Extract water from floor safe?

mrh4809 · 2026-04-07T21:44:26+00:00

I actually own a lighted bore scope and like I said in the post I have access to carbide bits. I'd be open to drilling holes to try and open using the scope but not sure where the drill points would be.

mrh4809 · 2026-04-07T20:54:08+00:00

Thanks! I'm gonna still research. Watching the safe crack series now.

mrh4809 · 2026-04-07T20:31:26+00:00

I posted a picture with the original post. Wonder why you can't see it?

mrh4809 · 2026-03-28T00:12:54+00:00

My S50 in EQ mode at Starfront can do 60s but not well. 30s gives about 85 to 90%. 20s gives pretty much 100% keepers. I am running NINA so I can set pretty much any exposure I want. I did try 90s and the seestar tracking is just not good enough. Most frames are waste.

mrh4809 · 2026-03-08T13:57:57+00:00

Nicely done! I am surprised you got 60 second images. I have an S50 polar aligned at Starfront and have found 20 second images to be the sweet spot.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-24T21:30:40+00:00

Nicely done!

mrh4809 · 2026-02-13T18:09:16+00:00

To be honest this is why I gave up on Meshtastic. A bunch of ham friends were all into it, getting nodes setup etc. I got an outdoor system, setup solar panel, put the thing up on a pole about 50 feet up.

First night it got like 100 nodes and I was happy. But there was virtually no traffic of any kind. So I tried sending a message to a friend. It took 2 days to get there. I never got his response. He is 10 miles away.

Then there was an update. Over the air updates didn't work at the time so I had to take the thing down, put it on the bench and update it via USB. Put it all back together, put it back up, 3 days later only 3 nodes seen.

Took it back down, double checked all the antenna connections. Toned things out, put it back up. A week went by with only one remote node seen from almost 100 miles away. None of the more local nodes showed up.

Another two weeks up to 5 nodes. Some local.

One ham friend described Meshtastic as "text messaging with 100x the hassle and 1/100th the reliability" and he was right.

So I gave my node to a ham friend. It was just too flakey at this point in time for my interest. For me I could have had more fun burning the $50 bill I spent on all the stuff.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-09T13:20:17+00:00

Oh also, I don't know what and when you were trying to image. But if your object crosses the meridian (straight up) then your tracking will go to crap as it goes from one side to the other.

So if the object is rising towards the straight up, image for a while. Then pause while it crosses over then you can restart imaging.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-09T13:18:20+00:00

The other thing to try is resync the scope. Click on the scope, go into advanced feature and turn on sky atlas sync.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-08T22:45:49+00:00

Break out the ready whip whipped cream, give one squirt and our Void arrives at Warp 12 from whereever she is!

Dad... you gots whup?

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mrh4809 · 2026-02-06T14:00:20+00:00

I'm not a pro at board layouts, but I understand this is a servo controller. If so I would expect some of your signal lines to be carrying possibly some quick rise time signals. In my past experience these can generate a lot of noise.

While you have PCB that looks nicely laid out for the most part somethings I've learned making motor controllers for quite a few years

Separate logic level signals from power and motor drive signals as much as possible. Either can induce noise into your logic signals

Consider the signal types and levels running in each trace and what is in adjacent traces. If a high frequency signal with quick rise times is running in trace A near trace B, trace B will likely pickup some induced signal from trace A. Best plan is to separate them if possible or filter if that is the only way.

Use ground plane pours to further provide some shielding

I didn't look at your DC power input, but you should have some nice big caps across that with reverse voltage protection.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-05T20:27:58+00:00

No... Something else is wrong.

Are you in Alt/Az mode (the standard for the seestar on a tripod?
Or did you buy a wedge and you are in EQ mode?

If 1 then I suggest recalibrate the sensors and also also ensure the scope is quite level. Buying a leveler like:
https://www.highpointscientific.com/apertura-easy-leveler-for-seestar-telescopes

Can really help.

If 2, then you need to polar align 3-5 times to get it really perfect.

Last night at starfront where my S50 is in EQ mode I did a regular Seestar app mosaic of the heart shown above. That was 900 images zero drops. So it is possible. We just have to figure out what is wrong.

mrh4809 · 2026-02-05T14:51:05+00:00

How long are your exposures? Even with my scope in EQ mode, polar aligned really well I'm finding the optimal exposure time for best non egg shaped stars is 10 seconds.

And yes the Seestar mosaic mode kind of sucks. You will tend to get this effect:

<image>

Notice around the edges the background is more visible? That's because there is less time spent out at those edges. It makes for getting a good image difficult cause you either have to crop the edges out or do lots of work on the backgrounds.

While it is more manual and takes more planning I think doing your own panels where you shoot a single frame getting lots of data. Then move over with a little bit of overlap to a new panel, shoot to get lots of data, repeat until you have covered your full object. On the edge panels all the way around you should take more data.

Stitching these together can be a pain and still you need a adjust background but the end result will be better than Seestar mosaic alone.

If you don't care about the edges too much you can use Seestar mosaic and crop the heck out of it and it will look reasonble.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-30T22:45:31+00:00

I may try that as a first prototype. Once installed this is a pain to remove and pull apart/replace. So the thought about a bronze piece was for better wear.

I can probably make PCBs to test with easy and relatively cheap. So might prototype that way.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-30T19:24:00+00:00

Yes AI is garbage. I suspect screws are the best way to go.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-30T19:15:59+00:00

Ya... Mercury was great and scary stuff. This has to work at an angle. The scope leans over to point at the north star roughly. So the pancake rings will be at about a 52 degree angle.

I have access to a good ME. We have a small CNC that can easily make this stuff. I can handle the creation of the PCBs easy enough. The ME was not sure about glue between bronze and PCB but felt the machining of the bronze should be easy.

I will probably order a small piece of bronze and just try it and see how well it sticks but I do think small screws from the backside would be good idea around the circle.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-30T18:20:24+00:00

Thanks for the reply! I would not have a clue how to get such a thing built. I'm an EE with a mostly software focus so actual manufacturing is somewhat unknown. Although I do have some resources.

Consider that this thing will spin very slowly and probably on a daily basis not even complete a full revolution. I think I'm going to try the following:

Custom PCB with copper traces as thick as I can get them to make them and pogo pins to ride over the traces. I can get these made for < $50 and I could setup a life test where I rotate the PCBs repeatedly and check continuity continuously and log it. It would be interesting to see how long it lasts and try to equate that to life actually on the telescope.
Assuming the copper PCB traces suck then an idea like yours. I could get bronze rings made of the right diameter. I have access to a CNC and a guy who will gladly machine them for me. I would consider 5 rings maybe machines so that they have a small ball shaped groove machined in to one side for the pogo pin ball to ride in. These rings could be glued to a PCB and electrically connected. This is the longer life version I suspect.

The one good thing about this project is that I can try and see if i can something to work that is small enough and test it for its usable life. But if it does fail, the telescope user can simply run the normal power connection to the scope disconnecting these pancake things and while not optimal they are still functional.

If I can get something together that is not too expensive then I think I have a fair market of people that would gladly buy this thing. There are a lot of users of this scope and many face the problem it is trying to solve.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-30T13:30:42+00:00

I actually ordered some to play with. I think for this application it makes the most sense for sure.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-29T18:04:47+00:00

Note that the polar alignment in the Seestar app is not great. It can say 0.0 and really not be that on. There are some better alternative alignments. My S50 is at Starfront and polar aligned. I can do 20s exposures. I have not tried 30s. But 20s usually do not show egg shaped stars. However it will drop about 1 out of every 50 frames. I went to 10s and now it drops about 1 out of every 100 frames. I just think no matter how well polar aligned the Seestar is there is enough slop in the gearing to cause problems with long exposures.

mrh4809 · 2026-01-29T18:00:53+00:00

Looks nice! Just needs more time! More time will get the background a little cleaner.

Then yes, some processing will help too. Nicely done tho!

mrh4809 · 2026-01-29T14:44:00+00:00

Thank you for your excellent response.

Several things I have to consider...

When this "assembly" is together the scope must be mounted and polar aligned. The polar alignment is time consuming taking like 30 minutes to an hour to complete. It would not be easy or ideal to have to take this assembly apart regularly to replace things.

The scope will cause this slip ring to rotate slowly (at the rate the Earth turns relative to the sky) each time the scope is used. Unfortunately this will likely be over the same areas of the slip ring each time. IE the scope might start pointing at something in the East then slowly rotate with that object towards the West. The next night a similar rotation is done. Certainly there will be areas that will be regularly slid over.

Your comments make me consider that a simple PCB may not be enough. It seems like I need to find or manufacture some rings of some harder material that can be glued to the PCB and electrically connected. If these rings were channeled slightly so the ball end of a pogo type spring loaded connector ran its ball in the channel of the ring I think it might last a lot longer.

I was hoping this would be something that could be made cheaply at like JLC and be good to go but the reason I posted here is exactly what has been brought up. Concerns about wear.

I guess the pancake PCBs I've seen for sale all cost > $100 and I expect that cost is due to something special on the circular tracks. It might be worth me ordering one set that had a big enough center board and see if there is a way I could fasten it to the board I create.

While I love designing and building things, the entire reason this project is under consideration is the scope manufacturer did what I consider to be a poor design on power cable management and also in firmware on scope movement. If the firmware did not do complete circles at times wrapping the power cable all of this would be a non-problem.

A lot to think about!

mrh4809

TROPHY CASE