DIY old style EQ5 hand controller

[ismangil]

I've acquired a used motorized EQ5 clone without the controller.

Looking around it's hard to find these controllers, so while waiting, I've looked into building my own controller.

My research so far is these are bipolar stepper motors.

On another thread there are already efforts to built focuser using stepper motors controlled by Arduino.

Arduino boards seems to strike the right balance of cost, simplicity yet programmable enough. I will need one Arduino board and one motor driver shield, costing less than £30.

The tricky bit would be getting the RA tracking speed right.

That's it so far.

[malc-c]

Or look at using a PIC micro.. bit cheaper and loads of example code for stepper motor control already out on the net, just need to work out the encoding and pulse rates

[ismangil]

Or look at using a PIC micro.. bit cheaper and loads of example code for stepper motor control already out on the net, just need to work out the encoding and pulse rates

Agreed it would be even cheaper. This is really an excuse to tinker with Arduino :-)