intercipere

Hmm youre right, maybe an update here and there isnt a bad idea. Maybe i'll make a small blog section or a newsletter where i tell people about how things are proceeding. What website do you mean? Most of the develepment happens on Github in the "develop" branch: https://github.com/OpenAstroTech/OpenAstroTracker

Hey there, i'm still on this and i'm still working on selling the kit. However, its very hard for me currently to source larger quantities of the parts needed, especially the filament (the 3D printing raw material). At least here in Germany practically every manufacturer, as well as my usual supplier, are constantly out of stock and i dont want to resort to the cheaper china filament thats available. So i'm using that time to further iterate the design, and theres been quite a few changes. The pictures posted are a bit outdated already. I've made numerous little improvements here and there, but most notably are the camera mount and the base thats been replaced with aluminum extrusions. For the camera it has improved stability quite a bit, especially for the guider thats held by two clamps now. The aluminum base has made the whole assembly SO much more steady and less wobbly that i'm quite mad i hadnt done that way earlier. Note that the motors in the pictures arent the ones that i'm going to include in the kit because theyre a good bit more expensive, but i might make them an extra option if testing finds them worth the increased price. Theres also a LOT of improvements on the software front, although for that i cant claim credit. Some amazing people from the community have taken pity on my horrible code and really improved things. The local LCD plus buttons now has nice new features like manual movement over the buttons, slew home, drift alignment (aswell as the standard Polaris alignment method), POI and coordinate goto, several calibration options and some more. Additionally theres now a proper ASCOM driver with pulseguide, slewTo/syncTo, home, park and manual movement capabilities. As if thats not enough, theres also a android and windows application in the works that will allow wireless control over wifi or bluetooth. Sadly, summer has arrived up here in the north and "night" is practically non existent until august, so i cant get much astrophotography done. I did get two images recently that i like: A really unspectacular image of the Owl Nebula and M108 at 200mm, with about 50x 180s exposures and the Heart & Soul Nebula at 200mm, with 70x 120s exposures (excuse the horrible CA) I'm not sending out mails to subscribers cause theres quite a lot of them and i dont want to spam so many people. There is going to be one mail once i start selling (whenever that will be haha). The subscription was really just for me to see if theres even enough people interested. And sorry Gorr if i missed your mail

Its public! https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4167783 https://github.com/OpenAstroTech/OpenAstroTracker

The lens gets mounted with a ring and the guidescope simply gets clipped onto that ring. That way they always move the same. It works, but its not the best solution as its a little prone to vibrations like this. Might have to change that.

I have some pictures on my IG https://www.instagram.com/fabianuehleke/ Only the last one is with the belts and autoguiding, dont have much luck with the weather lately. Also, shitty lenses Yes, mostly. Also two printed pieces dont have much friction, i put some isolation tape on them which made that a bit better, but the mount then started slipping when there was dew. A belt is just more reliable because its a proper mechanical connection. It also makes tiny imperfections in the printed surface more neglectable What do you mean? They are mounted and pointing the the same axis

Just found this randomly, i'm the creator of this tracker. I wanted to do some testing and refining of the design before making it public, but im gonna release the files (as open source) in the coming days. Check r/openastrotech or openastrotech.com/projects/openastrotracker/ for news. It is a EQ design, the two axis are in fact GoTo, RA and DEC. I have added adaptions so it now works in a range of 15 to 55°N. I also exchanged the friction drive to belts, because yes, that was inaccurate. I am getting very good results for 60 and 120s exposures at 300mm, its able to do more but the throwaway rate gets worse. I also designed a guidescope that sits on top, with that i'm getting good 5 minute exposures at 800mm. I've opted for the cheapest possible components, so it costs around 50 bucks to make this tracker (and another 50 for the guidescope). And 60 hours of printing lol