tekkydave

That would be great Gina

Cheers. I'll try to get this built into the project and a new release out at the weekend. It depends what SWMBO has planned for me at the weekend. I like the idea of getting the sketch to detect the serial number automatically. It will only ever have one DS18B20 attached so it only needs to get one value. I might be a good idea to have the code detect if the sensor is present and return sensible values to the driver if not. I guess not everyone will want to have the temperature sensor fitted.

Nice job. Now I really am ashamed of my cork mats. Now I have my bench drill set up I might go about making a proper bracket.

Thanks for that. Are you ok with me putting that into the project? Can you do a simple circuit diagram showing how the DS1820 is connected to the nano and I'll add that too. That's brilliant - you've saved me some time working it all out, thanks again.

It should start at position 1000 with the latest arduino sketch and driver. I also added the option to specify the start position on the chooser dialog. If you don't see the drop-down box when you choose the driver you might be using an earlier release.

23/09/2014 - add Steve_Max127

I have added the 'C#' command to the command protocol list on the SF wiki to reserve it for 'C'elcius temperature readings. I'll implement it in the next release. https://sourceforge.net/p/arduinoascomfocuser/wiki/Communications%20Protocol/

Roll of Honour I have just flicked back through this topic and made a list of all the SGL members who have made a focuser based on my design (or have one on the go). I hope this is correct. If I have missed anyone let me know. Dave_DBaffawuthtonMick JrussellhqmindburnerDavey-T

I think this is because you have used 2 chars ('TT') for the command. The switch statements starts with: switch(command.charAt(0)) { command.charAt(0) means the first char of the string command. It only detects the first 'T' and interprets it as the 'Set Target Position' command. It must be interpreting the second 'T' as the position then echoing it back to confirm giving the 'TT:OK#'. I decided at the outset to use single character commands for simplicity so we just need to pick a different letter. I suggest 'C' for Celcius. Try this: case 'C': // Get Current Temperature { Serial.print("C21.5:OK#"); break; } I have tested it on a spare nano and it works ok.

You will need to use subversion to checkout the code. You can use a client such as tortoisesvn to check out to local disk or check out the project directly in visual studio. Click on the Browse Code button on the SF summary page and it will give you the svn url to use for a read-only checkout. You can't commit any changes you make back to the site - only I can do that. If you just want to look at the code you can browse the files from this page.

The one I used from Technobots is 5mm and fitted the motor shaft after a small amount of filing with a needle file.-

Nice work. I'll have to go back through the thread and count how many people have built it. Must be 4 or 5 by now plus me of course.

Thanks. Glad you got it all working.

Always worth having spares I managed to destroy the chip on the stepper board when I was first experimenting so I have a good stock of those now, and spare boards & motors - just in case.

Yes, pin 30 is for Vin. Pin 27 is a 5V output from the nano. The stepper connections look good to me. Try connecting your battery or psu directly to the stepper driver board power pins only and see if it makes a difference. The nano will run quite happily on the power it gets from the usb. I only connected the battery to the nano Vin so it would stay powered if the usb power failed.

If it is turning and responds correctly to direction commands then you probably have it all connected correctly. I found it is fairly weak just powered from the nanos 5v supply but is stronger on 9v. Without the battery it is getting its supply from the usb port which may not be up to it - it may well be different on different PCs I suppose. Does it seem to be stronger on 9v? I find with the pulley attached I can still stop it turning with my fingers but it has enough grunt to turn the focuser knob via the toothed belt. Double check all your connections - the leds on the driver board should all be off when the stepper is stopped, I can't tell from your video if they are flickering or not. Hope that helps.PS - well done on getting it working so quickly. If you post some close ups of the connections to the nano and the driver board I can check them against mine

That makes sense. I'll have to make sure I return a sensible default from the arduino if the temperature sensor is not fitted aswell. Not everyone will want to fit one.

Interesting. I would have expected the client program (APT etc) to request the temperature from the driver. The driver will then query the focuser and pass the temperature back to the client. I haven't looked into it yet so I might be wrong.

I'll try to get the temperature sensor working asap but it will have to join the queue behind my other project at the moment which is to get my pier finished. I need to get my work bench and bench drill set up (hopefully this weekend) so I can complete the plate drilling. Sadly I have to something called 'work' 5 days a week which is getting in the way. Hopefully I can retire in 3 years or so and spend more time doing sensible things like sitting in my shed in the dark

Hey! What are you saying

Thats the beauty of 1-wire - I have 8 sensors all on a single pair of wires in my weather system and it just works. It will scale to 100s and cable lengths of 100m or more with a decent adapter/bridge.

Thanks Gina, I am following your 1-wire CCTV project with interest. I already have the focuser working quite happily just using the nano and stepper driver. I want to 'K-I-S-S' and stick to the design I already have, just adding the temperature sensor. No extra hardware or software will be involved apart from the DS18B20 i.c. and a few simple mods to the sketch and driver code.

Thanks - I'll have a look at how APT is doing it.

Regarding the temperature/humidity question - does anyone know of an ascom-based program that displays or uses humidity? I want to keep the focuser as a self-contained device with all communication via the ascom driver. If humidity is not useable by ascom I will restrict it to temperature only. I have some DS18B20s ics already from previous 1-wire projects so I can have a go with those.

That looks very professional - puts my cork mats to shame