Amateur astronomers want to know where their telescope is pointing at. For this reason, many commercial telescopes (like the Orion IntelliScope) come equipped with "push to" features, often based on high precision optical rotary encoders attached to the telescope mount, and a hand control device with a database of coordinates of thousands of stars and other sky objects.
There are also commercial Digital Setting Circles, which are kits sold for telescope owners to adapt to their existing telescope, in order to give it "push to" features, costing a few hundred dollars.
The mobile app SkySafari comes with a celestial database that is often more up-to-date, and it's user interface (a visual representation of the night sky) can be considered superior to what text lines on a push-to hand controller allow.
This project is an open source implementation of Digital Setting Circles for dobsonian telescopes. By using two inexpensive optical encoders and an ESP32 microcontroller it enables amateur astronomers to connect their dobsonian telescope to the SkySafari app.
Particular emphasis has been placed on making sure anybody can build the circuit regardless of their experience (or lack thereof) with electronics or arduino, including a step-by-step guide for a very simple implementation that requires no soldering.
This DSC achieves the following:
- Absolute minimum number of components, making it simple and inexpensive. (The bill of materials is under $40)
- Easy to build, no soldering required.
- Wireless communication with the SkySafari app, No need for a wired handheld control.
- Ability to connect to an external WiFi (to maintain access to the internet while using the DSC)
- Web configuration page for easily configuring everything: WiFi settings/password, encoder resolutions, flipping encoder pins, notification API/keys, device name.
- Bluetooth support.
This is what it looks like installed on a small tabletop dobsonian:
- This Arduino IDE guide will provide beginner-friendly step by step instructions on how to install and configure the Arduino IDE on your computer, including the board managers and libraries required by the DSC, so that you can upload this software to an ESP-32 microcontroller.
- This Upload and Configuration guide provides step by step instructions on how to upload the DSC software to the ESP32 microcontroller, how to configure the DSC using it's web configuration interface, and how to connect the SkySafari app to it.
- The Circuit Building Guide contains the circuit schematics, the parts list and a step-by-step instructions on how to assemble a beginner-friendly solderless implementation of the circuit.
- You can ask questions or provide feedback in the CloudyNights forums.
- Useful information on how to attach altitude encoders to dobsonians can be found here
