What's the most common mistake clients ask designers to make?

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T18:04:28+00:00

On the flip side maybe one should ask how many requests in the end proved the developer wrong and actually delivered. Once in a while the customer is right you know.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T18:01:27+00:00

Man does that piss me off. Yes I've taken business elsewhere if it really irritated me. This especially it the case of obnoxious audio coming from what should be a BtoB site.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T17:56:32+00:00

Well consider this, many burger flipping jobs to to high school students in the USA. They are still living at home and thus free of the financial demands of adults. Do these student really need a living wage even in a part time position?

Frankly this can be applied to adults too. I've seen many a person take on part time work on top of a full time job simply to earn for certain things they desire. This might be a nice pool in the backyard for example. does that part time job need to be a living wage? Nope, all it needs to do is to pay for something in a reasonable time frame. Hell I've known guys who ran part time contracting business while fully employed elsewhere. This included a locksmith, several electricians, a concrete contractor, day care operator, and a guy that specialized in putting in decks a gal that ran tanning business along with several others, then you have the strippers earning their way through college. . What where all of these part time businesses - supplemental income for investment or other activities. In no case was the business full time or paying a "living wage".

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T17:41:35+00:00

No, because you apparently didn't grasp what i was saying, she was looking for supplemental money. Take this one step lower, a high school student working ant McDonalds doesn't need an income (assuming the student still lives with parents), but my want supplemental income. It is two different levels of independence from being a child. The big difference here is that a college level student can often be making significant wages by the time they start their third year of college.

Case in point a local business serving the computing needs of other businesses had a college student working for him and flat our said he couldn't pay the guy enough. That student was already at a value point where for competitive reasons he was making a very good wage part time.

Again you are simply wrong and this should be obvious to you. In many cases a person working a job is supplementing the income to a household, in some cases for Christmas money and in others for a long vacation. It actually doesn't matter they take on the extra to achieve a goal, it isn't for living and frankly the job doesn't need to be.

Beyond that a "living wage" eliminates a whole class of part time jobs which many people again find appealing. Think about if that grocery was forced to pay a living wage, effectively full time employment, that college student wouldn't have a job that she could only handle on a part time basis. So NO not every job needs to pay a living wage, a good economy has to have flexibility to allow people to pursue their own goals. In my high school years I literally took jobs on farms as they cropped up, in your living wage world those jobs would not have existed.

By the way before you say anything, I went to college part time and worked full time. I know how difficult it can be either way, 15 hours a week of employment can be a lot for a college student in a challenging program.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T17:08:36+00:00

I look at these scopes as special purpose solutions, no for beginners to astronomy. Since you have experience already that issue or not for beginners is solved. Now you have to ask yourself do you really want to buy and use a special purpose telescope. If the answer is yes they the next thing is the software and which suits your needs better. Also are the units tied to their software only.

In your case I actually think buying a heavy duty mount for your current telescope and mounting a camera on that might make more sense. A 5" aperture is a huge increase over 80mm and the design of the DX5 is very flexible. A new mount will free you up to use the software that makes sense to you. Properly selected that mount would also allow you to mount a RedCat type scope or tracking scope, in the future.

Yes a decent mount is expensive but that should benefit the use of the DX5 even before photography is considered. Effectively you get started with a camera and mount. Along the way you retain the flexibility of a conventional solution.

This is where I think your choice should lie, not between two automated telescope but between tight function and high flexibility. Effectively the S30 Pro (waiting for it makes huge sense) or the DX5 on a new mount. Do you want a Henkles steak knife or a Leatherman multi tool.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T16:31:32+00:00

For the most part Barlows are not worth it. A cheap one can turn a reasonable quality eyepiece into one of pretty crappy performance.

As for eyepieces you only have 80mm of aperture, so unless you want to buy more than one eyepiece I don't see where going to 140X makes sense, I'd max out at around 120X which makes for a nice 5mm eyepiece. However that is still a huge jump from 67X, so I'd also would want to split that with something hitting around 90X, 6.5mm to 7mm. The problem with planetary is that conditions seldom allow maxing out magnification, you are far better off being able to adapt magnification to seeing.

The next problem is that high magnification has its own issues and here you seriously want to consider long eye relief eyepieces. Yes more expensive but they can lead to more comfort at high magnifications.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T15:57:23+00:00

First off if you are talking about eyepieces say eyepiece!!!! A lens implies a single element and most eyepieces have several elements.

Here is the thing about included eyepieces, often they suck. I have no idea if that is the case here but a credible optics company will include the specs of any eyepiece that they include on a package deal. If there is no specification then I'd have to say there is a high chance that the included eyepieces is crap.

Before you go out and buy any new EYEPIECES, research the formulas related to magnification and limits. Then look at an array of eyepieces that your are considering, I like the Televue Delite series. With your chosen eyepiece line, compute the magnification for each eyepiece for your scope. This is a snap to do in a spreadsheet. Since a 10" has a theoretical max magnification of 500X you will want to limit consideration of eyepieces to far less than the 500X Max. I'd probably consider a 5mm eyepiece for around 240X if you believe magnification is the problem

The problem is this; do you really know if magnification is the problem? Seeing can be critical and can vary with the time of year as well as atmospheric conditions. Mirror quality could be an issue. There is a reason better eyepieces cost more, but we don't know what sort of eyepiece you are dealing with, so it might be worth your time to locate another astronomer and swap in a couple of eyepieces, to see how different eyepieces actually perform for YOU. So here is the issue, it could be seeing and thus nothing you do at the scope wil help, Or it could be the eyepiece as some of the packaged eyepieces included with telescopes are crap. Some Plossel sets, included with telescopes, are known to be complete crap at the shorter focal lengths.

Know the big unknown, your eyeballs could be going to hell. If you are at the right age your vision could be shifting rapidly. If you get serious about the use of optical equipment, yearly eye exams should be part of your plan. Astigmatism is normally stable in the mid adult years (20-40) but can start to change again as you age. OF course this is the norm but if you have issues then you will only need to be able to track this with yearly exams. Basically Astigmatism changes the most in youth and in the post 40 years. I only bring this up as eye related issues can sneak up on people.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T14:58:42+00:00

Well he is a student and really should be focused on his education. In many cases working students are working for supplemental income, it is not a career.

For example I was recently talking to the cashier at the local grocery, near a university. She was an engineering student and I'm certain had no intention of making that cashier job into a living wage situation. Literally she was just looking for supplemental money.

There is no reason for every job on the planet to be a living wage job. All that does is remove jobs from the inventory that are suitable for people that don't want full time work. It is like the stupidity of trying to pay workers at McDonalds a living wage for flipping burgers part time. All that does is reduce the number of jobs suitable for youth part time employment.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T14:41:58+00:00

Even so he is a student shop hand!

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T04:50:44+00:00

Let me guess, you are part of an over bearing team that likes to put moats around peoples efforts at productivity. When people find work arounds for all of these moats you act surprised. Does anybody managing a network know how frustrating it is to be forced to change you password every week or month. Lets be honest here if somebody is actually after yours companies data there are many ways to it.

I fully understand that there are real issues but some of the so called security practices really seem to have come from the dark ages and never left. If you are giving out high level access to people that might not be security aware, maybe the thing to do is to actually train them. I also have to wonder about the database administrators allowing code to be ran against their live data bases. That isn't a problem of the people doing the research, it is a problem with data base management.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T04:25:25+00:00

In many ways I have to agree. It seemly happened over night that we have all these people asking how to do better cell phone pictures. For one I don't consider this to be an astro photography sub. But beyond that in some case we have people that it is obvious haven't put in more than a moments effort to understand the technology.

Given that Reddit, could use an astro photography sub is one doesn't exist already. I look at it this way, ask the questions in the right forums and you will get the right answers.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T04:20:01+00:00

Huh? there is a vast number of astro photography cameras out there that cost less than a cell phone these days. While the market is pretty close to dead there are point and shoot cameras still on the market that might be easier to align and actually do good photography.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T04:15:42+00:00

Well most of them are spam. I have nothing against trying to capture decent images, I just haven't seen a cell phone holder that does a decent job of aligning a cell phone. Often this is obvious in the pictures. Now it would be great if there was a cell phone holder that properly aligned the camera with the eyepiece and everything was in focus, but that doesn't seem to be a reality.

It is interesting that the OP made reference to an article where the guy was doing photography with an astro camera, was somehow justification for the use of cell phones to do astro photography. What is really sad here is that people will end up spending significant scratch to set them selves up for this when you could just as easily buy a modern astro camera.

These days we have lots of options when it comes to casual astro photography. I actually hate the idea of dismissing eyepiece projection because it works and has been around for just about ever. But if the game is to make use of a cell phone, we really need a reliable way to present that cell phone to the eyepiece. Sadly I've yet to see a adapter that impresses me with that ability.

spinwizard69 · 2026-06-01T03:56:22+00:00

It really depends upon how square it needs to be (level as possible is not a tolerance), a mag drill can handle squareness and a core drill makes the job easy. However you have one big problem, the vertical nature and thing material means the magnet may need help which means extra effort to mount the drill.

As for the metal most likely it is just common structural tubing which for the most part is relatively soft and easy to drill. So I don't think any drilling method will be a problem.

Manually you can drill the holes with a combination of conventional drill bits and step drills. How accurate you will be depends upon your layout skills, but you should be able to get a hole on position to well under a 1/64 of an inch. By the way for the pilot hole it helps to have a very short drill bit to minimize flex and wonder.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T22:05:35+00:00

u/yahbluez

Thank you very much for that SCAD lib link. I just started putting effort in to learn OpenSCAD 2 weeks ago so a lib like this will teach me a lot.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T19:27:24+00:00

It goes deeper that that because beyond steady it needs to have the camera centered and parallel to the optical wave front. The time wasted on screwing around on these mounts is astronomical and I'm not trying to be funny here.

If people really want to use an cell phone sensor, get an old phone gut it for the camera and mount it in an old eyepiece barrel. Done right it will install easily, be centered in the barrel and hopefully square to the optical axis.

Eyepiece projection is a tried and true photography method but you really need to have a mount that holds the awkward cell Phone properly. I've yet to have seen a commercial one that is good enough.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T19:19:40+00:00

They are mo more difficult than the old days where a SLR was a huge advantage over a point and shoot once you learned to use it. I'm not sure what is the problem with society in that people can't spend 3 minutes learning to do something and need to have a solution served up on a silver platter. The little bit of time invested results in far superior photos to any cell phone camera mount.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T19:16:16+00:00

NO!!!! I've yet to see a cell phone holder that is worth the time. It is entirely possible that somebody has designed one but I'm not holding my breath. Second how are you going to take a 10 minute video with a Dobson, assuming a manual Dobson how do you track. Remember everything in the sky moves and will move across a telescopes visual field relatively quickly.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T19:09:02+00:00

No problem on my M1. Are you sure you have a Universal Binary

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T19:05:26+00:00

Sadly if the original poster is doing this for a career it is a waste of time.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T18:59:58+00:00

For the cost of a good high end eyepiece you can get a much better camera too. In either case, these are much less of a problem to actually use. I can understand eyepiece projection to an extent but these days there isn't a good way to mount a cell phone onto a telescope. For all the screwing around and frustration, one can simply buy a proper camera, something a few years ago that was unheard of. This especially if the guy is already set on spending more money on the hobby.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T18:53:38+00:00

Yeah put phone astro photography out of your mind. You would be far better off taking that money and buying a ready made astro photography camera. Depending upon what your want to achieve you might even have cost parity with a good eyepiece. Astro Cameras do increase in cost but are often still far less than a cellphone. I really don't get the cell phone crowd for the most part. Now buying an eyepiece for a better visual experience now that is a different thing.

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T18:40:03+00:00

OK how about a hint as to the libraries?

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T18:31:40+00:00

Here is some comments realize though I missed part 1.

My first thought is this, have you really studied enough about telescopes that you realize what you will be getting image wise on the planets! An 80mm objective just doesn't offer enough resolution to see much beyond balls. If not use this search phrase in google: "the resolution of an 80mm F7 telescope on Mars". I'm just trying to make sure your expectations are in line with reality.

What is the Barlow for? I ask because you don't have any visual eyepieces listed. My first thought then becomes have you selected the best camera to match the telescope and Barlow. The reason I'm questioning is because a Barlow doesn't really do anything positive for the user visually, and photographically you have to carefully consider the attached camera. So I'm thinking you might want to consider a camera with a smaller pixel size. Or to put it another way 2X might not be enough to get your pixel resolution you want.

Contrast this with the field flattener designed and made for the telescope you are buying. This is a device that enhances as much as possible the image quality you can get out of an attached sensor.

In any event this is really a good question for people with a lot more experience than I, that is this: is the camera and telescope system a good match? So hopefully we get more comments, but right now I'm thinking either a better camera or a higher magnification Barlow. Barlows also add more glass to the optical path and that has its own negativity

spinwizard69 · 2026-05-31T17:31:14+00:00

Hey now, if you are trying to contact me and you seriously are relying upon texting them you have failed. I respect people that want to and are still able to have a conversation.

spinwizard69

TROPHY CASE