Gina

Wow!! That's a labour of love

Magnet pushed into hole, arm pushed onto motor shaft, arm end filed to fit lens cover and glued on. How just waiting for the glue to dry then I'll check the open position. Slowly plodding on

Now printing a new arm design incorporating a hole for the Neodymium magnet - 3mm diameter x 4mm long which will operate the Hall sensor switches.

Hall sensors connected to a ribbon cable. Hall Sensor wires :- Brown - Open sensor Gnd Red - Open sensor +5v Orange - Open Sensor Signal Yellow - Closed Sensor +5v Green - Closed Sensor Gnd Blue - Closed Sensor Signal Colour code for ribbon cable :- Brown - Gnd Red - +5v Orange - Open Sensor Yellow - Closed Sensor

I shall be very interested to read about how you get on with this new super-duper control board Dave My Titan printer come do with quieting down - at least while it's in the living room Unfortunately, 3D printer upgrades are on hold while I work on my ASC and weather station. Functionally, my Titan printer is working well and my main "work horse"

Dew heater GPIO pins swapped over. Hall devices fitted to motor housing.

That's the drive for the lens cover sorted out and the next thing is to determine how the position will be sensed. I'm thinking the most reliable system would be to sense the positions of both closed and fully open and best sensors would be Hall switches. One idea would be to have a magnet embedded in the arm and strategically placed Hall sensors in the casing. The INDI code can read the Hall switches and the stepper motor stepped in the appropriate direction until the associated Hall switch is activated. A failure condition would exist if the number of pulses sent to the motor exceeded a certain number. Regarding connections to the RPi, I have already assigned GPIO5 for a Hall device as it has internal pull-up. GPIO6 is currently assigned to the dew heater but the dew heater could be run from GPIO12 and free up GPIO6 which has pull-up.

I think this will do

Wow! They take me back - we used those on wireless sets in the 50s and 60s for fine tuning

New top cover motor housing designed and printed ditto arm for cover. Arm glued onto cover. The cover could do with going down a bit further, maybe move the arm attachment point a bit.

The lens cover cleared the tube alright but (as I thought) it doesn't rotate far enough to give a full sky view.

Arm glued onto cover and waiting for the glue to dry. I think there is more room between the cover and the lens tube that there appears in the diagram but I'll know soon.

Aarrgghh... Thank you, I think you're right - I checked it with the earlier design but forgot for this one so it looks like "back to the drawing board" or in this case SketchUp... Probably a longer arm is the answer but I'm about to test in in reality.

And this is how it might work.

Like this, for instance.

I think I may have to redesign the lens cover motor housing top part as I suspect the lens cover might not go round far enough - have to see. At least it's easy enough to redesign and reprint.

Hole made in main casing and lens cover motor housing glued on. Next job is to design and print the arm that connects the lens cover to the motor shaft and there's the domed top for the cover which I shall print in black to provide for taking dark frames. I've already printed the motor cover plate but won't put that on until I have completed tests.

Now printing the main part of the lens cover.

Fits alright now Nice and snug - can turn the unit upside down and the top part with the motor doesn't fall off.

Redesigned the lower part.

Not quite right...

Reduced printing speed to about half and redesigned the parts 10mm bigger in the smallest dimension. Also added a bit to the lower part to fit the curved main casing.

Now printing the bottom part and thinking it looks a bit small. I might make both parts bigger where they overlap. Also, though the bottom part does print on end without support material, the print was soft and wobbling around as it printed though the final result doesn't look too bad

Two part design. The top part housing the motor fits over the bottom part which will be glued to the main casing. The latter just needs amending to allow for the curve of the main casing. I'll sort that out when I've confirmed the motor housing parts fit together snugly.

This is almost right - just needs another mm or two offset from the main casing. But I've noticed one thing - if this casing is in one piece and glued onto the main casing I won't be able to remove the lens cone to gain access to the "works". So I'll redesign it in two parts to fit one inside the other.