Hi David,
I definitely am.
Last night when I was sitting on the couch doing astronomy (wirless connection to the observatory) waching it take exposures I was thinking "ok, next step - keep this going while I'm asleep".
I became quite keen about the remote & automated observing a year or more ago, started writing my own programs to do it. Ended up with a program that will scan a grid of the sky for me, moving the telescope to each grid cell, taking x expsorues etc. I hit one problem, making it automatically lock on to a guide star so my exposures could be longer than 30sec at 1x1. I wrote a few more programs, one for setting the scope to polar or land mode, another for setting slew speed, and I can't remember the other functions. THe idea was I could make it scan a grid of the sky for 3 hours, then re-scan the same grid, then slew to park position and set the scope to land mode such that it stopped tracking the sky. I never got it all working in sequence together but I have the pieces. I lost interest about there, going back to normal imaging. I'm becoming more keen about it now after having re-located my observatroy in the mean time and now finally having it all working nicely again.
I wrote a webpage discussing the ideas (for the purpose of those who don't know much about it - I know you David do, remember emailing you about something related to minor planets or comets in the past):
http://www.rogergroom.com/rogergroom...em.jsp?Item=29
It doesn't say much new, just discusses it a bit, as I found it hard to find information on the topic on the net, especially in Australia and how to get started.
Roger.