Ok.. anything i say here may be corrected by Rajah.. cause i know it will be. I know very little about these sorts of things as I'm still learning myself
to approach this in a complete DIY approach I'd start off with setting up DSC's first. As the encoders would be a major part of the motorising project. I doubt u'd be able to do it with steppers alone, as i'd assume there'd be some leeway in the steppers so you'd have to put encoders and a system in place to feed the current position of the scope to your software.
U'd also definately need to gear it. Getting fine movement out of a stepper of size to move the dob around would mean that even a half step would be too much.
I too have thought about it.. and basically you'd have to be or know someone with the skills and machinery to machine a few parts.
I started with the theory of X & Y, which is very simple. To get to Point A step X motor 5 steps and Y motor 2 steps sort of thing. But there's a few more variables in it that can mean you'd be way off by that method, which is why u'd need encoders. All in all a tough project, and you'd have to have ALOT of cloudy nights to work on it(which means it's a great project for kiwi's
). But it is possible, and it'd be very rewarding once accomplished.
my motorised focuser's keeping me going for now. Pretty much one major hurdle thats holding me back on the software stage (does anyone know how to input values from a text file in VB6? i can output.. but can't input to a variable) then i can start working on the mount.
el
