As the scope's permanently mounted this allowed me to run mains power into the observatory and run everything off an observatory mains power supply (pictured above).



Above is the Kendrick Digifire 7 dew removal controller. From this I run two heater bands, one around the corrector plate (front of the LX200R) and one around the eyepiece. I haven't as yet used heater bands on the ZS66 as it suffers far less from dew than the LX. The Digifire 7 is a very simple and effective controller to run heater bands from and has six outputs.



I wanted to operate the scope and image from my kitchen which is quite close to the observatory. This involved getting a couple of additional cables. The first is a 10m Meade AutoStar II handbox cable (Item number: ASTHB210) from Astronomiser. The one pictured above is the 5m cable as that's the only picture I could find.

www.astronomiser.co.uk/

The 10m AutoStar handbox cable allows me to operate the LX200 from my kitchen while looking at the images from the guide camera and imaging camera on a laptop. Astronomiser sells all types of cables for various cameras and scopes that you won't find anywhere else.



In order for PHD Guiding (the guide software I use which is free to download) to operate my LX200R via a laptop I needed two additional cables. Telescope House sell a 10m lead (Item number: RSLX20010) that runs from the LX200's RS232 port to a serial connector (pictured above). My laptop doesn't have a serial connector so I had to get a serial to USB connector.



Connect the RS232 connector into the left-hand RS232 port on the LX200 facia, connect the serial connectors of the two leads together and then the USB into a computer. You need to download free software from Meade for the USB to serial connector to work which can be found at;-

www.meade.com/USB_Serial/USB_SER.html



I also have a four port USB hub in the observatory that I connect up to two cameras to at a time. I needed to use a 5m USB extension cable to run from the hub output USB cable to the kitchen. I later found to extend a USB cable you have to get an active USB repeater cable (pictured above). These cables come in lengths of 5m and you can run up to a maximum of four cables together giving a total length of 20m. The best deal I found for one of these was on Ebay.