My telescope controller - TSC

[Birki]

Hi!

I have a rather heavy DIY telescope and for controlling the 350+ kg of that beast, I was annoyed by the plethora of adapters, cables, additional programs hampered by Windows component updates and so on. So I programmed my own stepper controller on a Raspberry Pi 3, which features standalone autoguiding via INDI, observation lists and catalogs, an LX200 interface and a ST4 interface. Not all features are fully tested and everything is in a very early stage - but code is available and I documented the project a little bit. It can be found under https://github.com/s...ontrol/wiki/TSC alongside with the C++code. Comments are highly welcome ...
yours
wolfi

[thedss]

I'm getting a page not found from your link.

[texy]

Truncated URL "s...ontrol" ??

[DirkS]

https://github.com/selste/TwoStepperControl/wiki/TSC ?

[Birki]

i am sorry that the link did not work ... https://github.com/selste/TwoStepperControl
... this is the git, and there is the wiki
yours wolfi

[thedss]

Sir, that is pretty impressive.

I have a NexStar 130SLT and am a casual astronomer. Shame the planets have all but moved southern hemisphere at good viewing times for the next few years but that's how it goes.

It would be good to see some of the images you pick up. Also, have you posted your stuff on astronomy websites? If not I think you should, I am sure it would gather some interest.

[Birki]

hi!
thank you very much. it is a fun project, so lets see whether other people pick up on this. i posted it to cloudynights and other german websites. however, it is my hack-project, and i do not intend making it a product. people may reproduce it, but the support i can provide is unfortunately limited

yours
wolfi

[IanS]

Impressive. I've been considering building something along those lines ever since the RPi came out. Maybe one day. My scope (a mere 100kg) has a motor on both RA and Dec, but the Dec only has a few degrees of travel available so manual assistance would still be needed to get close to the tracking target.

[Birki]

hi!

well - one thing that is on hold is an encoder interface. i was implementing relative encoders to monitor the steppers in the beginning, but i was putting that part on hold as i realized that is not THAT important ...

yours
wolfi