Gina

I have the main board designed and built and I'll come to that later.  I need an extra circuit board to carry the stepper motor driver modules.  These are A4988 as often used in 3D and in fact these come from an earlier version of the control system for my 3D printers.

This is a connection diagram for these driver modules.

Next, the layout of the extra circuit board produced on stripboard (eg. Veroboard).  The drivers share the 100µF electrolytic capacitor.

Here are some photos of the focus motor, cam and coil spring that will pull the lever against the cam.  The 28BYJ-48 has been modified to change it from unipolar to bipolar as per my blog :-

Yes, when closed it will rest on the dome clamp ring and open it will be straight down and against the cone shaped piece that connects it to the pipe/mast.

Focussing cam on 28BYJ-48 stepper motor.

I have an automated ROR as WIP.  Thread on here.

Couple of photos of the focussing system.  These photos also show the camera and thermally insulating casing.

Inside of lid showing focus motor and lever.

Top view showing focus lever on lens focussing sleeve.

Focussing cam and lever.

3 hours of Ha and 2 hours of OIII.  Taken with dual WF imaging rig with 200mm f4 lenses (Asahi Super Takumar SLR vintage lenses) and ASI1600MM-Cool cameras and Astrodon 3nm filters.  Guided with 200mm lens and ASI178MM camera.  Ha exposures 600s and OIII 1800s.  Calibrated with flats and darks.  Processed in PixInsight.

Hoping to capture more data when we get some clear night sky!

I think the answer may be to generate the date/time string in one of the clients and send the text to the Dashboard.  I already create text from input to the client for my ROR automation which will use the same system.

I don't have those in NodeRED.  I'll have to think about it.  I thought there might be a simple answer but apparently not.

Thank you I'll look into it.

Fair enough.

A DSLR doesn't have cooling - and cooling, particularly the superb cooling on these cameras, makes a huge difference.  I have the ASI1600MM-Cool which is superb.  My main imaging is with mono camera and filters - the only colour camera imaging I do is All Sky Camera and occasional planetary.  So guess I can't be very helpful, I'm afraid.

What I need to know is how to display it in my NodeRED Dashboard.

Can't remember but I think so.

I'm sure some of the MQTT & NodeRED experts out there have the answer 👍

I need to work out how to add a date/time stamp to this.

I'm much better now and hope to make more progress on the ASC shortly.   Next will be to sort out the electronics to provide the extra features of remote focussing and dome cover.

Update.

I use the Ekos native guiding and it seems very tolerant of thin cloud and haze.  (KSars/Ekos/INDI)

Pretty good that!!  👍

When I was working with DSLRs I often had trouble with connections.  Sometimes they looked alright but the printed cables weren't fully home.  There were times when I had to try several times before it worked!

I've found Artic fans to be good and quiet.

I don't get any fogging problem even with the sensor at -13C.  Maybe because my thermal insulation is good.  There is a dew heater though which warms the dome and maybe the lens.