Home Made Webcam Based Eyepiece

[Phil_W_UK]

Hi All,

I have just started sky watching, and I am also a tinkerer.... So I made my first digital eyepiece for my telescope.

I took a cheap webcam I bought from a famous online auction site (cost £1.70) and removed the casing.

Next I printed a plastic housing for it

I fit the webcam in place inside the housing

And to finish, I mounted the webcam on the end of a Skywatcher 25mm eyepiece

Maybe not the highest quality, but it is certainly very useable for a beginner.

If anyone would like the webcam item number and the STL files to print it out, please feel free to email me.

[Kropster]

Have you tried it out yet to see if it works?

[m37]

Nice job! 3D printing is so awesome.

[Phil_W_UK]

Yes it works

I need to find a better free capture programme, it does not seem to react as quick as I would like to exposure control...... Maybe I should spend ooh, £2.50 on the camera

It also allows video to be captured as well!!!!

The thing it has made me realise is, how fast the celestial objects are moving........

I now have another task to do. I now need to motorise my dobsonian mount. I am wondering if I can affix a couple of motors with encoders and a Raspberry Pi and make my dob into a goto?

I would have to create a motion control system, I am reasonable comfortable with that.

Then I would have to work out how to programme the movement of the earth and the stars..... that is where is gets interesting. I would be really interested to hear if anyone has any experience with this kind of thing.......

I shall keep you all informed as to how I am getting on with this new project

[JamesF]

What capture program are you using at the moment?

Making a full GOTO dob is probably a lot of work, through you could probably pinch a few ideas from Tom Carpenter's Astro EQ project.  What might be easier to start with is to make a wedge for it and then just drive in RA.  In fact, if you made the wedge you could probably use a lot of tools intended for EQ mounts to get you further down the GOTO path.

Or you could just choose the cheap option: sell the dob and buy a GOTO model to replace it.  But where's the fun in that?

James

[D4N]

Nice use of the stock EP.

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Phil_W_UK]

I am using 'Many cam' as the capture programme.

It works, but is not the best in the world.

And as far as selling my dob to buy a Goto.... you are right, there is no fun in that. But the programming and maths involved is quite scary....

[JamesF]

That's on Windows, presumably?

James