well.. been doing a little work on the focuser tonight. I've pretty much got the app done, well.. minus a fair bit of testing.. but i'm sure that will be done when it's out in the field.
The base of the project is
this stepping motor kit from jaycar. The description on the Jaycar site says that this doesn't work with 2k & XP, and that's true with the software that is included with it. But my stepper app DOES work and has been tested with 2k and XP, but hasn't been tested with 98/Me
Basically if you went out and got this kit.. did the assembly you'd see that this app drives the little motor just fine. The app has the ability to store presets, i'm not too sure how well this will work.. but I guess I won't know til it gets up and running. Say for vieweing jupiter in my 15mm the focus point is say 52 revolutions of the stepper. It allows me to store 52 and just hit a button to call that focus point up again.
I've also made a hand controller for when you want to use the motor independant of the PC.. but that's still in bits cause i got the wrong connectors last time I did a jaycar trip
I've begun work on the drive.. which I've pictured. Mine will be a gear driven system at first. But i'm sure as time progresses the drive itself will probably be changed and refined. Mounting the gear to the crayford was probably the bit that was worrying me the most.. as I didn't want to 'hard mod' it.. so that it could be restored back to original if need be. But it was as simple as unscrewing the nob.. boring out the gear and screwing it onto the base thing of the knob. No nasty glues or epoxies!
I'll post the first(and probably buggy as all hell
) version of the app.. and some pics on how i got the gear onto the crayford.
as always.. any input/critisicm is welcome and appreciated.
el