Building my diy Observatory.

[ribuck]

Hi all,

Well i finally got sick of constantly setting up my telescope rig, only to find that 10 mins after it's had cooled down the clouds roll in, so i decided enough was enough and that i had to build my very own DIY observatory.

So here's my efforts so far forged from sweat, blood, timber and fiber glass, and after 2 months of building inbetween crappy weahter there's light at the end of the tunnel.

What do people think so far ?? would love to hear people's feedback.

(Week 1) The timber finally turns up after B&Q screwed up the delivery twice..... :? , the ery next day i starts to rain for a few days just to annoy me.....

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(Week 1 contiuned) The rain finally stops and it's now time to start building. I started making the floor joists and side panels. So far so good.

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(Week 3) Solid rain for a few weeks put all stops to building, it's like i annoyed the big fella upstirs and he made it rain to spite me..lol. finally i stopped raining and i started on puring the side panels i place and then added the floor covering.

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(Week 4) Finally the base is complete, and now it's time to start thinking about the tricky thing like the dome.

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(Week 6) Oh what a suprise - more rain After 2 weeks of solid rain, the heavens break and work begis on the dome framework. this was a really tricky part, cutting the wood to the right angles and length including a lot of guess work too....lol.

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(week 8 ) The weather stayed cleasr for a few weeks so i made good progress on the dome. With the dome frame work complete now time to give it some shape with thin ply and Gaffer tape. yes i said gaffer tape, and this was just a temporary surface prior to fiberglass covering.

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(Week 9) Well i managed to get some fiberglass kits and here's the end result. It's no perfect but it will do. Obvisouly this isn't finnished yet as it all needs to be sanded and all the rough edges to be removed before being painted. But seeing this was my first attempt i was quite pleased.

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(Week 10) The roof rail system is installed at the dome is temporarily mounted to try the runners. The rail was made from tough pvc cladding joiners which are strong and easy to bend into an arc. i bought some double wheel casters from B&Q, which were perfect as the gap between the wheels was pretty much the exact with of the cladding, which made it a perfect guider. the dome was then mounted to test the smooth running.

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so now i just need to sand and paint the dome and add some more gladding on the base, then i can start in the inside of the dome installing electricals, timber cladding and carpet etc. I'll update with more photo's soon.

Rich.

[ribuck]

Would be great to hear other peoples views and their stories / problems they had when building their obs.

[beamish]

Looking great . A fair bit of work there I reckon. How are you setting up your rig, on a pier or tripod ?

Look fwd to further reports.

Karlo

[MikeD]

Very nice job so far, looking forward to more pic's as it progresses.

Mike.

[centroid]

That's looking really good Rich, and when finished, will be a major asset to your enjoyments of the hobby.

I like your innovative design for the dome, but have one question. With the top end of the 'slot' ending where it does, will this not affect your ability to point the scope at the zenith?

If you have a look at my website, the pictures of my own observatory build and evolvement are there.

Keep the pictures coming, as I find these obsy building projects, really interesting.

Dave

[ribuck]

Hi Dave, Your obs is looking good. why did you with from the roll off roof to a dome style roof ? to give more proetection from the weather, dew etc...?

I see what you mean about the zennith on my dome. If i need to have more of an opening for the Zenith i can easily cut back the fiberglass to extentend the opening along the roof. My only concern there would be keeping it water tight.

Rich.

[George]

That's a smashing job Rich, and that dome is very innovative Toyed with the idea of replacing the rolloff myself like Centroid but unless I motorise the dome its a lot of faffing about while imaging.

[centroid]

The conversion from roll-off-roof to rotating turret, was to provide better protection from the wind. At 3048mm, the 12" LX200R has a pretty long focal length, and when long exposure imaging at around f/7, it doesn't take much of a breeze to affect the image.

I could get away with it, when I had a 10" LX200R at 2500mm focal length, and it's presenting a smaller profile to the wind, but not with the 12".

My garden backs onto open countryside, and is quite exposed to the elements, especially when the trees etc, are bare of leaves in the winter.

With the 'turret', I now look forward to be able to image at times when without it, I couldn't.

Ok on the cutting the 'slot' back to allow access to the zenith, I sure that without doing this, there are going to be many times when you would find it frustrating.

Dave

[Martin 2]

Thats really good, you will not regret it, its just so nice to have it all set up and ready to go.

Keep the pics coming

Martin

[ribuck]

Just a quick update after many months of stalled building due to bad weather.

Finally, the dome is finished, bar a few cosmetic tweaks.

The hatch is made of 3 parts that are hinged, that operates on a pully system and folds in on itself. The outside of the hatch has a black cover, to give extra waterproofing. so far she's held up to some pretty major storms.

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Inside the dome....Well inside is totally waterproof, but needs some cosemetic work like painting the inside of the dome roof but that can wait for the moment.

sittingin the middle is my skywatcher 200P o a heq5 Pro goto mount which is connected to a laptop for imaging.

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dome by night......with the warm glow of red light. as you can see the hatch folds in on itself quite nicely.

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i would love to hear people's comments. all in all it's not perfect but i'm very proud of it seeing i'm not great at diy.

Rich.

[Jaffa007]

I think you've done a fantastic job there mate . Love reading about everyone working on their Obbos. Perhaps it's just the DIYer in me

Keep up the good work and keep us posted on even the smallest updates.

[beamish]

I hope you're justly proud, fantastic job. Well done mate, cosy and weather proof ! :salute:

Karlo

[ribuck]

Well i guess the next stage will be to motorize the dome to track with the scope, but i think i'll leave that until next year now and just enjoy the winter months now that it's built. Just glad to get it finished, so I can get some quality observing in and hopefully some imaging.

The only downside is my other hlaf constantly taking the mick, calling me star commander and asking if i'm spending the night in the star command bunker........she just doesn't understand.....lol.

[lukeyboy]

Your turret does look great, i am going to build myself an obsy in the next few months ( pier already done) and i was wondering how much it cost to make the turret.

I was going to do a roll off roof but i can really see the advantages of a turret.

Luke

[ngc2403]

That looks great, i think you are under estimating just how good that looks,

the tracking of the dome would be a major upgrade. i think that it would be difficult thing to do? i did read about an american guy who made his fully robotic by using a barcode scanner and lots of bar codes placed all round the dome so that as it turned it knew where it was!

he was an electrical/mechanical/computer genius

ally

[ribuck]

Hi Ally,

It took some time to build and it's not perfectly symetrical, but i'm proud of it. Kind of proves i'm better at Diy than i though. So far it's held up to lots of major storms and remaind perfectly dry inside.

In terms of automating the dome, i already have a few idea's, lucky i'm a computer engineer and majored in electronics which comes in handy.

i was thinking of the following system:

Split electrical system to allow free rotation without wires getting caught up.

The top electrical / sensor system would be attached to the dome only. probably running a series of Infrared diodes, each one emitting a slighly different inforamtion to determine it's position, running off a rechargeable 9v Lipo-poly battery @ 4000mah to give very long life to led's / elecronics before rechage is needed.

bottom Electrical system would have some sort of reciever or set of recievers to pick up the infrared led. The infrared reciever could be connected via either RS232 or usb as they require very little power requirements. this information could then be processed and relayed back to high torque Dc stepper motors via a gcusb interace, which is already a Ascom compliant device.

The processing of the information would be fairly crude, count the number of motor steps to complete a 360 turn, then divide by 360 to give you the calculation for a single degree of movement. then read the current position that the mount if facing and sync through Ascom, then for every degree the mount rotates, the dome also rotates.

The infrared transmitter / reciever will work on the same principal as a tv remote. you press button 1, a signal is sent and the tv knows to change to channel 1, you press button 2 and a slghtly different signal is sent to to tell tv to switch to channel 2.

My idea, is that you have an equivelant for n,ne,e,se,s,sw,w,nw etc (1,2,3,4 etc etc) except that the led are continually transmitting this information, so when the sensor passes one of these it knows where it is.

The dome shutter would have to be completely redesigned to be automated.

[Psychobilly]

Nice one Rich

I built my DIY obs earlier this year and even thought I dont leave the scope out all the time it makes life so much easier. I'm still not happy with my viewing port and had an accident with the zenith hole last week which damaged my "66"

Automating the rotation is the next project although i was thinking of a much simpler approach as i still enjoy being out there with it I dont want full roboscope/dome control - I only need to move the dome every hour or so so i was thinking of a timed system that would move the dome through a fixed angle at regular intervals. At the moment i use a timer to give me regular alarms incase I nod off

Billy...

[ribuck]

Hi Billy,

The dome rotation shouldn't be too complicated as it will based based on the same way a tv remote sends a single to the tv for example when you press button you get bbc1 and a different signal is sent for bbc2 when you press button 2 etc which would equate to north, North east etc,

I probably wont have time to implement that until the spring, but inbetween i can think about the design.

[Psychobilly]

I was just going to have the dome move between sensors every 30 mins or so as I get 60 mins clear view through the apeture...rather than continous rotation thats what i was trying to say ..

Isn't it much more fun doing things yourself rather than use off the shelf solutions... keeps the grey matetr active under grey skies

I did a 12 sided design on CAD an then I got all the roof spars and dome ring for mine laser cut out of 19mm exterior grade ply (material cost only) which I covered in UPVC shiplap. Also designed the pier and wedge and had them laser cut from 10mm steel plate and "professionally" welded FOC

Nice to have good contacts in the trade ...

Billy..

[ribuck]

Unfortunately i wasn't so lucky, i had to do everything by hand. I tried to get a steel runner ring made up, but the guy just kept messing me about so in the end i just cancelled the order, so just ended up making my own runner ring.

If i want to automate the dome movement, i will need to rectify this with a proper steel riing /roller system to get soother turning with much less friction.

But the manual turning will do for now.

[Psychobilly]

What are you using for bearings?

I used ball transfer units to take the vertical load and have 3 guide wheels runing on the edge of the ring to locate it horizontaly...

The BTU's were from RS Components tomorrow - p/n is 687-590 very easy to fit and no alignment issues...

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No its not a UFO

Billy...

[ribuck]

Billy i wouldn't mind seeing more info on what you did for your dome rotation system

[Psychobilly]

Baically I had intelocking 45 degree sections of 19mm ply cut to form a ring two "layesrs" of these were laminated together offset by 22.5 degrees to form a 38mm thick base ring the ball tansfer units were set into this (i used 12 set at 30 degree intervals) A single ring with the joints for the roof structure runs on top of this with three guide wheel mounted on it that pickup on the inside verical edge of the base ring..

At the moment the BTUS are running on the plywood ring as this gives enough friction to hold the dome in place when i add a drive system I have a standby plan of adding a zintec steel ring to the bottom surface of the dome ring to give a more rigid running surface and reduce the contact area between the BTU and ring...

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Billy...

[ribuck]

I'm just thinking that those bearing would be great idea, but i would need to run them in some sort of track. That would be the hard part, figuring out how to make the track

[Psychobilly]

I was lucky becaue the ring segments were laser cut the inner circle was pretty precise so I could use the black edge as the running surface for the "location" rollers...