ncjunk

If you look at Glenblokes thread and the Motorized ROR video this is exactly the type of setup I have and i used the remote controls that came with it. https://stargazerslounge.com/topic/387345-my-complete-fully-automated-diy-ror-shed-observatory/

The sliding gate motor I had has a metal bar which is attached to the end of the rail and as it moves past the motor it hits a switch stopping it. I used the remote controls that came with it to open and close it from the house and had a wifi camera I logged into to check the telescope had parked. I'm thinking of trying a garage door style one next.... I'm not sure though.

Well said, it's still work but you don't have to write your own software as it comes with ascome drivers, software etc, if i remember correctly. ...and you have a post explaining it! what could go wrong😁

I used a gate motor for my roof which came with, obviously, the rails for moving the load (in this case roof) and a control board which had some useful interlocks on it On mine I left it open all night (so only clear nights) but you could disable it by using a safety input based on the position of the telescope. The safety would be "ok" when the scope is parked - this should be a hard wired couple of switches which are active when the scope is parked. Your case isn't ideal as the telescope must be in parked position for the roof to close. there will be the possibility of the roof closing on an unparked telescope if you don't disable the motor when the telescope is unparked. The only surefire way of safely doing this is physical limit switches detecting when in safe position. If the park position is taken from software and not the physical position you will always have the possibility of damaging the scope as software is not reliable. Having said all of that the opening and closing is easy and just done on wired signals. If you have programing knowledge you can program an arduino with a couple of Inputs and outputs and then link it to an ascom driver (I'm sure someone will have done one somewhere) I'd start off with a gate motor hooked up to an arduino that has wifi and create a mini webserver with buttons to open and close the roof, just open, close and then an indication of current position. This way is cheap but needs a bit of programming knowledge and also some wiring knowledge for the connections and the signals to the park position. So, a control just to open and close manually is easy. The hard bit would be the ascom driver interface with the arduino and the wiring of the limit switches showing park......and then the intergartion and testing with your existing softare. Sorry for the brief explanation if a diy solution..hope it gives you an idea. This is a classic example of if you have the money and not the diy skill go for the Talon system mentioned by a previous poster but if you have the skills and fancy a challenge you can do the cheap diy method

Great pic, I love ngc6888.

I have always preferred mono and getting ha and rgb. Can be a pain to get a few nights in a row to get enough pics...but I'm lazy so automated everything. Love the ha on the bubble or horses head nebula. Are qhy drivers any better now? they used to be a little bit flaky edit: the QHY268M is impressive, i like the look of that. I have an old atik 428ex which fits nicely to the filters etc but does have a smallish field of view.

Very nice Crescent nebula, I had a QHY8 colour once but never did really take to it so it's nice to see a great pic from one.

Not the easiest target so keep going! It's a great start you have. I tried imaging this once and was surprised at how awful I managed to make it look - needed a lot more data so I moved onto an easier target🤣

That's one hell of an image and I love all the different objects you can see in it. Wonderful!

oh that's absolutely stunning and of my favourite area of the sky. I love these photos. Neil

I haven´t been here for ages, it´s lovely to see all of the Arduino and Raspberry pi design Your threads are always so wonderfully detailed.

That is without a shadow of a doubt one of the best images I've ever seen. Well done to Tom and Olly on that one!

I don't get a chance to read much if the forum these days but your threads are always fantastic. I love your designs and the way you think things through. Keep up the good work gina your an inspiration. How's your roof automated? I've forgotton what you did on that, I'm about to put a gate ooener on mine. Sent from my GT-N5110 using Tapatalk

Damn steve beat me to it I was just writing a similar answer....so....what steve said! Sent from my XT1032 using Tapatalk

As my 2 year old says..."Oh dear oh dear oh dear...it´s on the floor daddy". You could hear the screams from the Mount from miles away as I started attacking it with screwdrivers and Allen keys.."You´re useless"..."You´ll have bits of me left over you know!"..."What?? you´ve put the small bit on the floor for safe keeping...idiot.." But I ignored these imaginary words of encouragement and now have a dismembered mount sitting in the Garage....that´ll learn it. The idea, no the great plan of unbridled Genius, is to remove the nasty horrible Gears and replace them with a sun shine happy pully and belt system. This will have the benifit of the mount not sounding like a Herd of screaming cats at four in the morning. I´ve also bought a set of new bearings and a new "Astronomers do it in the dark" sticker to put on the mount. (Oh ok, I´m lieing about the sticker :p) All I want in return is a low Periodic Error and the winning lottery numbers for Friday night is that too much too ask? I have a nasty suspicion that the winning lottery numbers may be the easy bit in all this. So I find myself with the mount in a higher state of Entropy than it was a day ago. Now lets see if, when my machinist finishes altering the pullies, I can get this little swine back to a working state by the weekend. My boundless optimisum says yes...but my Brain says "remember that computer you took to bits? your getting no help from me"..damn you Brain... Still, it can only get more like a Mount from this point on! A bonus point to anyone who can tell me the Artist that I robbed the title of this post from! and a bonus point if you actually got this far in the post without your hands poking your eyes out to stop you reading this drivel! Saludos and Rainy skies for everyone till I get my mount back together. Neil C

Summers over, it must be as I have just spent the last week and a half looking at cloud. The thunderstorm was fun....for a while...but then back to the cloud....dull grey ones skimming across the Galician country side. The sneaky little buggers formed a huddle behind some hill then jumped out on me whilst I was setting up and no amount of shooing would get rid of them. I´ve even started naming individual ones figuring that if I name them I can take them to court and get them evicted from the skies...I´ll do them for invading my Human rights as an Astronomer them and the blumming street lights down the road. Who, I hasten to add, have been ma'liciously staying up late throwing parties and shining light into my Garden.....and laughing...I swear they are laughing at me as I walk by in the morning. Then theres the Dew! I never knew it could get so wet here whithout actually raining.....lie down Mr C....deep breathes...remember what the Doctor said..."If you don´t get out of my office RIGHT NOW I´m calling the Police"....not quite sure if that was an actual diagnosis or not but the Golf club hurt like hell, although his swing needed a bit of work if you ask me, so I thought I had better leave. So, after much pacing and looking skywards shouting the clouds cleared and the C11 came out....and then I got lost amongst the stars, couldn´t focus, tracked badly and generally behaved like a teenager on a family holiday....at which point I started doing a rain dance to bring the blumming clouds back, that´ll learn it. Damn it...I´ve ranted myself out...I think I need a lie down now...rest...that will do it and a nice visit to the Doctors for a game of Golf. Saludos Capitan Big Thunder

The Romans managed to build complicated feats of engineering that stood the test of time. They had an ability to design systems for transferring water over long distances and Cities that was phenomenal...the humble Aqueduct. I, on the other hand, have spent the best part of a year and a half trying to keep the stuff out of my observatory. I have tried No Entry signs, a system of fines and even shouting at the water from a distance. Unfortunately water is somewhat ignorant, can't read and doesn't listen, like a stropy teenager. So, with little pools of water gathering on the floor, I decided to have one last try at finding how the Ninja water was evading my defences and entering the sanctity of my green zone. It turns out my observatory must have been built by the blumming Romans! some idiot...(cough)...built some rails to guide the roof smoothly on its journey to openness. These rails look, to your average Roman, very much like mini Aqueducts and efficiently transport water from the outside to the inside. If I line the inside of the shed with pond lining I will have successfully built a great big eco water butt.....Oh bum. Now after a brief word from Mr Saw we are basking in the miracle of drainage slots but no longer have any water storage for the plants in the summer. Happy New Year! I spent all summer dreaming of long cold evenings having candle lit dinners with Orion...perhaps playing a little footsy with him and taking the odd picture of his big sword. Alas and alack, I have not so much as grabbed a quick peek at his weapon since the end of November and that was a hazy disaster...it looked more like a penknife. But it is the New Year and surely 2011 must contain less cloud than 2010....I am hoping that like the de-icer stores for de-icing London runways the Gods have mucked up and heavily under ordered their cloud supplies. In my dreams huge warehouses are echoing empty buildings with just the odd cloud left in the corner....oh please! please...be as efficient as a London Airport management team...I beg! Enough of the rambling....Merry happy New Year to you all! May all the clouds pass over our neighbours house and not your own. Saludos Neil C

Once more unto the observatory dear friends once more.... Ahhh now an almost critical, possibly fundamental, requirement for your average telescope is the presence of light with which to perform the miracles of magnification. And apparently your average photon does not have the ability to pass through my lens cap...I ask you...photons today are just too damn lazy for your own good. Lets face it why couldn´t they have found a back way in? the cheek of it. So having turned everything on, checked the cameras, verified the autofocus and made sure I had removed the roof...I am let down by the refusal of the light (which has, admittedly, been travelling for rather a long time without even seeing a Welcome break or having a cup of tea) to use a bit of initiative and find a way past the lens cap. It could have knocked on the door and politely told me... But fear not, having wasted a clear night last night I have removed the cap and set it all up again....and the roof....but can´t help feeling I have forgotten something else....hhhhmmm Ohh is Astronomical Twilight the really expensive twilight? I have been reading about dark matter and the differing theories by people, some of these contrasting. I have decided that I too can jump on this band wagon and get a paper published but can´t be doing with all that research rubbish. I think I have it sussed you need fulfill the following points:- 1. Cool Name that the newspapers can throw around 2. Make sure there is no really easy way to confirm its existence. 3. Chuck in a few big words and an “Artists Impression” of a star with stuff being sucked into it. So….I propose “Dark Stars” yes Dark matter is really just a lot of old dead stars that aren´t emitting anything and have basically got lost on the way home from the pub. This fills the first two criteria perfectly. Next we just add in a black picture with an ever so slightly less black circle indicating our artists impression of what a “Dark Star” may look like. I will then state that on the 27th August a Dark star will be the closest it has been to the Earth for ages and we will be able to “see” it if we all shine a big torch each at Mars…I could do an impressive power point and everything. This could be a whole new theory line, I could bring a new one out every couple of months….Dark planets, Dark comets….and then I could add a new range…Out of phase stars the light exists in one universe and the gravitational effects in this…hhhmm What would happen if we could get the whole of the UK to stand outside with torches and point them up and turn them on…perhaps we could blind a passing alien… I hope that by now you have realized what a waste reading this blog was but fear not! Whilst you have been reading this I was robbing your house! Aahhh till next time and remember a removed lens cap is a happy lens cap. NC

Duct tape! Its so obvious i should have thought pf it myself. I will put the rocks on as well and steal one of those falling rocks road signs in order to warn people. I will also need to custom build a "warning low flying shed roofs" sign but i think the neighbours are already used to it. NC

I am sad to anounce the destruction of yet another roof on the shed. It did, however, manage to snap a reenforced fence post in half in its BID for freedom. So beware the evils of bungee cord, i knew it wasn't strong enough and all four bungees frayed like the spineless buggers they are. I was expecting them to make some brave last bid stand with triumphant music playing and slow motion capture as poor brave jonny bites the dust......poor jonny. Ahhhh look out brad! Another gu....oh the humanity as brad bites the dust. But i feel it didnt happen like that and that jonny and brad bungee cords may have been sniveling in the corner crying for their mothers.....some may say it was again the generals fault for not supplying the correct equipement to the troops but i say pish and Tosh! They survived the last three storms so why not this. So our general is roofless and yet again without an observatory, i do have a rather nice swimming pool which has four walls and a door! Luckily the cameras and scopes were inside so its back to the drawing board and a new roof when the weather clears. Roofs aré over rated, still, up until i had to move the eq6 back indoors the alignment and Photos really were coming along nicely. The moral of this sorry tale is use moré bungee cords! Oh i kid, it is never look a gift hor....no thats not it....perhaps its never leave four huge m16 bolts in your car boot when they could be holding your roof down.....yep thats the one. I have a great design for a house of straw next and i am sure it will work.... Clear windless skies all. Neil c