hey John:

What did you do when you were at DSW--especially during the summer "monsoon" season? I've found that it's not unusual to have stretches of cloudy, rainy weather where humidity climbs into the 80s and 90s at night. Looks like we might be headed for a stretch of that this week:



When I first got out to DSW last July, I used to turn everything off every morning or for days at a time during long stretches of rain. I went out there about a month later to deal with a camera issue, and the weather was wet and humid at the time. When I uncovered my OTA, I saw that water had accumulated inside the dew shield next to the objective (thankfully, it wasn't quite deep enough to have reached the glass yet). That was when I decided it might be best to stay powered up through such periods. And Lloyd told me he would just leave everything powered up all the time 24/7/365. I haven't seen any more water accumulating since I have kept everything on. DSW is a very different environment from Obstech, both weather-wise, and also from the standpoint of how the observatory is powered.

Since you're the guy who literally wrote the manual on best practices for remote imaging (an incredible document, btw), I'm definitely interested in your thoughts on an environment like DSW. I'm still relatively new to all this, so my opinions and practices are not even remotely steeped in experience or deep knowledge and should always be taken for what they're worth, which ain't a whole lot.

I do have more than 40 years' experience in IT, managing businesses with large server rooms and the like. At one point, we had an old Novell server that had been up and operating continuously for more than 14 years. And any time our servers had power turned off for any reason, it was an all-hands-on-deck moment. So I know that electronics can be designed to stay up and running continuously for years, if not decades. That makes me tend toward what Ed Thomas says in the 10u forum thread @Ruediger posted about power cycling things. Still, a dedicated server room in a secure facility with its own HVAC system and power fail-safes is one thing. An unsealed metal Quonset hut sitting in the New Mexico desert is quite another.

CS,
Tim

Hi Tim,
As I'm sure you know, I was out at DSW for nearly 5 years but I never had an issue with water actually pooling anywhere.  This might be an argument for always parking the telescope horizontally.   If this were an ongoing problem, I'd suggest drilling small (~ 1/16") drain holes in strategic positions and always parking horizontally.  Dew and frost are definitely a very real problems at DSW.  I built my own Arduino controlled anti-dew system that worked amazingly well so dew and frost never formed when I was running.  I suppose that if you were getting dew when the roof was closed, that you might want to keep your anti-dew system powered up all the time as Lloyd suggested.  My C14 was wrapped in Reflextix with two heater straps on the dew shield and one strap just behind the corrector plate.  The Arduino controller simply measured the temperature-dew point spread and turned on a Dew Buster controller when the spread went below a fixed threshold value (~4-5 degrees).

Since DSW is on the power grid, leaving your stuff on 24/7 isn't the kind of concern that it might be if the main power came from solar cells and batteries.  I always shut my system down every morning and powered it back up at night and I still do that in Chile.  I've heard the argument that temperature cycling the PC (and other gear) might cause more wear and tear than just leaving it on; but, I don't really buy into that argument.  I use industrial level, wide temperature range PCs that are rated for operation from -25C to 70C (!) and so far, they have served me well.  One downside to leaving the camera on all the time is that the fans accumulate dust at a rate proportional to how long the fans run so leaving the cameras on all the time will eventually completely clog up cooling system with dust.  This might be an issue where there are a lot of opinions but not much actually data.  I've noticed that roughly half of the operators at both observatories that I've been at leave all of their equipment running 24/7 so it must be fine.

BTW, dew is also an issue at Obstech.  It is not at all uncommon during certain times of the year to find everything absolutely soaked by midnight.  Even my MacBook Pro got pretty wet on a few nights while I was setting up my ASA600.  That's why I was so concerned that ASA doesn't supply their scopes with any internal heaters for dew protection.  I've discovered that the fans are so effective that they work well to prevent dew on the optics--at least so far.


John

Nick Grundy:
i may be late to the party, but finally got Digital Logger Pro to do everything I want. Getting Wake-On-Lan going was critical. Even if I leave the PC on mostly, I want to be able to shut it down in the summer months if I can. 

And regardless, turning it back on remote is sort of important. 

After setting Wake-on-Lan in BIOS and within Windows Network Adapter settings...I got Digital Loggers script going through that web interface. It seems fairly robust as I've been testing for a bit now. Here's the snippet below. 

-- Send WOL to outlet 8
function WOL_outlet8()
        WOL("11:AA:11:aa:23:gf") -- your MAC here       
        log.notice("Wake On Lan command issued")
end



I know i'm about the 4995th person to circumnavigate this, but just in case its helpful...

I must be missing something.  I use a Digital Loggers IP power switch as well but I don't understand why is this needed?  I just set my PC to boot on power up in the BIOS so that when I turn on the power through the IP switch, it boots.  When I'm done, I shut it down from Windows.  My IP power switch isn't affected by a loss of power--other than it simply reverts to everything off.  I just have to connect to it to turn everything on when the power comes back on and I'm ready.

John

Jerry Gerber:
All good.  I got some help from Chris, the chief tech at DSP Remote.  He's sharp and very generous with his time and expertise.  I now have the capacity to turn on and off all gear from my desktop browser at home--without losing my remote connection.

Now on to the next problem....

Thank you all for your help and sharing your experience!

Jerry
www.youtube.com/@astromusicvideo

hi

this one working perfect and not expensive ( around $ 200 dollars )

netBooter NP-0201DU  

CS, Brian

Nick Grundy:

John Hayes:
why is this needed?

I assume you have your PC set to turn on in the event of power loss? 

In testing, and what I'm anticipating for remote, just turning power on to the outlet won't get the PC to start if I shut it down at the end of the session. 

1. End imaging session
2. Transfer data and Shutdown PC via Windows
3. Power down outlets via Digital Loggers web interface (or script)
4. ....next evening....
5. Access and Power on outlets via Digital Logger web interface
6. Send Wake-on-Lan to PC via script
7. Access PC, connect, etc.

@John Hayes It sounds like you have it set up so #6 is unecessary? (that's what the function above does)

Yes...as I said, I set the BIOS so that the PC will boot when power is applied and I've been running that way for about 7 years of remote imaging without any problem.  If what you are doing works, that's great but I think that if you simply do the same thing that I'm doing (it's actually what everyone does), it will work just fine and you won't need any code or scripts at all.  Keep it simple!

Do you know how to get into the BIOS on your PC?  The boot on power up is an option on every machine that I've seen.

John

Howdy,

I use a Primalucelab Eagle 4 Pro as my main drive and from here, use WakeOnLan (WOL) commands via MountWizzard4 (MW4) to start my 10Micron.

By toggling the Eagle PC to wake when power is turned on via relay - I believe this is a Windows setting - it has been very straightforward to start the mount and the whole process can be scripted in Voyager or similar observatory software if needed.

Best,

Rowan

Nick Grundy:

Rowan Prangley:
t has been very straightforward to start the mount and the whole process can be scripted in Voyager or similar observatory software if needed.

so, is everything shut down at some point? 

do you use VPN, then send the Wake command to the eagle pro from home?

To wake my Eagle, I use a nifty free software (I think it's called "WakeOverLan" or "WakeMeLan"... Something like that) then use Windows Remote Desktop to access via my home network (a touch easier then full remote location) but you can use others systems like Chrome Remote desktop which works via the browser or, if you are a Starkeeper Voyager user, you can script the full automation including mount shutdown using Voyager's web access 

Shutting down the mount is easy with MW4 as this will send the commend to the mount. If you don't want to use MW4 to shutdown the mount, a simple method is the 10Micron virtual keypad 👍

i'm definitely against additional points of failure. 

I am right to assume most to the remote facilities provide you some sort of VPN access mechanism? 

If that is the case, you would have some sort of switch or device you keep online all the time? (from which you wake other devices) no?

@Rowan Prangley it sounded like you are on the same network (observatory at home?)

@John Hayes  your remote setup has something you log in to first? the switch? or PC?

Nick Grundy:
i'm definitely against additional points of failure. 

I am right to assume most to the remote facilities provide you some sort of VPN access mechanism? 

If that is the case, you would have some sort of switch or device you keep online all the time? (from which you wake other devices) no?

@Rowan Prangley it sounded like you are on the same network (observatory at home?)

@John Hayes  your remote setup has something you log in to first? the switch? or PC?

Yes! Observatory at home and on same network. Sorry, I should have read the thread from the start to better provide input

Nick Grundy:
I am right to assume most to the remote facilities provide you some sort of VPN access mechanism?

No VPN access in the remote site I’m using, for the reasons mentioned by Ruediger. If VPN is important to you, you may want to check out ZeroTier. This is a virtual VPN system and can easily be setup at a remote site on your own remote PC without interfering with the remote networking environment. It works great if you need IP-access to a software server on your remote PC. I use it for example for some of the remote tools that Voyager offers, which need to connect to the Voyager server on the remote PC. It can give you direct file access as well, for example using an FTP client. It only works on PC’s, phones, tablets etc., as you need to install some software. You will not be able to access your mount this way.

As for WOL, I have always stayed away from it for reasons mentioned above. Also, my understanding is that WOL for the 10Micron mount only works as long as it remains powered. In case of a power loss, you have to physically press the switch again. The best way to power on these mounts remotely is with a relay switch of sorts.

Besides the Screen/keyboard/mouse access of the remote PC (Team Viewer, Splashtop, etc), there are many other options to interact with your equipment on-site, and without a VPN. But they all work with some intermediary cloud-based service like Ruediger described. For my system for example such accesses are:
- Shelly Pro 4 PM (IP switch), via Shelly Cloud
- File exchange, via Box
- Camera access and switch monitoring, via the UniFi (UI) site manager
- UPS, via Schneider Electric cloud service  

Willem Jan.