Arduino telescope control

[tomhow]

I've attempted a narrated demo of the Arduino telescope control project I've been messing with this summer. All bolted on the back of the homemade telescope mount.

Consists of Arduino Mega 1280 controlling two DC motors + encoders + gearboxes + worm gears via an L298 HBridge and PWM.

As well as tracking slowly to follow the stars, it can slew to different targets in the sky. The system is fully integrated via its own astronomy standard ASCOM driver so any PC astronomy planetarium software can use it.

The motors are precious metal brushed coreless Maxon motors with 512cpr (2048 in quad) encoders: These motors are superb, and capable of rotating extremely slowly: Handy for tracking the stars!

http://youtu.be/d-jEStDotsU

[infoseek]

Wow nice job I am impressed!

[E40racer]

That's an impressive setup you have there.

[TonyD]

Great project

[retrolefty]

Yes, great job. As one who has owned several telescopes I can appreciate the difficulties there can be in building a even decent telescope drive. Not only must the rate be very small and precise in timing, but the smallest of drive caused vibration can make viewing and/or photographing almost useless as the magnification factor can be huge depending on eye piece selection used.

Lefty

[TonyD]

Can you post a wiring diagram/schematic?

[tomhow]

Can you post a wiring diagram/schematic?

Hello, I've included a high level diagram on this page

Arduino Telescope ASCOM control

I do not have a wiring diagram - well, I do have a wiring diagram but it is hideously out of date!

And yes - very difficult to make it work smoothly, and I'm imaging at about 1.3 arc seconds per pixel, so you really have to make sure the motors are ticking along at the right rate.

Some recent images

http://astro.neutral.org/RecentImages.html