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Laptop specifications

Unspecified/unknown company EQMod Fabien Chéreau et al. Stellarium Acquisition Help Needed
GAS Astrophotography Interest Group •2 replies•46 views
Tim Ellison avatar
Tim Ellison avatar
Hi All,

I'm going to risk starting off another new topic here, and hope for more responses than the last one generated…!!!!

For the past couple of years I have been doing my astrophotography using a fairly modest laptop - A Dell Inspiron 17-5000. This has an Intel i3-6006U processor. I'm not sure if this is really sufficiently powerful. In operation, the CPU often shows as running flat out at 100%. A few software things seem to not work especially well, and are sometimes quite slow and clunky.

I have been wondering whether I should upgrade to a faster machine, and whether things might work better if I did. In particular I'm wondering about moving from my current software setup (EQMOD, Stellarium, Backyard EOS and PHD2) to a N.I.N.A.-based setup. Is that likely to need more power? Or less? How much power is necessary for things like plate-solving to work well (which it doesn't at all for me at the moment!)?

Does anybody have any experience to share on this kind of thing? Do more powerful CPU's help? If so, how far up the scale is reckoned to be good? I wondered what kind of laptop specifications others in the group might be using, and what your experiences with them are like.

Does anybody have any thoughts?

All the best to everybody.

Tim
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maxchess avatar
maxchess avatar
Tim
Are you noticing a particular problem?
i don’t think any of the applications you currently use is  CPU intensive.
platesolving is a moderate CPU user but I would try adjusting settings first. If it’s connected plate solving that might depend more on your internet connection.
otherwise check you have the right files for your FOV and focal length etc are set correctly.

The real CPU hog is Pixinsight and that’s offline imaging.

I think you will find NINA a delight to use, but I run it on a very old machine.

The one area that might make a difference is having USB3 but modern camera now have buffers so even that might not change things.
Max
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Tim Ellison avatar
Tim Ellison avatar
Hi Max,

Thanks very much for those thoughts.

No particular problem - more a feeling that the machine is being pushed to its limits, and packages now and again stopping talking to me because the machine is too busy to let them. I found some time ago that Stellarium was soaking up all the CPU it could get its hands on. I slowed Stellarium's  "resting" refresh rate down to once per second and that helped quite a bit. But the machine still seems to be very busy a lot of the time.

It looks like possibly clear sky tomorrow so whilst everything is hooked up and running I'm thinking of trying some experiments - switching software on and off etc, and see if that throws any light on anything.

The laptop has USB3, and image downloads etc don't seem to be a problem. It's more the combination of the various packages running that is keeping it all busy.

I haven't ever really got very far with plate solving. You'll probably laugh but I have played a bit with Astro Tortilla, which worked, but not really very well. And when it did work it generally took about 15 minutes to come up with a solution. Not an internet problem as I am operating very determinedly offline and don't let the machine near any kind of a connection - the database is stored locally. I believe there might be more suitable plate-solving packages around. I will probably investigate further on that front if/when I take the plunge with N.I.N.A.

Today I've been looking at CPU specs a bit, and finding that upgrading from an i3 to an i7 doesn't necessarily bring a huge increase in power. So perhaps I'm barking up the wrong tree. And if Raspberry Pi devices etc are being used successfully that might be a clue that my problems aren't what I have been thinking they are. And the fact that you're happily running N.I.N.A. on what you describe as an "old" machine might be another clue. Perhaps I really should make the switch to N.I.N.A. before I buy a new laptop….

Anyway I'm going to have a go at shutting down Backyard EOS for a while tomorrow night, and see how things look with just all the other stuff running. I'm wondering if that package might be a problem - being the one that I'm using that perhaps others aren't.

Cheers Max,

All the best,

Tim
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