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Old 20-09-2009, 07:51 AM
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mtodman (Matt)
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Join Date: Oct 2007
Location: Arcadia, NSW, Australia
Posts: 191
Cheap & Easy Parallel Port Focus Motor Controller

A while back I decided to have a go at building a cheap stepper motor controller & writing an ASCOM driver to allow it to control a focus motor. As it came to pass, I ended up getting a robofocus unit which is working well but I still managed to follow through with my DIY parallel port focuser as well. Whilst I never hooked it up to my focuser, I did get it all going "on the bench".
Perhaps someone it trying something similar, in which case this may help give them a head start. It comes with no guarantee that it's 100%. I'm sure that there are a few bugs in there but the basics seems to work.

Anyway, after much looking around for appropriate motors & controllers, I figured the easiest way to start was to go with a off-the-shelf product. I decided on the KV3594 stepper motor / controller kit from Jaycar
http://www.jaycar.com.au/productView...r&form=KEYWORD

I then set about writing an ASCOM driver to controll this specific kit. I ended up writing an ASCOM V5 driver (in VB.net). It can be downloaded from the following link
http://astroromp.com/astronomy/stepp...or_control.htm
Please note that this link contains both the source & executable files (ie, the ASCOM installer).

Good luck

Matt
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