Re-wire of the scope and addition of a NUC ( small PC )

[irtuk]

So its raining and miserable and looks to be staying that way. I had moved my scope inside off the pier to try re-wiring it the the garage where its dry, stable and I can clamp the thing in a vice.

I lost a power cable and damaged my focuser unit last week with a cable snag so I was keen to try and prevent this in the future. Also the 30M powered USB cable gave up the ghost, flat out refused to connect to, or even see my equipment. I have been thinking about getting a remote mini-pc for a while and this seemed to be a good opportunity.

This is what I have come up with. Using the right hand side mount for a guidescope shoe I have attached the Pegasus Powerbox 2 and the mini-pc back to back mounted in an aluminium chassis, then I have routed all the wires that do not move relative to the scope and cable tied them together.

Only four wires should move relative to the scope, that's the NUC power, the powerbox power, the mount power ( which thinking about it I could actually opt *not* to run off the powerbox which would mean one less wire that moves ) and finally a network cable that runs to the PC.

Its actually fairly well balanced because the new powerbox / PC unit counterbalances the guidescope / camera / focuser. The bunch of wires hanging down connect into power or mount, the rest of them should be static no matter where the scope points.

 

 

 

 

Ed.