Telescope controller

Velvet Leopard

Hewwo, all.· I am not sure if this forum is the right place to ask about this, but here it goes.· I have a HUGE Meade Telestar telescope and it came with a Meade Autostar controller that allows you to point the telescope manually at different speeds, set the telescope's longitude, latitude, and azimuth, and even choose from a whole Smile load of preprogrammed points in space to point the thing.· It connects to the scope via an 8-pin phone jack-like connector.· It gets power from the telescope's main board and it has an LCD display.· I was wondering if this could be used as a viable robot controller and where the heck I would find info on it sinse Meade never replied to my question about how it works.· I figure no one here would know about such a controller, but I have to try.

bobhillier

I would expect you could ask at the Meade Autostar group. http://groups.yahoo.com/group/Meade_Autostar/
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The Autostar is a lot like my SkySensor 2000 GoTo computer. I believe the output to the telescope is a series of pulses directed to RA and DEC stepper motors. The fact the Autostar "knows" where all the sky objects are is because the user first points the telescope to a known object and then synchronises the Autostar to point at this object. If the telescope has good polar alignment and it's level then the Autostar can position the scope to within a few 10s of arcseconds of other sky objects. Each time you position on a known star and synchronise the Autostar it updates it's alignment data, corrects for lack of telescope levelness and corrects for poor·polar alignment. Having done all this, it still only moves the RA and DEC stepper motors with pulses based on where it believes the scope is pointed.
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If you connect the Autostar to your robot it will probably move in some erratic motion until the Autostar has the "telescope" motors pointing in the correct direction. Then.. the RA motor will slowly pulse as the world turns and your robot will never stop moving....
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······ Bob, Ottawa
W75 54 17·· N45 18 30
·········· G16 #27

Velvet Leopard

Hewwo and thank you greatly for your information.· I understand about the roaming feature of the scope.· I have seen that as I stared at Venus and Jupiter.· Abou the pointing, my scope , when level and with magnetic north, DOES point at objects without syncronizing first.· It has a list of preset points and a mune for them on the controller.· I will check out that link.· I hope there is a way I can still use the thing to control.· Thanks again.