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#373987 - 10/01/2023 04:28 Any Astronomers in the house? Celestron?
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
During Covid19 (ongoing..) I acquired a computerized "go-to" telescope made by Celestron. Well, I actually acquired three different ones in succession, returning each of the first two until reaching the desired level of quality and functionality with the third one. smile

So I've spent a bit of time star-gazing and planet-gazing over the past three years now. But, a lot more time has been spent on the "computerized go-to" aspect of the the telescope mount. I bought into the Celestron brand because they feature one or more "AUX" expansion ports on their mounts, for which some documentation was available.

Celestron sells a number of clever and very expensive electronic accessories that plug into those (RJ12) AUX ports. And I have spent some time reverse-engineering many of those and creating lower cost open-source alternatives. As well as accessories that Celestron has NOT made. As one might expect. smile

Eg. WiFi adapters, for control from astro-apps on smartphones and tablets. GPS adapters to do away with tedious and error-prone data entry before each use (time and location are vital for a go-to mount). Bluetooth, because it is more fault-tolerant than WiFi for this application. Ethernet, because wired is better than wireless for many uses. Joystick and Nunchuck interfaces for slewing the mount and adjusting electronic focus motors. And so on.

Anyway, just wondering if anyone else here has Celestron gear, and might benefit from some of these gizmos under "friends and family" costing. smile



Attachments
HomeBrew_Gen3a.jpg

Description: HomeBrew Gen3a WiFi+Bluetooth+GPS+USB+Nunchuck..



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#373988 - 10/01/2023 04:36 Re: Any Astronomers in the house? Celestron? [Re: mlord]
mlord
carpal tunnel

Registered: 29/08/2000
Posts: 14472
Loc: Canada
For the latest designs of these gizmos, I have had custom printed circuit boards (PCBs) manufactured with surface mount components pre-soldered by the factory. This turns out to be surprisingly affordable: just a few dollars per board (including shipping) and a 5-day turnaround from China.

The project uses an ESP32 DevKit-v1 processor board, with gobs of flash and RAM, plus WiFi, Bluetooth, and USB all built-in. The custom PCB mates with that and provides the interfacing electronics to connect with a Celestron AUX port, as well as to accessories like the GPS receiver and Nunchuck controller.


Attachments
pcb.jpg

Description: Parts



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#373993 - 10/01/2023 17:58 Re: Any Astronomers in the house? Celestron? [Re: mlord]
tfabris
carpal tunnel

Registered: 20/12/1999
Posts: 31563
Loc: Seattle, WA
This is spectacular. Recommend submitting to Hackaday.com . Do you have a web site or a video detailing your exploits?
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Tony Fabris

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