Fish

Finished the mount , I have it set so that I level the mount , set the scope horizontal and then point it north. In the picture below the solar finder shows how close the first goto was. Very happy with the results may need a slightly larger battery .

They were made out of aluminium angle , I think people have used the standard nema plastic brackets

Final testing today , just need to box up the cct board. This is my final config.

After converting my LXD75 to onstep and seeing that someone had motorized and fitted Onstep to a Porta mount I had to have a go. Looking to power from a 12v battery I wanted to keep the power requirement low, managed to find some 36mm 0.9deg 0.46A steppers on ebay for £3.65 each thinking that they would be a failure but worth a try. The motors came with 16 tooth GT2 pulleys so decided to order some 60 teeth ones to provide the greatest torque. Ordered some slightly longer pins to account for the extra plate thickness, the good thing about this mod is that it does not require any mods to the original mount. Manufactured brackets from aluminium plate and angle that I had and fitted motors. Assembled and fitted to mount. Largest scope that I use on this is a C5 so will use that to set up the config.

Sorry had not seen this! Hope your build went well. I had the soldering equipment so no idea what the spec is just standard soldering stuff. Weller soldering iron with about 0.5mm tip .

OnStep is now finnished, in a box and waiting for clear skies ? Very happy with the outcome and the fact that it is modular by design means I will be able to easily replace any parts in the future should they fail.

Its great ? compared to my old Meade the goto is a lot quicker. The accuracy seems to be good , I did a two star align and off we went. I set a park position as my roof will not go on in the home position and on the two occasions I have un-parked all seems to be good. This system has a lot more to it than the normal commercial solutions, you can alter everything on the fly. It is geared very much towards photography . Me ,I can just use the android app and sky safari and zip aground the sky clocking up all my normal targets. You allso have a set of web pages , as OnStep generates its own wifi , that can change and tweak tracking that I presume would be usefull for photography. I must allso add that OnStep can be used as a finnished product , ie. build and forget just use with the stable software. Or , keep track of the evolution and update as required. New builds and features are being worked on all the time. OnStep itself becomes another cloudy night hobby .

Eventually finnished all the remaining bits and sorted out the final config perameters. Still without a box its time to get it on the mount. Everything fixed to the mount I did a goto and compared it to sky safari as it was still daylight. It looked good so a second star was chosen and again it looked good and align was successful. Then noticed the moon was up so I did a goto to the moon. First thing that was apparent was it was slewing the wrong way then the dec motor stalled. Back to the config and a couple of changes to the max rate saw an end to the stalling and the strange slew to the moon was the RA motor going the wrong direction, this was not as obvious as you would think. Darkness falls so it was time for a proper test, set it to home position and did a two star align. Each alignment star, very close to central was synced then it was time to go through some of sky safaris tonights best. Short clip of it working. Still a bit of work left to complete and will be doing a smart hand controller next . The whole process is a lot easier than you may think and there is even an option where there is virtually no soldering. The community for onstep is great and loads of help available. My total cost was just over £119 , this is not the cheapest build you can easily build one for under £100 .

Today was programming day , after two weeks of trying to get my head arround IDE , the software used to program arduino devices. First up was the wemos, the wifi board has its own software . Opened the sketch , set up the board type etc and flashed the program. The main thing here was that you need to press the reset button before flashing, this I did not know and it took a while of searching to find out. Apparently its the normal thing when programming arduino devices. Next was the stm32 with the onstep program, again once the board was set up all went well . No need for reset here as it has a different set up for the usb. Powered up the board and connected phone to onstep with phone and tab with sky safari. Did a fake alignment and all was good. Decided I wanted to connect onstep to the internet , this locked up the wemos. So first thing this morning it was searching for solutions, tried them all in order of what seemed the less risky. As it was the last two things worked, flashing it as a generic esp8266 and then a full flash . Eventualy everything was back up and running. Here is a vid showing the two wifi connections with onstep app and sky safari. Looking for a box now so that I can get it finnished and on the mount , still a few bits to sort out . More molex connections (grrrrr) the buzzer does not work and have to sort the motor cables.

My kit arrived today you can download assembly instructions from the wiki. https://groups.io/g/onstep/wiki/STM32F103-Blue-Pill Picture of all the bits. First job is to get everything soldered and following the sequence of assembly on the wiki made it quite an easy task. After a few hours everything soldered . And a final picture with everything plugged in just to double check everything is ok. Next task will be to make up the on board links, source a box and find out how to fit molex connectors to connect the motors.

Motor mounts finnished today they use the standard EQ5 single bolt fixing. Waiting for the postman now.

My onstep journey When my LXD 75 electronics died I was left with a problem. After asking in this forum it was suggested to go the diy route but initially I discounted it because I wanted a quick fix and after reading up on the options I decided I wasnt upto the task. After a successful temporary repair of my mount electronics I decided to have a go at DIY. Out of the two options , Astroeq and Onstep I decided to research the latter. Here is the wiki. https://groups.io/g/onstep/wiki/home At first this reads like some foreign language but dont give up , register on the forum and read. Eventualy things will start to become a little bit clear. After a lot of reading I decided to go with the STM32 blue pill , it seems like a neat solution and I found that you can order a full kit from here . https://baheyeldin.com/astronomy/onstep-telescope-controller-stm32-pcb-kits.html Thanks to Khalid and Dave for making these kits available. Im now waiting for my kit to arrive from Canada and because of their postal strikes Im not sure how long it will be. My intention is to log my build on here so that anyone who has been down this path can advise when im straying off course and in the hope that it may help someone else. The first thing now is to start to decide on motors and how to mount them on my LXD 75 which is just a standard EQ5 mount. So it would seem that stepper motors come in loads of variations . Basically for an eq5 mount that has a worm ratio of 144:1 a 400 step motor would be better with a further gear ratio of 3 : 1 between the motor and drive so decided to go with these motors . Bipolar Nema 17 stepper motor with step angle 0.9deg and size 42x42x39mm. It has 4 wires, each phase draws current 0.9A. To get a gear ratio of 3:1 I needed to order the timing belt drive pulleys, it seems the most common standard used is the GT2 type so I ordered 16 tooth for the motors and 48 for the drive to give me 3:1 ratio. Need to sort out the mounting next.

Thats great , can use lap top anyway so no problems either way .

No the existing motors are not suitable, the whole lot will go . Wasnt too sure how the phone app would work but think I will try the app before making a hand controller. Is it possible to connect your phone with the app and use a tablet (wifi) with Sky Safari ? If thats the case then I would not need the controller. I have ordered all my bits just waiting for the slow boat to arrive now ?

Nice did you do a build blog or forum post on the build? I was going for the ramps board but then found I could easily get a stm32 board which is a nice neat job. Its good to know it works with sky safari as thats my normal software, have you made a hand controler?

Managed to replace the board mosfet that was blown so the mount is back up and running. If anyone ever needs any SI4947ADY let me know . Thanks @lenscap I have been looking into onstep and it looks great so Im starting a build to replace the Meade goto . Going for the stm32 blue pill .

My trusty lxd 75 has blown its drive card , repair is out of the question , spare parts are not available so my choices are attempt to fit a Skywatcher goto kit to my mount or purchase a new Skywatcher eq5. My mount handles my 10kg of equipment for visual with no problems at all (C8, moonlight focuser, largest eyepiece and large finder) Reading the eq5 max is 9kg is a concern , I thought the Meade mount was essentially a eq5 but the payload is upto 15kg and it handles my 10kg easy so may be not. So would like advice off folks who use a Skywatcher eq5 with similar set up for observing or have experience of fitting a Skywatcher goto to a meade.

A big thanks to all who had input to this thread. Works like a dream , fantastic mod for 34 quid. It will be nice to use sky safari for direct control. Credit to the Chinese ebayer , posted on 22nd delivered on the 26th full set of import stamps etc, how do they do that?? Just need to install it permanent on my mount and get some clear skies. Anyone keep the bt serial adapter outside in the obsey? Wondered if they are prone to damp?

Thanks for that, just found this on ebay . http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/141694570340?_trksid=p2060353.m1438.l2649&ssPageName=STRK%3AMEBIDX%3AIT I presume it's correct looks the same from your pictures. I'm not to sure how I'm going to change the baud rate yet as I'm on windows 10, presume the software listed will work. I have read all the thread and not much on the power side of things, I have a 12v stabilised supply that powers my mount I presume this will be OK? Just hope it gets a fast journey from China :-)

Rather than starting a new thread I was wondering if this info is still correct and the best way to connect to android. My obsey pc has died again and connecting to a tablet would be a good solution. Looking at the price of the bt serial adapters is it better to buy skybt and are there any uk stockists? Any current info would be good as Google is not helping much at the moment.

Just for the record the lxd75 does not use standard ethernet cable , you have to re-configure it . looking at both connectors with the clip facing up the wires go from the inside out . So a standard e-net cable needs to have one end reversed. A standard cable can cause damage if what I have read is correct. Glad you sorted it :-)

Had exactly the same issue with my LXD75 a few weeks ago. My problem was the handset to mount cable. I made a tempory cable from an old ethernet cable to prove it. Hope you manage to sort it.

Have a look here as well http://www.meade4m.com/index.php?/topic/901-version-12tc/

Try and do a full update , use that bin file to update your mysky with the meade software . Have you searched the yahoo mysky group? https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/meade_mysky/conversations/topics/462 Have a look there for info as well, these things are so easy to mess up but most are fixable with lots or reading and playing. Dont bin it sell it on the bay as broken , people allways buy them