It was a long time since last I wrote something about my HEQ5 project. One important part in my travel equipment.
It replace my EQ6 that weight 70 kg with TS130 APO and car acid batteries. Newer did any tavel with that equipment. With the new HEQ5 I have as a goal to be close to 20 kg and at battery operation for ten hours.
The Raspberry is also important, it save a lot of energy and I can have a much smaller battery and it's a Lithium battery, 3kg.
I have now got the GPS device work, it's important when traveling to different places. The Raspberry doesn't have any battery backup for the clock either.
I can't have the heavy TS130 APO refractor on this mount. Instead I replaced it with a Pentax 645 300 mm ED medium format lens, a nebula hunter.
The HEQ5 mount is Rowan modded and from my balcony I can after some tweaking of the paramneters have a total rms guide error at 0.8", it should be even better from outside the city where I live.
Now when I got it working I concentrate me on to get it even more compact and lighter. The last pages is about how I shorten the legs on the tripod and 3D-Print a special head that hold the lenses.
That was the short story, more details here:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/...5/01-heq5.html
The Raspberry with Astroberry works nowadays much better compare to my Windows server. Here is an overview:
http://www.astrofriend.eu/astronomy/...sequencer.html
I just say, have a look at it if you don't already use a Raspberry to control your equipment. It's amazing what you can do with this little matchbox size computer system. And it can be powered from a USB Backup battery.
/Lars