A few important tips to note when bringing up a new PC to run astro-imaging devices and software. There are always a large number of drivers and application software modules to get installed, and it can be pretty difficult and time consuming getting everything working. Having done this a few times, (and naturally having to do this again for my new observatory setup) I wanted to write up some of my most important learnings.

1. Create an “Install” Folder on Your PC

As you start to install drivers and other software, much of which you will be hunting around the Internet for and downloading, create an “install” folder on the PC to keep everything in one place. This is what one of my install folders looks like:

Each one of those folders contains all of the files that I downloaded in order to do the install, whether it be executable installers, .msi files or any additional installers (like .NET runtime installers that some software requires you to install first).

If I need to create an install from scratch on a completely new machine (and you will need to do this much more often than you realize), all I have to do is copy this folder across and I can retrace my steps. Note that everything is numbered as I go along, so I can proceed in the original order. To help with this, I put numbers at the start of each folder name with a leading zero, so Windows will helpfully sort them for me.

Important additional tip: for any commercial software for which there is a license key or license file, save the information in a text file in the install folder. You’ll definitely be grateful you did this later.

2. Get Everything Connected Before You Start

I strongly recommend having everything hanging off just one USB hub, with one cable. Very few devices use USB3.0, so unless you do have a camera with USB3.0, a cheap USB2.0 hub will do everything you need. I would also strongly recommend a powered USB hub, since many of the devices will be USB powered, but it doesn’t need to be anything expensive. I have had good success with the Insignia 7-port USB2.0 hub from Best Buy, but it looks like this particular unit is being phased out.

Before even starting to do any software installs, plug in the hub into whatever port you are planning on using permanently in your setup, and connect up all of the devices, including any serial adapters. Once you have done that, make a note of which device is connected to which port and which port on the PC the hub is connected to.

If you have USB-serial adapters, label them somehow with what they are for.

For writing up all of these details, I find it very helpful to have a Word document with all of this sort of information – you may well find you need it later. I call this document my “On-Site Operations Manual” and it has got me out of trouble more times than I can remember. I will add this sort of configuration information to it in tables, and I have a copy printed out in a binder that I take with me to star parties. Highly recommended.

The reason for all of this is that many astro-imaging devices are sensitive to which USB port (or hub) they are connected to, and you will find that if you start moving things around they will need to be reconfigured, and in some cases will actually need a reinstall of the driver. This is because many of the devices, even if they have USB interfaces, contain an internal USB-to-serial adapter chip (the easiest way to design a USB interface on a tight engineering budget) and appear to the PC as a serial device attached to a numbered COM port. The number of the COM port will generally change if you switch USB ports.

3. Make a Wiring Harness

To help keep everything stable and minimize the chances of inadvertently switching around USB ports (especially if you travel to star parties), assemble all of your cables, serial adapters and hub into a wiring harness. This will look something a bit like this:

All of the cables are tied together with zip ties every few inches and then wrapped in spiral wrap to keep everything tidy. To make sure you get all of the cable lengths right, start with everything plugged in to the telescope, and then start zip-tying the cables together at the telescope end. If you have any extra cables at the other end they can be zip-tied into loops. You can see an example of this in the above picture for the mount serial cable; I just wound the excess cable in a loop and secured with a couple of zip ties. You definitely want this excess at the “plug-in” end rather than at the telescope end.

An added benefit of doing things this way is that you are much less likely to have a catastrophic cable snag when slewing the telescope.

That’s it for now – I will post some more detailed write=ups of each of the installs of some of the more troublesome hardware as I get to it.