IR Remote Control Focuser

[pete98]

A little relicutant to even post this topic, cause bringing up such an old posted subject got me banned on another forum.  And as always, if this has been discussed in another post and I missed it, my apologies.

Not that long ago I stumbled over this YouTube DIY IR Focuser by Joe B.  I have always wanted something that let me do my rough focus manally, but have some sort of slip connection in there that let me do my super fine focus motorized.  Being able to do it with an ir remote was a bonus.

Video shows what he did, but does not do a good job of showing how he did it.  Not knowing much about IR sensors, and servos, I went out and got the Robot and servo, and as you can imagine, was not able to duplicate what Joe did.

All my google searches on controlling an servo with an IR sensor took me to "Arduino".  A little control board that needs to be programmed.  No where in the video does he mention Arduino, and looking as hard as I could to determine what is involved in his set-up, am not so sure he used an Arduino control board in there.

I have ordered an inexpensive servo tester to see just how bad I messed up the servo I have, a couple of robots that I think are more like the ones Joe used, and another servo.

And now that I know a little more about servos and IR sensors, does anyone know if the pulses an IR sensor give off when triggered are sufficient to send a signal to an RC Servo motor on that orange wire. 

Am also thinking that what Joe did was de-solder the servo motor from the servo control board, remove the servo control board,  and then place the robots control board into the servo housing, and have the robots contol board control the servo motor.

If anyone has any knowledge or experience with this project, would appreciate their feedback.

 

 

 

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I can't remember if there's an IR option, but have a look at this https://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinoascomfocuserpro2diy/?source=directory or even our own

 

[pete98]

Thanks for the reply Julian.

Guess I should have mentioned I have a 20+ year old Black tube C8.  I don't even have slew on the dec axis (other than a thumb knob).

I've seen some of the other ideas for focusers (including the one you pointed out), but what I am looking for is something that will give me a fraction of a degree turn over a couple of seconds....ie real fine focusing.