Projects update:

[davidpretorius]

Forgive me father, for it is a long time since my last confession!!!

Ok, My dob is now motorized with a dob driver II i picked up 2nd hand from gary beal in NZ.

Below are some piccies. It is very good for tracking for imaging at 1000x, but if i want to get better goto and rock solid tracking for long exposure, my alt bearing must have a larger radius of curvature.

So without further ado, here are the piccies

[davidpretorius]

A rather large CMOS camera.

Just putting it through its paces to see what it can do!

[Striker]

Great work David....looks like a great weapon

PS...rotate your images next time....you must of got that of Houghy....lol...houghy is going to kill me at Lostock for saying that....hehehe

[davidpretorius]

Peltier cooler, aperture / hartmann mask & just to prove to Janoskiss i have grass, this is my eastern horizon view!

[davidpretorius]

arrr yes, i shall rotate them!

[davidpretorius]

Here is the imaging / cheshire equipment including the very expensive focussing tool.........the chop stick!

[acropolite]

Geez Dave, it's looking more like a Dalek every day. Where did you get the Peltier modules??

[Miaplacidus]

Sorry, Dave, but what the hell do you do with the chop stick? (I'm gonna love this, I know.)

Brian.

[davidpretorius]

jaycar in launceston next to mortys

brian, as my usb stepper motor board (that drives the focusser) is fried at the moment, i iattach the chopstick to the focusser to get the fine adjustment at high magnification....technical huh

[Miaplacidus]

:rofl:

[davidpretorius]

pictured is a $310 powermate, the hand controller of a $600 dob driver, a cmos and a ccd camera say $500, a $29 cheshire and a chopstick that was free from dave's noodle box!!!!

[acropolite]

And may I ask, Mr Pretorious, how the said interface came to be fried??

[davidpretorius]

ummmm if you put the power connectors on back the front, the diode went up in smoke. i will send it back to the supplier for repair. i can't be stuffed trying to fix it.

[acropolite]

Tip, put diode with say 4A rating accross all power inputs on your gadgets, reverse biassed and have a fuse in line, that way if your polarity is reversed only the fuse blows. If you want better protection for electronics etc then a zener of say 14.5V (in a 12 V installation) will protect against over voltage as well as reverse polarity.

[asimov]

Davo....How does the mask with the 4 triangles work for focussing? What I mean is, does it do a better job than eyeballing say an image of saturn on the laptop screen without the mask?

[davidpretorius]

well last night I tried a few ways. I went to the nearest star and focussed the diffraction spikes and that seemed more precise than the triangles.

back to saturn and then as the seeing as not very good, i then check the area between the rings and planet to see how sharp it was.

with jupiter, i focussed on some craters on the moon and then back to jupiter, which was everywhere. i will post the rather mediocre saturn and and jupiter - soon

[ving]

holy cow dave!!!that wish list must be shrinking hey! :)

looks more robot that scope!

[davidpretorius]

you are not going to believe this, the new temp gauge does voltage / ice etc. It is a car version, but i have adapted to keep tab of the power hungry peltiers.

It has a back light that is that neon blue, so at night, it most definately is a robot!!!