Triple NB imaging rig with remote camera rotation using a turret system.

[Gina]

Here's a photo of my triple widefield, narrow band imaging rig with 200mm focal length lenses.  Mainly 3D printed to my own design.  Further details to follow.

Mounted on my EQ8 in the observatory.  Three cameras 2x ASI 1600MM-Cool and 1x ASI 294MM-Pro.  Mounted in the adapters directly on the cameras are Ha, OIII and SII Astrodon 3nm NB filters.  In the middle is an ASI 178MM with 55mm lens for guiding.  The main imaging lenses have remote focussing controlled by the Astroberry Focuser INDI driver in Raspberry Pi SingleBoardComputers.  The guider uses fixed focus as the focussing on a guider is not critical.

The ASI 294MM-Pro camera is run from an RPi 4B with Astroberry Server and controls the mount for slewing, plate solving and guiding as well as imaging in Ha. The other cameras run from RPi 3B boards.  The 3 RPi boards are contained in the yellow 3D printed box with blue top.  3 Ethernet patch cables connect the SBCs to a Network switch and a CAT6 Ethernet cable to the house.  The RPi boards are air cooled with a fan run at low speed to avoid vibration.

The turret rotation angle is controlled separately from an ESP32 SBC and MQTT network over WiFi (same network as I use for my weather station).  Controlling the turret rotation this way was much easier than producing a new INDI driver and matching control in Ekos.  MQTT network and Code-RED Dashboard make for an easily programmed control and data gathering system.

Edited October 26, 2021 by Gina

[tomato]

Very impressive.👍

[teoria_del_big_bang]

Yes, looks great Gina.
I saw the designs you posted sometime ago and wondered how this was going but what a great result 🙂 

Steve

[dmki]

That looks great, I like the focusing mechanism, its an interesting alternative to using a timing belt with matching ring

[Sunshine]

This is the Ion canon from Star Wars! amazing rig.

[vineyard]

That looks amazing👏🏾.  Do you store the image files on each Pi (& so run independent [EKOS] instances on each Pi) or have you figured out a way to capture multiple cameras with the same EKOS instance?

[Gina]

11 hours ago, vineyard said:

That looks amazing👏🏾.  Do you store the image files on each Pi (& so run independent [EKOS] instances on each Pi) or have you figured out a way to capture multiple cameras with the same EKOS instance?

Thanks very much.  I download the images to my tower machine indoors.  I run 3 Terminal windows to SSH into each RPi then 3 instances of KStars/Ekos on the tower to control each imaging system separately.  With the 3 imagers being on the same mount, one RPi controls the mount and all images are aligned (as closely as I could manage when I assembled the turret.  The 3D printed turret ends assured main alignment but rotation needed setting up by hand).

[Gina]

Should add...  I also have a laptop running Linux Mint 20.2 MATE that does the same as the tower machine (currently running LM 18.3 Cinnamon but due for upgrading as 18.3 is EOL.).

Edited October 27, 2021 by Gina

[dweller25]

Awesome - as usual 🙂

[Swoop1]

On 26/10/2021 at 23:00, Sunshine said:

This is the Ion canon from Star Wars! amazing rig.

I was expecting to see Luke Skywalker sitting behind it ready to blast pursuing TIE Fighters to smithereens because Gina's observatory is really the Millennium Falcon....

Nice work there Gina. Your skills are to be commended!