jimao22

The project was forgotten for a long while, because of lack of time and lost of interest. As a result, this nice mount goes to a close friend of mine (the one who made the motor control with the 555 circuit) who had in mind to upgrade the controller with an ARDUINO system. But he agreed to give me the mount in a win-win trade we did.

So here begin the story of the mount for me. 

My friend's task was to start and finish the ARDUINO upgrade - a better way to control the mount and an easy way to change and upgrade the tracking. He did his job very well, according with my requirements - 2 forward speeds (sidereal and lunar) and one backward (very high speed back). Also, he installed in the electrical system 2 limit switches to avoid accidents when motor is at the end of the run.

My task was to improve the mechanical part of the project, with the goal to use on this mount a small telescope or a RFT and a camera - of course, obtaining exposures of  5 minutes at least. I wanted to use ready-made parts and components because of lack of time and because I was sure the result will be better. i found a good idea is to use parts from Skywatcher Star Adventure,a good mini-mount with parts that can be purchased separately. 

In order to have a functional mount, I needed a tripod, a wedge and a "L" shape adjustable support (see down bellow).

Everything was installed on a photo tripod and the stepper was controlled by a 555 timer circuit. The speed of the motor could be adjusted very easy with a potentiometer. The accuracy was not an issue due to the fact he wanted to use a DSLR  with a short focal length. First pictures with this nice set-up are shown here.

Hi,

I want to show you an ATM project on the run, started by a friend of mine and continued by me and another friend of mine.  

The initiator of this project have in mind to create a barn door for the beginning. The idea evolved and at some point he said is a better idea to try "clone" the Astrotrac - which was a new astro-item at that time (2013), but he goes further and made a mount operated by a stepper motor by friction. He made the project and he had access to a CNC machine and everything was made under his supervision. Initial drawings and final ones are down bellow.   

Right, sorry I missed that! Can I post it again in a new topic or is to late?

The Moon from this evening (25-th of December). 40 images stacked from 100, through my deep-sky set-up. Atik 460EX + MN190/EQ6 belt drive. Acquisition with MaximDL, stacked with Autostakkert and post processed with Maxim again. 

If you asked me about that, I took a break - too nervous.

I swapped the telescopes on the mount - now I'm back to MN. I will try another test in half an hour, now I do some asteroids catch.

Thanks for support. 

Hi guys,

Is unlucky me again.

I am amazed how you all have no issues working with AT. Perhaps I'm a moron. 

This evening I tried to use AT under real sky.

If I do not check  "sync scope" or "re-slew" or "repeat...", AT solve the plate in under 10 sec. But if I check those options, the program freeze and is impossible for me  even to close it. The message is "re-centering..." and that's it.

I made a test "on blind" with the mount connected and a picture of Dumbell nebula. I slew my mount on Dumbell (according with TheSky6) and than start plate-solving my picture. Everything solved in 84 sec.

I am glad about that, I look forward to see how it work on real sky, with pier flips.

Is anyone know if the syncs from AT are recorded in EQMOD "Apend on sync" procedure? 

Could be use FocusMax with AT for plate solving or FocusMax is just working with PinPoint only?

Hi,

I succeed to install  AT one more time, on my fresh system. I downloaded the very last version from  http://sourceforge.net/projects/astrotortilla/files/AstroTortilla-0.6/. The process was a bit different but the biggest difference was downloading Cygwin files. First time it took about 1.5 hours and it was a 3Gb size file. Now it took me 14 hours for 9.6Gb (and the range of the FOV sizes was smaller this time - strange). When I came back from my office, an error message on the screen advised me to start downloading again Cygwin (  ) or to step forward on my risc (  ).

Of course, I pushed "next" button and than  trying to solve my first plate. Because it is daytime, I "solved" a dark frame - but most important, the program started to work, doing efforts to find out from which part of the sky are my hot pixels.

So far so good...

I will try to find how the program works with some pictures from my computer. This evening will rain (of course) but the forecast for the next one sounds good, so see you than.

@jimao22

What does the log file tell you?

Sorry Daz, I uninstalled AT again and I want to re-install it from the scratch one more time on the fresh W7 os. After that, I will tell you what the log said.

Thank you!

Now I can answer all of you about my "progress".

Re-install everything, working fine, polar alignment done very accurate (EQMOD procedure followed by Align-Master twice), AT and Cygwin re-installed -> same result:

"No solution in 0.0s".

I am very disappointed  because I am using Pin Point now and after meridian-flip I used to have errors big enough to be unsolved by Pin Point. So my hope was AT. 

If I will not find a solution on this, I will find another way to plate-solve properly my shots.

With hope, thank you... 

Sorry, yes, you're right Daz   .

But I said this because I suppose someone did know what is about. Maybe the developers, or some soft genius hidden here between us.

I will keep you informed, I finished re-install W7 and I am about to finish installing everything else. I will make a try again wit AT and we'll see... 

What about me?

Is anyone having any idea about what is happening in my computer, or between the computer and camera? Because, otherwise, the camera is working fine with MaximDL and I did make pictures...

 On ASCOM drivers for camera on the pop-up-menu is only "Camera V2 simulator" and "Simulator". Nothing else.

Anyway, I decided to re-install the Windows on this computer because I found some issues on EQMOD too, so I suppose some  registries are stunned.

I hope I will have a functional system until this morning   .

I am very envy on all of you because you did manage to use AT. I tried to do the same last few days and I am very frustrated because I cannot do it.

My set up is based on an EQ6 mount/EQMOD, an ATIK314L+ camera with TRUETECH filter-wheel, I am using MaximDL 5.22, on W7/64 and whatever I am doing, I receive the same message from AT - "no solution in 0.0 sec".

I installed AT in drive C:\\, Cygwin was properly configured to be downloaded, I re-installed AT several times, one time from the scratch, but same message over and over again.

I even sent an e-mail to http://sourceforge.net/p/astrotortilla/home/Home/ on mailing list, but no answer till now.

I will be very grateful if someone will tell me what to do because I'm stuck.

Thank you...

Now I sow your observatory, Malcom. Is a state of the art one.

The warm room it could be a nice improvement for mine. I will think about this... 

Very nice building, Tony! Very nice, indeed. Don't you make a slope to the roof? I know you don't have heavy snow there, but you never know!...

I have 101 posts and I still cannot edit my posts. Is there anything special I should know? Where is the Edit button?

I was sure someone will tell that...

Chris was right, it was just to demonstrate how it works, it was late at night and I was to lazy to install the computer and make all the connections.

Thrust me, I understood perfectly how everything it function:downtown:.

If you read carefully the thread, you'll see that I asked Chris about gear ratios and the numbers inside EQMOD settings.

When I will have data for this, I will post some PEC analysis to see the difference.

No offence.

I did it !

The result, here:

Hi there,

I started to make the tuning for my EQ6, same parts and same supplier like those from the beginning of the threat.

Dismantling the dec gear, I found that one of the teflon washers is missing, the former owner of the mount did some improvements by changing the grease and the bearings with some German ones. But apparently he loose or forgot one of the washers.

So, I ask you all if you know a place where I could find a ready made teflon washer for EQ6 or at least raw material for doing one by myself.

Thank you !

Ok, Chris, good enough.

Thank you very much, you are one of my favourites peoples from the astronomy area, realy.

So, if using autoguider, the 64 arcseconds error for a whole night for instance, is compensated by autoguiding system, right?

But what about the alignment, is it affected some how by this small error?

Ok! I understood !

Now, if we should use integers (13 instead of 12.91), doesn't induce this aproximation some errors on the system, especialy when traking for a long time (the whole night)? Is just an academic question, hope not to disturb to much.

But sometime is good to know the theoretical bases of what we are using, to avoid mistakes or make some improvments in the future.

Total Steps = 8640000

Worm Steps = 64000

Tracking offset = -28

For a 4:1 ratio on an HEQ5 you would need to set EQMOD up with:

Total Steps = 6912000

Worm Steps = 51200

Tracking offset = -211

For Chris - I want to know how do you determine the parameters from above, especially the so called "tracking offset". For an EQ6/ 4:1 this is 13 - why?