Dave's Astrophotography

22/04/2026

Latest mod to the observatory - Adding NEEY 4Amp Active Balancer to the battery.

Project Power Part 11 - Installing Smart Active Balancer (Equalizer) To The Observatory Battery

09/02/2026

MORE POWER!!! Time to give the off grid observatory some more juice for those cloudy days and hot summers.

Time to add additional power to the observatory off grid system. I am adding two 405W Canadian Solar and another Victron Energy Smart Solar MPPT 100/30, Smar...

04/01/2026

Happy New Year, everyone! 🥂✨

2025 was a frustrating year at the observatory, the bad weather, the faulty batteries, the Great Mice Invasion, but 2026 is going to be better. In this video, I’m taking a quick look back at what has been going on and what the plans are for the upcoming year.

Happy New Year, everyone! 🥂✨2025 was a frustrating year at the observatory, the bad weather, the faulty batteries, the Great Mice Invasion, but 2026 is goin...

11/12/2025

Crate just arrived with a new Lithium Battery for the observatory, the original Lead Acids are no longer holding a decent charge and die after only a few hours.

26/03/2025

If you have watched some of my Dome related videos, you will maybe have picked up on the the fact the shutter communications have always been unpredictable/unreliable. Not what you want we you are dependent on the rain sensor located on the rotator module to close the shutter if rain detected. So, I'm prototyping my own boards that are protocol compatible with the original NexDome software. Progress is good so far........currently working on the motor driver implementation.

14/01/2025

So the weather has not been kind over the last few months, so the astro activity took a beating, at least it gave me opportunity to work on the sim rig etc. Here's the latest snapshot of the man cave as we head into 2025!

Happy New Year Everyone! Here we are at the start of another year, and I thought I would give a refresher on where I am with things in the man cave and the s...

15/09/2024

AllSky camera build for the observatory.

Eventually got round to doing my AllSky camera build. Decided on using the ASI676MC camera, but this turned out to be not supported on the current AllSky sof...

02/09/2024

Captured these of the Sun today, standard and inverted process of the two captures.

28/08/2024

ZWO ASI676MC camera turned up today, have been wanting to make an AllSky Camera for a while, so thinking this will do just nicely!

21/07/2024

Capture from today's sun!