Laptop for Astrophotography Capture - Request for Advice - Forums

Topic starter

Feb 4, 2023

Hi all,

When I started out with astrophotgraphy, I went with what looked like the prevailing guidance - that image capture doesn't need much computing power, and pretty much any computer will do. I bought a quite low-powered Windows laptop, thinking that would be good for running from batteries when away from base. But having used it for a while, and done some experimenting, reading and researching, I've come to feel that I really need more power.

So I am thinking of upgrading the laptop. But I wondered if anybody might have any thoughts on whether I am on the right track with this - and if I am, how powerful a laptop I ought to be looking for?

Current kit is :-
Dell Inspiron 17-5770 laptop with i3 CPU, 8GB RAM, 1TB hard disc, integrated graphics.
Sky-Watcher AZ-EQ6 mount
Canon EOS 600D imaging camera
ZWO ASI120MC-S guide camera
Windows 10
Stellarium & EQMOD running the mount
BackyardEOS handling image capture
PHD2 guiding

The system works, but the laptop feels rather overloaded. I can see signs that the CPU is running pretty much flat out, and when capturing images I get a delay of about 35 seconds between shots. This feels too long - especially when shooting short exposures on brighter targets! Comparing with a few friends, they seem to generaly get delays of around 8 seconds or less between frames. Their equipment setups are sufficiently different to mine that it is difficult to figure out much from further comparing with them. I have experimented with NINA in place of BackyardEOS, and got fairly similar results (with NINA controllong the mount too, in place of the Stellarium/EQMOD setup). Experiments suggest that the time taken to transfer data from camera to computer is around 10 seconds. The remaining 25 seconds appears to be taken up by processing activities on the computer - which I imagine mainly to be decompression, debayering and stretching of the image data so that the software can display the image on screen. If I have just a capture program running - nothing else - and just the DSLR connected, the data transfer time appears to fall to around 5 seconds, which I take to be a sign of the computer being overloaded when running everything.

Having thought around the subject a little, I realise that the computing workload will depend on the type of camera being used - how many pixels, whether a "consumer" or an "astro" camera, and whether colour or monochrome. I reckon that my kind of camera - i.e. a DSLR - probably imposes a higher workload than most "astro" cameras, as the RAW data from the camera needs to be decompressed and then debayered before it can be stretched and displayed. So perhaps a low-power laptop would be OK for an astro camera with a small sensor, but maybe not for a typical DSLR?

If anybody is running anything broadly similar to my setup - i.e. involving a Windows laptop and a DSLR - I'd be very interested in feedback on how well you get on. How short is the time gap between exposures when shooting an image sequence? Plus details of the kit used, etc. Any such feedback will be very gratefully received.

Many thanks for reading.

Regards,

Tim

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Michel Makhlouta

Feb 4, 2023

is that 1TB a hard drive? as in a mechanical one? swap that with an SSD and bump your RAM with another stick to 16GB, and you should be fine. The rest of your specs are good.

Concise

Jared Holloway

Feb 4, 2023 · Edited: Feb 4, 2023

I have a laptop that is similar but I have 16gb of RAM. Beyond RAM, maybe a slightly more powerful processor. I run NINA, PHD2, and the Pegasus software - run one USB cable to the laptop. I also power externally instead of off the batteries. I have had zero issues.

Also, check what else may be running in the background - use task manager. You may have some programs running in the background thay is causeing the CPU usage to spike like that.

Edit: I also have EQMOD and Stellarium running

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Eduardo Suárez

Feb 4, 2023

Hi, have you considered using a ZWO ASIAir Plus or similar? This would remove the need for a laptop for capturing images. I used to use my old laptop to capture images, and since I've moved to the ASIAir Plus, it's been so much easier and faster. The ASIAir Plus controls the mount, the guiding camera, main camera, etc…

It seems like the ASIAir Plus would support your Canon DSLR, so this might be an option. Just a thought :-)

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Ed Dixon

Feb 4, 2023

The key things I see are memory (I use 16GB) and fast SSD for capture (I use 1 TB). Given that, almost any processor will work fine.

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gmadkat

IOTD Staff

Feb 4, 2023

I use a similar laptop for data capture. Only thing I recommend is to not upgrade to Windows 11 right yet, I have had bad experience with Windows 11 and Planewave and other software. 16GB of RAM helps but I make do with 8GB.
I do all the processing on a different computer which has more disk space and memory.

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Jonathan Young

Feb 4, 2023 · Edited: Feb 4, 2023

Fast SSD is mandatory.

I use a Mele2, about the size of two card decks. You can add a 1 or 2 TB m2 SSD to the kit, reflash OEM windows and drivers from the website. Maybe $300 total. Plug your USB peripherals directly into the box, leave it mounted on the scope. It windows so it can be configured for true remote operation.

It has been fine for Solar or planets at 200fps video. Also fine for 24MP long exposure, 1s guide etc. Run anything you want for capture while using an actual Remote Desktop (can start remotely if stuck at work, or kids sports, or on business travel) and can be wired or WiFi if it is close enough to your router (50’-60’ is fine). Enable One drive for file sharing back to your processing rig.

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John

Feb 4, 2023

well i see you use the canon 600d,i had the same. that use usb 2,so its slow .
the i3 processor is also slow,i would not go below a i5.

my trick was to use a powered usb hub for the canon,it did helped allot.
if you can try to find a better camera,zwo asi or equal,so much more fun.

greetings John

Nick Grundy

Feb 5, 2023

I used to get some ZWO "Camera failed to download…" images sporadically when I was using an undersized PC to aquisition. That was using the ASI2600mm in 5s exposure. @50 mb each, I guessed it was just hammering the system too much.

I wouldn't skimp on the laptop if you can help it. The gear for the rest of this hobby is so expensive it dwarves the cost of a simple i7, 16gb ram laptop. I think you can get one for ~600-800 now.

There's nothing worse than getting up in the morning when you go to review all the wonderful subs, finding out that the PC up and crashed on your at 1am.

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Joe Linington

Feb 5, 2023

Your cpu is 1 size to small and your mechanical hard disk is to slow. The i3 version of that computer had a 2 core, 2 thread i3-6006u. I run a similar laptop but the 2 core, 4 thread I5-6200u with 8gb ram and I have replaced the hard disk with a 500gb SSD. It runs my rig well but just when I use my Sony A7r 36mp camera. No issues with my 24mp A6000. Running Nina, PHD2 (2mp camera), EQMOD, and a few Ascom drivers.

imho minimum for a capture computer is 4 cores or threads (4cores is better), 8gb ram and an SSD. Many mini computers and budget laptops meet this now but not in 2018. Be careful of the cheap Chromebooks. Many have enough power to run a rig but are locked to chrome OS.

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Die Launische Diva

Feb 5, 2023 · Edited: Feb 5, 2023

The simplest and cheapest solution is purchasing any decent SSD drive as an upgrade. Unfortunately, Windows 10 on spinning rust disks (aka HDDs) does not perform well. Your old laptop will benefit from the faster data transfer speeds of an SSD and a fresh installation of the operating system.

A next potential upgrade is to buy one of these small and fan-less PCs people mentioned above. The total cost will probably be lower than buying a new laptop. And you won't have to worry for exposing a new and expensive laptop to the elements outside, while if the old laptop fails, it won't be a big deal.

dkamen

Feb 5, 2023

N.I.N.A. loads the raw file into RAM and converts/debayers it to a TIF which is written on a temporary file on disk before being passed over to star analysis and stretching.

Debayering itself, star analysis and stretching almost certainly happen in RAM and are CPU bound. Obviously a faster CPU would help.

But writing and reading the files is I/O bound and would net on that being the main issue. I think you should see significant improvement if you swap your HDD for a smaller SSD. You don't really need more than a few GB for imaging, I would take a 128G SSD over a 1TB HDD any time.

You can also see how much debayering is "taxing" you by disabling it in the imaging settings.

Finally, there are two ways to use a CANON in NINA: natively or via ASCOM. Maybe they perform differently.

I don't use NINA with my DSLR too much but in the few times I did, overall delay was about 15 seconds. Much older laptop but with SSD. And Nikon camera so I don't know if it is comparable.

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 7, 2023

Hi All,

Many thanks to everybody for all your thoughts and advice. It's good of you all to respond. There are quite a few different strands of thought in there, which have all been interesting to read.

It seems there's a definite consensus around my laptop being too puny. Putting together your various advice, it seems like the general feeling is that an i5 CPU with four cores is a good minimum level to go for. I take the points about RAM and HDD/SSD too - but when I run diagnostic tools during capture I don't see either the memory or the disc being remotely stressed - it appears to be wholly the CPU that's the bottleneck - if the tools are telling me the truth of course (:-)). Having said that, any new machine is likely to have an SSD and more RAM in any case. I've looked around a bit and it looks like I can get a suitable refurbished machine for around £250 or so, so that seems a good way to go. I know that a lot of people use ASIAirs and other small computers at the mount, with a remote desktop or laptop, but for the moment I think I'd prefer to keep my setup as it is and just upgrade the laptop. And yes a "proper" camera would be nice too - but for the moment I'm having a lot of fun with my trusty old Canon and am going to stick with it for a while yet.

Now that I'm thinking seriously about an i5 (or possibly i7) laptop with four cores, I'm wondering whether anybody is running one of those and has any datasets sitting around, from which they could extract any bits of timing information and confirm that short inter-shot delays can be produced using such a machine? If anybody does I'd be very interested and grateful to see any figures.

Many thanks again all!

Best regards,

Tim

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Joe Linington

Feb 7, 2023

If you let me know how to extract data I could. I have the lowest of the laptop I5's, a 2 core 4 thread I5-6200u and shoot a DSLR like you. I use Nina to manage my sessions and download my FITS. I also have the Hocus Focus image analyzing plugin installed. When using my A7r which outputs 36mp in 14bit and creates a 70MB Fits file, it takes about 5 seconds between shots. It takes another 5-10 seconds for the computer to process, plate solve (with ASTAP) and display the new image. The camera will start taking the next sub while it preps the image so only 5 seconds between subs. The computer is also running PHD2 with possibly the most inefficient setup possible. My guide camera is basically a web cam and the slowest it can go is 5fps so my computer is constantly stacking 10 frames of 2mp data to perform the guiding. Both cameras share a single USB cable and both are USB2. I am running Win10 Pro (not the included version) and keep the computer clean. I also force an update before imaging and then disable updates for 7 days.

I don't experience any dropped frames or errors. Sometimes Remote Desktop can be a little slow (I remote in from the house to stay warm once setup) but that is usually more network related than computer related. I have 8gb single channel ram and I have replaced the HDD with an older 500GB SSD. I think this might be the worst case scenario. Especially the way I run guiding is less efficient than it could be.

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Monty Chandler

Feb 7, 2023

It's good that your running full versions of software. Have you considered a NUC device? I mount mine on my rigs and power them via the pegasus pba. That way there's only one cable (power) leaving the rig.

With that recommended, I really don't think your laptop is the issue. I used a 15 year old Acer netbook my first year and never had an issue. USB3 wasn't a thing yet.

Cheers!

Concise Supportive

Dale Penkala

Feb 7, 2023 · Edited: Feb 7, 2023

I have both an i3 7th gen for my wide field rig and an i5 6th gen for my main rig, however I’m not running a DSLR. My wide field rig I’m using my ZWO ASI294MC Pro and my main rig my 071MC Pro.
I had ALOT of problems with my i3 when it had the mechanical HD. When I changed it for the SSD it was a completely new computer and then I added another 4 gigs of ram to which helped as well. I do have USB3 on this computer and that makes a huge difference over the USB2’s.
My i5 so far I’ve not had any reason to complain about it. Its has 16gb of ram and I’m able to download with the USB3 well over 100fps in video mode when shooting the moon or planets.
In both rigs I’m using a USB3 Hub and I’ve not experienced any issues there. Again I’m not running a DSLR but thought I’d give you an idea what I’m running with the setups because I have both an i3 & i5 and run windows 10 on both.

Hope this can help in some way.

Dale

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gfunkernator

Feb 7, 2023

Depending on what your capturing, a standard SSD will be fine. No need for an expensive "fast" SSD because input/output will be limited to how the software handles data. If you're doing planetary capture with a very high frame rate, obviously an SSD will be better than a regular HDD, and the CPU will be more important. I've watched ASI Capture write a large file to my SSD at around 120ish megabytes per second, far below what my drive is capable of. That is because the software isn't processing data as quick as the drive and bus can handle, which is the case most of the time. I've seen this also using DSS. I watch the network usage while stacking (my subs are on a NAS) and it never really goes above 300Mbps. The only time that connection becomes saturated is when it loads the final image, because that is a normal file transfer command, and that operation will use all available bandwidth. So keep this in mind.

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 8, 2023

Joe Linington:
If you let me know how to extract data I could. I have the lowest of the laptop I5's, a 2 core 4 thread I5-6200u and shoot a DSLR like you. I use Nina to manage my sessions and download my FITS. I also have the Hocus Focus image analyzing plugin installed. When using my A7r which outputs 36mp in 14bit and creates a 70MB Fits file, it takes about 5 seconds between shots. It takes another 5-10 seconds for the computer to process, plate solve (with ASTAP) and display the new image. The camera will start taking the next sub while it preps the image so only 5 seconds between subs. The computer is also running PHD2 with possibly the most inefficient setup possible. My guide camera is basically a web cam and the slowest it can go is 5fps so my computer is constantly stacking 10 frames of 2mp data to perform the guiding. Both cameras share a single USB cable and both are USB2. I am running Win10 Pro (not the included version) and keep the computer clean. I also force an update before imaging and then disable updates for 7 days.

I don't experience any dropped frames or errors. Sometimes Remote Desktop can be a little slow (I remote in from the house to stay warm once setup) but that is usually more network related than computer related. I have 8gb single channel ram and I have replaced the HDD with an older 500GB SSD. I think this might be the worst case scenario. Especially the way I run guiding is less efficient than it could be.

Hello Joe,

Thanks for all that info. Plenty of detail in there. A great help. Your A7r has twice as many pixels as my 600D (18mp) so it's really good to hear that the laptop gets the job done so fast. Especially considering that you're making it work hard at the guiding too (thought it was just me who ended up doing things like that! :-> :-> :->). No more timing data needed than what you've already provided. Thanks very much.

Could I just ask for clarification on two points please though?

Is the laptop is connected to and running all the equipment (and NINA too)? You mention Remote Desktop, and I'm imagining the laptop is outdoors near the mount and you are sometimes connecting from a second machine indoors. Is that right? There isn't an ASIAir or a NUC or anything like that between the laptop and the mount/cameras? Just checking to make sure!

I've also just recently started wondering about the graphics capabilities of laptops. Most use the "integrated graphics" built in to the CPU chip, but some have a separate graphics card - often a Radeon or similar. I'm not sure whether or not that has any relevance to the question at hand, but wondered which your laptop has. Do you know? Make and model of the laptop might be enough to confirm that, or it can be found in the top line of the Display section of the System Configuration app (found in the Windows Administrative Tools section of the Start menu in Windows 10) if it's easy to look there. The info would complete the picture brilliantly.

Cheers Joe,

All the best,

Tim

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 8, 2023

Monty Chandler:
It's good that your running full versions of software. Have you considered a NUC device? I mount mine on my rigs and power them via the pegasus pba. That way there's only one cable (power) leaving the rig.

With that recommended, I really don't think your laptop is the issue. I used a 15 year old Acer netbook my first year and never had an issue. USB3 wasn't a thing yet.

Cheers!

Hi Monty,

Thanks for your thoughts. Yes I've considered a NUC or similar. I might try something like that in the future, but for the moment I think I'd prefer to "stick with what I know" and just upgrade the laptop. I'm imagining that a faster laptop would probably still be useful when hooking in to a NUC if I go that way later.

Your Acer must have been a good'un! My laptop dates from 2017 I think. It's got USB3 and all the other good bits from that time, but all the signs I see are that the CPU is limiting things. A friend has allowed me to connect my camera to his "blisteringly fast" laptop - running NINA - and try shooting a set of dark frames. That proved there's nothing unduly slow about the Canon camera or the USB cabling - delays of only 1-2 seconds between shots.

Many thanks for your comments,

All the best,

Tim

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 8, 2023

Dale Penkala:
I have both an i3 7th gen for my wide field rig and an i5 6th gen for my main rig, however I’m not running a DSLR. My wide field rig I’m using my ZWO ASI294MC Pro and my main rig my 071MC Pro.
I had ALOT of problems with my i3 when it had the mechanical HD. When I changed it for the SSD it was a completely new computer and then I added another 4 gigs of ram to which helped as well. I do have USB3 on this computer and that makes a huge difference over the USB2’s.
My i5 so far I’ve not had any reason to complain about it. Its has 16gb of ram and I’m able to download with the USB3 well over 100fps in video mode when shooting the moon or planets.
In both rigs I’m using a USB3 Hub and I’ve not experienced any issues there. Again I’m not running a DSLR but thought I’d give you an idea what I’m running with the setups because I have both an i3 & i5 and run windows 10 on both.

Hope this can help in some way.

Dale

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your comments. I've checked on you ASI294MC Pro and 071MC Pro and they both have decent numbers of pixels - about 12Mp and 16Mp respectively if I've got it right. Being colour cameras too, overall they are fairly similar to my 18Mp DSLR in terms of computing workload I think. So your information is pretty helpful. My laptop has USB3 but the camera is only USB2. But as per my post above, the camera and USB side of things seems to be good and fast. It's good to hear that your i5 is going well. I think that's where I'm headed, and hopefully that will sort things

Many thanks,

Tim

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 8, 2023

Depending on what your capturing, a standard SSD will be fine. No need for an expensive "fast" SSD because input/output will be limited to how the software handles data. If you're doing planetary capture with a very high frame rate, obviously an SSD will be better than a regular HDD, and the CPU will be more important. I've watched ASI Capture write a large file to my SSD at around 120ish megabytes per second, far below what my drive is capable of. That is because the software isn't processing data as quick as the drive and bus can handle, which is the case most of the time. I've seen this also using DSS. I watch the network usage while stacking (my subs are on a NAS) and it never really goes above 300Mbps. The only time that connection becomes saturated is when it loads the final image, because that is a normal file transfer command, and that operation will use all available bandwidth. So keep this in mind.

Many thanks for your thoughts. I agree. SSDs are probably a good idea in general. But with my current laptop I don't see the mechanical HDD getting anywhere near being worked hard. It all seems to be the CPU which is the bottleneck. But of course a faster CPU might benefit from a SSD and it would probably be foolish to not go for one. I've been doing both deep-sky and planetary stuff, and as you say, an SSD might help get the max possible frame rates with the planetary, amongst other things.

Many thanks. Cheers.

Tim

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Dale Penkala

Feb 8, 2023

Tim Ellison:
Dale Penkala:
I have both an i3 7th gen for my wide field rig and an i5 6th gen for my main rig, however I’m not running a DSLR. My wide field rig I’m using my ZWO ASI294MC Pro and my main rig my 071MC Pro.
I had ALOT of problems with my i3 when it had the mechanical HD. When I changed it for the SSD it was a completely new computer and then I added another 4 gigs of ram to which helped as well. I do have USB3 on this computer and that makes a huge difference over the USB2’s.
My i5 so far I’ve not had any reason to complain about it. Its has 16gb of ram and I’m able to download with the USB3 well over 100fps in video mode when shooting the moon or planets.
In both rigs I’m using a USB3 Hub and I’ve not experienced any issues there. Again I’m not running a DSLR but thought I’d give you an idea what I’m running with the setups because I have both an i3 & i5 and run windows 10 on both.

Hope this can help in some way.

Dale

Hi Dale,

Thanks for your comments. I've checked on you ASI294MC Pro and 071MC Pro and they both have decent numbers of pixels - about 12Mp and 16Mp respectively if I've got it right. Being colour cameras too, overall they are fairly similar to my 18Mp DSLR in terms of computing workload I think. So your information is pretty helpful. My laptop has USB3 but the camera is only USB2. But as per my post above, the camera and USB side of things seems to be good and fast. It's good to hear that your i5 is going well. I think that's where I'm headed, and hopefully that will sort things

Many thanks,

Tim

Your welcome Tim and best of luck to you!

Dale

Joe Linington

Feb 8, 2023

Tim Ellison:
Joe Linington:
If you let me know how to extract data I could. I have the lowest of the laptop I5's, a 2 core 4 thread I5-6200u and shoot a DSLR like you. I use Nina to manage my sessions and download my FITS. I also have the Hocus Focus image analyzing plugin installed. When using my A7r which outputs 36mp in 14bit and creates a 70MB Fits file, it takes about 5 seconds between shots. It takes another 5-10 seconds for the computer to process, plate solve (with ASTAP) and display the new image. The camera will start taking the next sub while it preps the image so only 5 seconds between subs. The computer is also running PHD2 with possibly the most inefficient setup possible. My guide camera is basically a web cam and the slowest it can go is 5fps so my computer is constantly stacking 10 frames of 2mp data to perform the guiding. Both cameras share a single USB cable and both are USB2. I am running Win10 Pro (not the included version) and keep the computer clean. I also force an update before imaging and then disable updates for 7 days.

I don't experience any dropped frames or errors. Sometimes Remote Desktop can be a little slow (I remote in from the house to stay warm once setup) but that is usually more network related than computer related. I have 8gb single channel ram and I have replaced the HDD with an older 500GB SSD. I think this might be the worst case scenario. Especially the way I run guiding is less efficient than it could be.

Hello Joe,

Thanks for all that info. Plenty of detail in there. A great help. Your A7r has twice as many pixels as my 600D (18mp) so it's really good to hear that the laptop gets the job done so fast. Especially considering that you're making it work hard at the guiding too (thought it was just me who ended up doing things like that! :-> :-> :->). No more timing data needed than what you've already provided. Thanks very much.

Could I just ask for clarification on two points please though?

Is the laptop is connected to and running all the equipment (and NINA too)? You mention Remote Desktop, and I'm imagining the laptop is outdoors near the mount and you are sometimes connecting from a second machine indoors. Is that right? There isn't an ASIAir or a NUC or anything like that between the laptop and the mount/cameras? Just checking to make sure!

I've also just recently started wondering about the graphics capabilities of laptops. Most use the "integrated graphics" built in to the CPU chip, but some have a separate graphics card - often a Radeon or similar. I'm not sure whether or not that has any relevance to the question at hand, but wondered which your laptop has. Do you know? Make and model of the laptop might be enough to confirm that, or it can be found in the top line of the Display section of the System Configuration app (found in the Windows Administrative Tools section of the Start menu in Windows 10) if it's easy to look there. The info would complete the picture brilliantly.

Cheers Joe,

All the best,

Tim

No Nuc, no ASIAir, the laptop is running the show outside under a dishtowel. Onboard pathetic Intel 520 graphics. The model number is Asus Vivobook Flip TP501UA-DN026T. My guidecamera is the surprising SV-105. Cheap, cheerful and it just works with PHD2. It also works with Sharpcap but I have to set the frame rate and mode to 5fps every time or it tries to run it at 30fps which isn't slow enough to show stars and use the polar align routine. It has guided my mount down to 0.6 arcseconds attached to the also budget SV-165 scope, so I'm impressed for my $100.

My I5 is almost the lowest of the 6th gen. Most of the other 6th gen have 4 full cores instead of 2 with hyperthreading. Even modern Celeron/Pentiums have more umph. So my take away is anything with an I5 6th gen or better, 8gb ram and an SSD should do the job. I will be testing the similarly pathetic A10-8700P laptop processor in the next few months. I need something to run my second mount and my wife NEEDS something better for work. So I get the left overs as "reward" for buying her a nice fancy 13th gen intel desktop.

Helpful Engaging

Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 9, 2023

Joe Linington:
Tim Ellison:
Joe Linington:
If you let me know how to extract data I could. I have the lowest of the laptop I5's, a 2 core 4 thread I5-6200u and shoot a DSLR like you. I use Nina to manage my sessions and download my FITS. I also have the Hocus Focus image analyzing plugin installed. When using my A7r which outputs 36mp in 14bit and creates a 70MB Fits file, it takes about 5 seconds between shots. It takes another 5-10 seconds for the computer to process, plate solve (with ASTAP) and display the new image. The camera will start taking the next sub while it preps the image so only 5 seconds between subs. The computer is also running PHD2 with possibly the most inefficient setup possible. My guide camera is basically a web cam and the slowest it can go is 5fps so my computer is constantly stacking 10 frames of 2mp data to perform the guiding. Both cameras share a single USB cable and both are USB2. I am running Win10 Pro (not the included version) and keep the computer clean. I also force an update before imaging and then disable updates for 7 days.

I don't experience any dropped frames or errors. Sometimes Remote Desktop can be a little slow (I remote in from the house to stay warm once setup) but that is usually more network related than computer related. I have 8gb single channel ram and I have replaced the HDD with an older 500GB SSD. I think this might be the worst case scenario. Especially the way I run guiding is less efficient than it could be.

Hello Joe,

Thanks for all that info. Plenty of detail in there. A great help. Your A7r has twice as many pixels as my 600D (18mp) so it's really good to hear that the laptop gets the job done so fast. Especially considering that you're making it work hard at the guiding too (thought it was just me who ended up doing things like that! :-> :-> :->). No more timing data needed than what you've already provided. Thanks very much.

Could I just ask for clarification on two points please though?

Is the laptop is connected to and running all the equipment (and NINA too)? You mention Remote Desktop, and I'm imagining the laptop is outdoors near the mount and you are sometimes connecting from a second machine indoors. Is that right? There isn't an ASIAir or a NUC or anything like that between the laptop and the mount/cameras? Just checking to make sure!

I've also just recently started wondering about the graphics capabilities of laptops. Most use the "integrated graphics" built in to the CPU chip, but some have a separate graphics card - often a Radeon or similar. I'm not sure whether or not that has any relevance to the question at hand, but wondered which your laptop has. Do you know? Make and model of the laptop might be enough to confirm that, or it can be found in the top line of the Display section of the System Configuration app (found in the Windows Administrative Tools section of the Start menu in Windows 10) if it's easy to look there. The info would complete the picture brilliantly.

Cheers Joe,

All the best,

Tim

No Nuc, no ASIAir, the laptop is running the show outside under a dishtowel. Onboard pathetic Intel 520 graphics. The model number is Asus Vivobook Flip TP501UA-DN026T. My guidecamera is the surprising SV-105. Cheap, cheerful and it just works with PHD2. It also works with Sharpcap but I have to set the frame rate and mode to 5fps every time or it tries to run it at 30fps which isn't slow enough to show stars and use the polar align routine. It has guided my mount down to 0.6 arcseconds attached to the also budget SV-165 scope, so I'm impressed for my $100.

My I5 is almost the lowest of the 6th gen. Most of the other 6th gen have 4 full cores instead of 2 with hyperthreading. Even modern Celeron/Pentiums have more umph. So my take away is anything with an I5 6th gen or better, 8gb ram and an SSD should do the job. I will be testing the similarly pathetic A10-8700P laptop processor in the next few months. I need something to run my second mount and my wife NEEDS something better for work. So I get the left overs as "reward" for buying her a nice fancy 13th gen intel desktop.

Many thanks for the clarification Joe. That really nails things down. The thing I'm missing is the dishtowel ( :-> :->)!! Seriously though, it sound like your setup (apart from the guiding where I'm being a bit more "conventional") is quite similar to mine. I am on a 6th Gen i3, with 2 cores, so probably a bit lower down the scale than your i5 but maybe not by a lot. It is looking fairly clear, from all the evidence, that a slightly newer - maybe 8th gen - i5, with four cores, decent memory and an SSD ought to be a good safe bet. I'm looking at going shopping with that thinking in mind.

Good luck with all your plans. I hope your second sysyem goes well.

Thanks again for your help.

Regards,

Tim

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Tim Ellison

Topic starter

Feb 22, 2023

Hi all,

The project seems to be heading towards a successful conclusion. New (actually a refurbished unit) laptop has been obtained, software installed and set up. Timing trials have been performed using three different image capture packages - BackyardEOS, NINA and digiCamControl. All give delays of around 4-5 seconds between exposures. That seems pretty good to me. Testing so far has been indoors only, but I've done my best to simulate a real capture session, and am hopeful the results will be replicated out under the stars sometime soon. I'm looking forward to making properly efficient use of those gaps between the clouds.

For info the new machine is a Dell Latitude 7490, with an i5-8350U CPU (4 cores, 1.7GHz base speed), 16GB RAM, 512GB SSD and Windows 11. Whilst all aspects are upgrades from the old machine, I believe the more powerful CPU is the key factor.

Many thanks to you all for your feedback and help in getting to this point. I couldn't have done it without you!

All the very best,

Tim

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