Coco

You could always use some narrow vinyl tape in your eyepiece undercut should it foul the compression ring. Ive read very good reports about the optical quality only negative is the plastic body. It goes without saying if your going to hang a 600g £700 eyepiece of the end of your scope then better get a 2" Baader one.

Only this winter my right eye see's a bright star or planet like it has a tiny comets tail but not in the left one, I wear eye glasses for reading my prescription is similar to yours but I am feeling its back to the opto's for another exam. I'm 59 soon.

Personally I will avoid a dioptrix and get eye glasses if the optrician thinks its the way forward. Go to a good optrician not a high street hard sell place.

7 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

as far as I can tell - both lenses are marked for orientation and spacer is included.

If not, it will be a little trial and error with artificial star. I've seen few cases where lens was not optimized with spacing and changing it improved spherical aberration substantially, so it's worth checking out anyway.

 

Ive had this in my cart for months, thought it would be worth a punt, at least it would be a good learning curve. 131mm f/7.6

https://www.aliexpress.com/item/1005003002741307.html?gatewayAdapt=4itemAdapt

7 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Have no idea, but I'll post my findings as soon as I get the chance to inspect them.

Given the holiday seasons, I expect them to arrive next year (at least 30 days shipping).

That will give me plenty of time to design and print focuser and order aluminum tubing locally (or maybe I should wait and measure lens themselves? Not sure, never designed a lens cell before).

Can't wait for your report, what about spacing between the two elements hows that calculated? I wish you well, might have ago once you have guinea pigged it.

You want to live in Preston Lancashire on the Irish Sea Coast, clear nights are extremely rare.

3 hours ago, LDW1 said:

My NP101 is a lot of fun as well ! Great views.

Hardly a 'cheap achro refractor' or just a boastful type comment.

Superb, love b&w images, they look real unlike over processed images that to me look coloured in .

ha! that Chevy is nearly as big as my house. great report nice scope

Superb, I'm a big fan of b&W images, this is really pleasing.

1 hour ago, Moonlit Knight said:

I had one of those years ago. I thought, deep in my memory that they were fl7.5, but happy to be wrong. The optics are indeed very good for a short tube achromatic refractor

Yours might have been but mine is not 😂 agreed the optics are indeed very good.

Hi from Preston, love pies...
Good starter would be https://www.harrisontelescopes.co.uk/acatalog/bresser-messier-6-dobsonian.html#SID=1739

Celestron SLT105  f/6.47/660mm  found on ebay 90 quid, its a real gem of a wide field scope, pin point stars to better than 90% through a cheap Starguider 12mm, using a range of SV Bony 1.25 filters ive had hours of fun. Yes false colour on the planets.

I'll order a decent focuser for it one day so I can use some heavier eyepieces, maybe I'll paint it or vinyl wrap it also   The optics really deserves to be in a better tube. Ive had fancy triplets (imaging days) that cost 25x more and for little gain visually.

17 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Yes, ground needs to be shared between boards - it is "reference" thing and all boards must have the same reference.

Check out schematics you linked - there is black wire going from arduino to all other boards - joystick and both drivers.

Not sure if I can find one.

In any case, you define pins that you want to use for particular driver, so you have choice of pins on your board.

All those pins that are marked with cyanish blue (digital) can be used to command your stepper driver. In program you'll define which port number will do what (stepper1 dir, stepper1 step, stepper2 dir, stepper2 step).

So you can for example use, Pins 6 and 7 for one driver, and 8 and 9 for other

Excellent, yes I can see it in the code

Thank you so much again its much appreciated.

57 minutes ago, skybadger said:

That looks fine to me 

It is a bit more complex than that to get full range of speeds and adequate slew rates..

I used onstep to do this. You already have half of the required kit. I heartily recommend it. 

 

 

Looks like a project for the Dob   Thanks for the Onstep idea

20 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Just FYI, in above schematic - ground/GND also must be connected to Arduino, otherwise it might not work.

May I ask, why don't you use something simpler like DRV8825 and say raspberry pi pico as controller?

(that would be my choice of the top of the head for motorizing SkyTee2).

I only thought about Arduino due to the fact I bought a starter kit 2 years ago and I found the YT video that got me interested 🙃

The ground wire from both drivers to the GND pin?  the Any chance of posting an image where the second driver connects, much appreciated for you help.

Hi

I am trying to control my Skytee via stepper motors using a joystick joystick, Ive found a handy YouTube video that controls 2 small stepper motors but
these will not be powerful enough, I’m looking to use Nema17 motors via a more powerful driver, just not sure what pins from Arduino to Stepper driver to plug into as in the image attached sketch.

Assuming I can replace the ‘ULN2003A ‘ controller with  ‘DM332T’ and power the new bigger driver directly with 12v and miss out the 5v power wires going to the  ULN2003A that is in the sketch.

Appreciate any help.

Regards
Guy

Nearly finished my mount, waiting for Xmas to buy a 3D printer to make some covers for the encoders, belts and a phone mount. 

Super smooth mount for a copy of the AYO 

Thanks to Serge at Astro devices for the help working out the ratios.

Thanks also to Zoltan. 365 Astronomy for a great deal on the mount.

On 07/11/2022 at 13:50, Stu said:

Avert your eyes anyone of a sensitive disposition, or if you are a precision foam cutter outer!

This is my ‘big eyepiece’ case, and I promise I will get some new foam soon!

31mm and 22mm Nag

17.5mm and 12.5mm Morpheus

10mm, 7mm, 5mm and 3.5mm XW

All the eggs in one basket kept under your bed with a 45.

The 127 Mak is plainly a giant killer, superb image! 😛

If it's cheap buy it and let us know how they compare.  I find my Achro102mm 660/6.47 stopped down to 60mm just fine on planets and the moon with a 12mm eyepiece, but full aperture superb on deep wide field. 

Great report! I'm in Preston so only 30 minutes drive, I really must make more effort to get out under darker skies.

Stunning!

Great night last night it was the first since March! Using 28x110mm Helios binoculars on my home brew fork mount with encoders & Nexus II was able to grab multiple DSO’s

M2, NGC 6934, NGC869, M15, M71, M27 , M56, M57, M92, M13 M81, M82, M1, M37 & Veil Nebular with OIII filter.

Not bad for Bortle 6 skies, am all fired up for this winter. These out of the way it’s time to find something more difficult.

Cheers
Guy

Congratulations on buying some fine BT  (Binocular-Telescope).  I see you have a SkyTee 2, a sturdy L bracket would complement these nicely, I can't tell you how many times I’ve added these to my shopping cart only to find the tumble dryers packed in or the car needed new tyres etc. 😂

My 28x110 bins pick Saturn out nicely they are sharp enough to see the gap between the disc and the rings, they do not seperate any ring divisions. They can also pick out Jupiter & Mars nicely too. The only drawback is they need a very big heavy duty mount, if you want to see Saturn and other planets sharply and in colour I would look at a Maksutov 102 or 127 and bigger. A Maksutov 102 will sit nicely onto of a strurdy camera tripod with fluid head.