Pre Shipping Checklist

So you are preparing to ship/bring your telescope out to Starfront, this document will give you some pointers for what you should prepare to be successful. You need to think of building a remote telescope setup like preparing for a space telescope mission, you are going to send this mission to another world, and this mission will go a bit more smoothly if all the necessary steps to remote observing are taken in advance at home.

If you are preparing your used home telescope to go remote:

• Does my system have all the power supplies needed?
• Does my system have all the required USB cables?
• Does my system have a way to remotely cycle the power?
• Is my PC set to auto-power on after a power failure?
• Does my system function well at home?
• Does my system fit within the reserved tier?
• Does my system have Chrome Remote Desktop installed?
• If my system needs collimation, do I have the adapters to allow a laser collimator to be attached?

Before you go remote, these are all things you should have an answer for. The quickest way to answer all of these questions at once is to completely set up your telescope at home first, as you plan to have it remotely. Do a successful night of imaging, measure your swing diameter exactly, and make sure you have a viable way to remote into your system. After your successful night, pack everything you used.

If this preparation is done successfully, it will help massively to get your system operational as quickly as possible.

• Does my system have all the power supplies needed?

You need to power your computer, camera, mount, focuser, rotator, and flat panel. You can do this with AC power supplies, or with a pegasus/wanderer power box. Do these cables have enough slack that they can work well with your system? If you are shipping from another country, do you have US plugs for your power supplies?

• Does my system have all the required USB cables?

You need to be able to communicate data from the camera, guide camera, flat panel, focuser, mount, rotator, dew controller, power box, etc. Do you have the right cables, and enough slack to cable manage them?

• Does my system have a way to remotely cycle the power?

Lets say you need to power cycle your PC or camera, you need a kasa power switch or a digital loggers power switch to remotely do your power cycling. This will allow you to troubleshoot from home.

• Is my PC set to auto-power on after a power failure?

If you unplug the power cord from your PC and plug it back in, it needs to be able to automatically turn on. This behavior allows you to remotely power cycle the PC without a human needed to press a button. This ‘auto power on’ setting is located in your PC bios. You should enable it before sending your scope.

• Does my system function well at home?

Does your mount track well? Does your autofocuser work well? If you can do a successful night of imaging from home, the answer is yes. If you can’t, it is much easier and cheaper to figure these issues out at home first, instead of us figuring them out here.

• Does my system fit within the reserved tier?

If you are doing your test run of your setup, now is the perfect time to exactly measure your swing diameter. The process to do this is described in this video.

• Does my system have chrome remote desktop installed?

You need to be able to take control of your PC remotely from a distance. By far the best way to do this is with Chrome Remote Desktop, a free remote PC program from Google. When you set this up on your PC, you will gain immediate access to your computer once we power it and connect it to the network. This makes for a seamless install process. If you don’t have this on your computer in advance, it may greatly slow down your installation.

• If my system needs collimation, do I have the adapters to allow a laser collimator to be attached?

We have plenty of collimation tools on site, but lets say for example that you have an odd custom focuser on your telescope. If you need collimation, you need the required parts for us to easily attach our m54, m48, or 2” visual back collimation devices in order to do the collimation.

Again, most of these problems/questions can be resolved by a full system test before you bring your rig out!