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SPC900 LXmod yesyes style ;-)

yesyes

By yesyes
in DIY Astronomer

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yesyes

yesyes

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Chris, do I gather that you have managed to separate out the LX frame? Last I remember, there was a problem.

No. I had given up on that for now. Might get back to that later. It would require either the modification of an existing capture program (such as SharpCap) to save webcam long exposure still images at configurable intervals or to write a new program to do that.

What does work though is to use an LX modded webcam as a normal webcam without having to switch it to normal mode and without giving it the LX signal. If you were to send the LX signal (and that is what I tried), you run into the described problem.

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DIYASTRO

DIYASTRO

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thought I would post some 'Skeleton' pics of what I am building within theYes Yes style of lx amp off webcam with built in filter wheel.

Images I hope will give some idea of what i want to achieve but some help required!!!!

Top left... showing camera and electronics with ali housing, with drive shaft for filter wheel and original camera lens in place for protection of ccd.

Top right... Base of camera module you can see camera SPC900NC, serial to usb converter, edge of lx mod board and stepper motor for wheel.

2nd left... Front view with filter wheel on shaft.

2nd right...Oblique view of above.

3rd left... Drive motor, gear box and worm drive to filter wheel shaft,

top circuit to right is the Electrozone stepper motor programmable module.

3rd right.. rear view, fan cooling and switch for lx usb cable and filter wheel drive shaft protruding for indicator 'gog' to show which filter is in position.

4th left... close up of stepper motor gear box and worm to filter wheal drive shaft.

Tested all the circuits pc recognises all the bits and camera works in normal and lx configs.

This is the problem....

The 'electrozone' stepper motor driver, which has to be said is brilliant! only works from 7.5 v to 20v. it is programmable which is great since I want to 'regester' each postion of the motor drive but usb is only 5v added to that is the problem of sending the signal to the forward / reverse switch via the single usb cable.

My original thought was to use a simple dc motor and 'Shoestring FCUSB module ( I have an add in wants for this by the way!) and use the 4 way usb hub to directly connect via pc. but at the moment no FCUSB!!!

Ideas would be welcom, in the meantime I shall get busy making the filter wheel housing and 1.25" adapter so that it all fits to the scope!

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Reggie

Reggie

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Hi DIYASTRO, that is look very nice I must say :) The filter wheel could be driven using a 12v battery, with the electrozone driver board you could connect it to an arduino and control it from there via the onboard usb to serial? the arduino could also derive it's power from the 12v battery, and depending on the logic voltage being 3.3v or 5v on the electrozone board, you could power that from arduino too.

You might want to look here:

sgl_observatory_automation : SGL Observatory Automation

We have been working on a focuser that connects to ascom, that sounds very much like it would work very well for a filter wheel too, although obviously it's not designed specifically for it. Looking at the electrozone driver boards it seens they have a step/dir pin, we already have code to use that, you can set a max limit that the stepper should move, number of steps to move or you can move to an absolute position which would be ideal for your case.

It'll cost you about £10-15 for an arduino board, you don't have to use our code but it can give you ideas on how to control your driver board.

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DIYASTRO

DIYASTRO

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Thanks for kind comments!

You will see Reggie that I have left just enough space on the back plate just behind the motor / gear box to fit a RJ12 connection so if all else fails I can input a drive voltage and forward / reverse switching. The problem is that I really want to keep within the 'spirit' of the Yes Yes mod and retain the single usb cable to opperate everything. The FCUSB dc motor board from shoestring astronomy would be the answer. Surely someone out there must have one that is not beeing used ! Not being flushed with cash I dont want to spend £80 on a new one. As I have said in earlier post its great making your own equipment but care has to be taken not to induce cost near or above market available gear.

I will read up on th arduino board but at the end of the day its all got to fit in the box!

More suggestions very welcolm!

Regards

Boyd

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Reggie

Reggie

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a full size Arduino board is slightly larger than a credit card, 1/2 the size if you use a nano. can be made to shape if you design your own board. £15 for an arduino or £3 for a chip and get another of yeyes usb to serial adapters. It takes around £2 of components to build a working microcontroller circuit that will control your electrozone circuit, so about £8-9 if you get the usb to serial adapter to build yourself or £15 for a prebuilt arduino, you'll need 5 wires (Step, Dir and GND + 3.3/5V from the usb to serial adapter and gnd to power the microcontroller).

If size is the issue then build it yourself, you could probably design a board that is no more than 2cm wide x 6cm long.

The arduino has a bunch of support libraries, there are libs for steppers and servos, with many code examples for your type of board :)

Did I mention it's incredibly easy to build your own arduino?

Build Your Own Arduino

4 caps, 1 resistor a crystal and the chip are all you need, the power can be taken from somewhere else in your circuit and you only need the LEDs if you want visual indication that stuff is happening.

You got me thinking last night about our software and your situation, it really will work for you as a standalone app. It would talke a small amount of coding to add in features that you might need, all you'd really need is for someone to write an ascom driver if you wanted to control the filter wheel inside an astro app. I reckon I could knock up a simple java based windowss app. that would give you a range that your stepper can safely travel, +/- position movement and presets for your 6 filter positions. Our software already provides most of those features and we've been discussing about putting presets in too.

Regards,

Reggie.

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RobertCL

RobertCL

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No. I had given up on that for now. Might get back to that later. It would require either the modification of an existing capture program (such as SharpCap) to save webcam long exposure still images at configurable intervals or to write a new program to do that.

What does work though is to use an LX modded webcam as a normal webcam without having to switch it to normal mode and without giving it the LX signal. If you were to send the LX signal (and that is what I tried), you run into the described problem.

If you're just trying to capture images at an interval then SharpCap already does this. I just realised last night after reading the "all sky cam" thread. Just set number of frames and interval when you start capture - saves png images into a folder I think.

I've not tried it in LX mode though.

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yesyes

yesyes

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Yes, I found that option the other day. It works with LX mode as well.

However, there are no proper options. For each exposure it always creates a new folder with the time and date in the name, then puts one image file in there always using the same name (img001.png IIRC).

So while it is possible with SharpCap, the result is not very useful with the way it is being saved.

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Reggie

Reggie

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Does anyone know much about USB hubs? Trying to expand on YesYes's LX mod, it seems some of us would like to use the spare 2 USB ports on the hub, to be sensible it would help if we could externally power the hub.

I've found a datasheet that gives us the pinout of the chip on yesyes USB hub, download it here.

If you look at yesyes' picture of his hub, in the top right there are 2 solder pads, these are ground and +5v in. if you follow the circuit, it's connected through a resistor to 5v in on the IC and 5v from the USB host port. I think we can disconnect the 5v from the host and put an external 5v supply in it's place, not sure if we need a load resistor on the 5v from the host side.

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yesyes

yesyes

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The solder pads are for a LED power indicator LED (hence the resistor).

But the other idea might be worth thinking about. Cut the 5V going to the outputs and supply your own 5V. As long as you keep a common ground, it might work.

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Reggie

Reggie

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sure, that 470 ohm resistor can be swapped out for '0' ohm jumper resistor (like on the toher side of the board). I'm looking for more information on how the FE1.1 works, I've got a powered 7port hub here that uses 2x FE1.1 chips, so it is possible to externally power them. I just need to trace out the pads to see what it does with the red wire coming from a usb cable.

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