I have followed on another forum with great interest the adventures of newbies and oldbies helping each other with collimating scopes and volunteering my (hopefully helpful) suggestions now and again. Of particular inspiration, I noticed one person (call him Vic) often assists individuals who, by taking a photo through a collimation cap (e.g., the Rigel Systems Aline) of the scope mirrors they’re collimating and post it on on the forum, Vic would download the photo, add colored rings showing how the focus draw tube, secondary, and primary should line up and suggest what tweaks were needed to achieve collimation.
This has always struck me as a great idea except for this process relied on static snapshots and iterated on the forum. As helpful as this is to illustrate how to improve collimation, collimation is a dynamic activity not a static one. There are a couple of devices offering “live video” collimation, some which will superimpose collimation guide rings onto the live image , but are all are a bit pricey and have their pros and cons. So I set off to inves:gate how to make a dynamic, affordable alternative for live video collimation just using an iPhone or Android phone. And what follow demonstrates it is an eminently affordable and effective doable do to achieve these 3 foundation requirements.
• Live video of the op:cal components to be collimated
• Displaying the live video on a larger screen
• Ability to superimpose collimation guide rings on the live image
For more, here's a link to where I've posted the full PDF on the topic :-)
https://www.rigelsys.com/video%20collimation.html
