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Stabilisize an EQ1 drive


larsmn

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Hi,

Have an old Lidl/Bresser NG mount, I got several years ago.  When having had it for a year, I added a small alu arm to the mount base, allowing me to mount a EQ1 motor to it.  

Why?  

The NG mount, though its quality limitations, is the smartest and design wise best mount I ever encountered.  If the quality of the tripod and the mount was in the same range as most EQ2/EQ3 manual mounts, it had been the best beginner mount ever. Anyway, I did some modifications to counteract it's limitation, making it a workable mount/tripod. To go over to a SkyWatcher AltAz goto, since the stability of the EQ1 drive was failing and load was limited to Bressers cheaper small refractors. 

Then, to the Swedish yearly national Astronomy Night and Day event in Oct, I got a SkyWatcher Heritage-76 for a local exhibition. After the exhibition I started to play with doing a very lightweight Heritage/NG combo. Last week I did and I have now a 1-2 kg stable 300/76  EQ Dobson, that can be taken out if one wakes 3-4 in the night and the sky is perfect, as it can be on the island I live on.  A perfect Quick&Dirty telescope (QDT), with acceptable optics and that with a Barlow can take a DSLR (prime focus is inside the focuser).  

However, the EQ1 drive plays up. It do not keep a stable rate and when the battery goes below 9V it starts to slow considerably. A couple of times I have succeeded to adjust it to take 15-20 20 sec exposures with the 900/70 mm f-12.9 refractor it came with and have 3 or 4 1 min exposures of M42, so it can do astro photo. But after those 15-20 shots, it needs speed re-adjustment, which isn't exact.

I am not interested in pushing a load of money on this one, but I do like to get the drive more stable, keeping the object relatively fixed in the ocular for an hour or so or finding another low-tech EQ1 drive solution that can, maybe an Arduino or Raspi solution. The EQ1 gearing works, while a EQ2 drive I have do not. 

 

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As Knobby suggests another 9v in parallel, just not overly simple oddly owing to the connectors - I am presuming a small 9v PP3 type battery.

If at home then a mains to DC supply with a small connector converter on - I built a couple for an ETX-70 which is 9v. Costs a bit more mainly mains/dc bit but easy.

If running from a car then a car dc converter, can point out the Maplis item but not much use for Sweden, again a small conector connverter is required to get to the expected 9 volt connector.

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:-) Thanks both,

thought of a DC converter, since I have a couple lying around, but for simplicity, battery is the solution. It's a pitty it is 9V, for I have several 7.4 and 11.1 V lithium polymer (LiPo)  batteries. 

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