Cheap & lightweight travel mount

[lux eterna]

Hi all,

About a year ago, I got the idea of making a portable mount without need for any counterweights.

The main design is (almost) an English Mount with two tripods supporting a rotating bar pointing towards NCP. This is very stable, but one of the 6 legs must just barely touch the ground - otherwise it is not. A slider on a M6 threaded bar is pulling a braided fishing line that is connected to a "windshield wiper" type arm, which is anti-backlashed with a adjustable torsion spring.
The lower tripod can easily be replaced with some kind of base kit that fits on a sturdy table or even a balcony fence.

Some components :
omron encoder E6B2-CWZ6C 2000P/R 0.5M
stepper
mcu
RoboRemo app

I can control the whole thing with the small IR remote and / or via Bluetooth LE and the RoboRemo app. The Arduino sketch does PID speed regulation and dslr intervalometer & dew heater controller are also included. Polar alignment is pretty easy with the laser pointer.
After careful speed tuning I have approx 75 % success rate (no wind present) with my dslr and TS ImagingsStar71 APO (350mm / F5). I also tried it out with an extra dslr (135mm lens) so approx 5 kg total payload without any noticeable negative impact.

This is 350 mm FL @60 seconds with APS-C Nikon D7000.

And this is 87 x 60 seconds stacked and processed:

And what about the snail label in the pictures ? This project started with the idea of having a snail powered mount, as they seem to go slow enough and need no batteries 😉 ! But I settled with an artificial snail - it can run a whole night on 4 x 18650 batteries without draining them.

Ragnar