Motor control on homemade mount software.

[alyson123]

:shrug: I have been experimenting with stepper motor control using the PC parallel port, with the idea of making a diy goto mount.

Does anyone know a way to use windows based software like starry night or ascom to send the correct signals to the PC parallel port, to run the two stepper motors on a homemade dual axis mount. Posibly a drivers patch or suported mount emulator. :help:

[Omaroo]

Alyson - try here:

http://astro.umsystem.edu/atm/ARCHIVES/FEB95/0174.html

and here:

http://cdcc.sc.usp.br/cda/telescopios/hp-mbartels/altaz/parallel.html


There are plenty of pages on the subject if you google "parallel port equatorial mount"

[alyson123]

The motors being used are two unipolar four phase steppers, using the ports D0 to D7 outputs into two ULN2003 darlington arrays. hope this helps.

[MrB]

You might be able to use Mel Bertels' (http://www.bbastrodesigns.com/BBAstroDesigns.html#Computer_Operat ed_Telescopes) software.

[alyson123]

:shrug:I have window xp and I cannot get Mels Bartels to work in dos. It keeps freezing up with windows. Do you know how I can run it in dos only please?

[Ian Robinson]

Try one of those amateur robotics places , you might have to bone up on Java , C++ or Basic depending on what kit you buy though.

[alyson123]

Thank you for our advise I will look into it but I want to use it with windows xp as thats whats on my pc. I will have alook though and see what I can do.

Thank you

[programmer]

Try DOSBox, or a variant that has parallel port functionality, to run really old DOS software.

[alyson123]

Does this work on windows xp, alot of the programs I have looked at do not work with windows xp.?:shrug:

[programmer]

Yep should do. The whole purpose is to run old software on modern OS's.

What are the programs you have looked at that didn't work?

[alyson123]

Am using Ascom and Starry Night and was trying to use Mel bartels Dos Program but it kept freezing up, Laptops and pc. Tried different downloads and same thing, checked PC and Laptop specs and my equipment is above what is required to run this.

[Ian Robinson]

How handy are you with electronics and a soldering iron : you might find the following a good starting point.

http://www.doc.ic.ac.uk/~ih/doc/stepper/control2/connect.html

and
http://www.atmsite.org/contrib/Rowe/dastep/controller.pdf might be right on the money for you.

[MrB]

Maybe get an old PC/laptop for a few dollars and dedicate it to DOS programs. I do that with an old 486 laptop for CNC software. I bought an old Pentium laptop for $50 a few years ago, batteries still work too, similar thing would be as cheap as chips now($20?) and plenty of grunt for DOS use.

I read some time ago that the reason most CNC software(and probably Mel's software?) run on DOS is that Winblows does not allow direct access to the ports, therefore, no good for time critical applications.
I've never found any CNC software that runs under windows and drives steppers directly off the Parallel port. All the windows CNC software I've seen sends commands via Serial or USB to an external microprocessor(usually a PIC or AVR) that then generates the stepper pulses. So Astro related software is probably in the same boat me-thinks.