Promotion Price $438.00 . Upgrading the firmware takes 20 seconds and all user settings in the menu are protected. Telescope Setup with an EQ Mount If you are using an equatorial mount, the mount’s RA and Dec axes should be at the index marks or homed, depending on your mount, and roughly polar aligned prior to using the CPWI software. Version 0 - The first we have seen at our friend and the reason why this project born…, Version 2 - Current (RPI4 + Arduino Nano), Version 2 - Morots, 3D printed case for connectors and box with mount controller, Version 3 - NextGen devkit with RPI4 and all required hardware. Thanks ZWO. … Not just from electrical and software perspective, but also from mechanical one. This mount comes with all the features you would expect of a professional telescope mount! Here is the announcement of latest version 5.0.1: EQ6-R – Fully Computerized GoTo German Equatorial Telescope Mount – Belt-driven, Motorized, Computerized Hand Controller with 42,900+ Celestial Object Database 4.5 out of 5 stars 90 Amazon's Choice for telescope mount The GT1 is a stepper motor controller with goto functionality. OnStep Telescope is an open, very capable and feature rich telescope controller by Howard Dutton.. 1.2 Slewing with the Direction Keys The four large direction keys (Figure 1a) allow the mount to be slewed electronically as follows: • The Left and Right keys control the movements of the Right Ascension (R.A.) axis (for an equatorial mount or mode) or the azimuth axis (for an Alt-azimuth mount or mode). Finally, it converts the stream to rt h264 payload and UDP streams it to Janus streaming plugin. Before getting into the various methods for connecting a SynScan mount to a computer for control, it is best to have a basic understanding of which parts do what in a SynScan mount. It was also funny as friend of mine bought nice small stepper motor on which manufacturer claimed to have 160ncm holding torque. Additionally I tried bigger bitrate, but the video shutters time to time on the client although both devices are connected over LAN, I need to investigate this further as I don’t know what component in the chain causes this. Once I will finish this I will focus on web server and web code (camera control, storage management, playback of stored files and so on). The current version consist of 2 3D printed motor holders which exactly fits the mount positions and allows better control of belt tense. Later, after few night astronomy sessions we’ve agreed that because it is necessary to take a lot of stuff with us to the observing site it would be great if number of items we have to carry can decrease. But now, as a compensation, please make camera API open source. It have had Arduino built-in and promised fast USB 3.0. We thought it will be much easier task to build a goto mount. I wanted to write it on my own until ZWO will fix it. These can be either Equatorial or Alt-Azimuth mounts. SkyPortal App. First, let’s think about the electronics inside the mount body. Pulsar2’s unique feature, the 8 bit microstep allows you to use very low total gear ratios (down to 180) which result in very smooth periodic error. I use python for my software and a python binning to use the sdk library. You made us buy Xavier NX. Your eyepieces are the first accessories you should learn to use with your telescope. But the problem was the same. We used some universal iron holders for NEMA17 which was surprisingly easily possible to fix to the mount using few screws. My main purpose was to apply real time filtering with quite low frame rate, considering it is hard to get very fast treatments (i mean treatment faster than 10ms) so frame rate was not the key point for me. Most telescope hand controllers are connected to their respective telescope mounts using TTL serial data signals while the more ubiquitous serial data connections, i.e., those connecting to a computer serial port, are in the RS232 serial data format, often as part of the telescope mount hand held controller hardware. Otherwise bugs in libusb and buffer handling will not never get fixed. Shipping and tax is not included. I can get the data from it and pass it to CUDA. Complete unit (driver and hand controller w 2m cable): Driver only (for PC use, virtual hand controller). This is a flexible telescope mount controller. Connect the USB cable to a powered USB hub, to both distribute the USB connection and provide power to the devices outside at the telescope. We wanted to have just single small computer allowing us to control the mount but also to capture photos and video and storing the data. Celestron’s FREE planetarium app is an astronomy suite that redefines how you experience the night sky. I tested all devices I own and all of them were working correctly, with no problems. The natural evolution of Pulsar1 is the Pulsar2 GoTo Controller. We’ve found them much later when we were looking why something works in another way we expected or why something does not work at all. It is accurate, silent, simply - it is a great driver. It also allow us to set acceleration and deceleration ramps. This item EQ6-R – Fully Computerized GoTo German Equatorial Telescope Mount – Belt-driven, Motorized, Computerized Hand Controller with 42,900+ Celestial Object Database Celestron - PowerSeeker 127EQ Telescope - Manual German Equatorial Telescope for Beginners - Compact and Portable - Bonus Astronomy Software Package - 127mm Aperture Further optimization would be avoiding using of the GStreamer completely and encode video / and create rt payload directly in the video capture app. Alt-Az Adjustments. Drivers, ASCOM support, latest firmware and sky databases are available for our GoTo Controllers. Use this app to control the AZ GTi mount or other Sky-Watcher or Orion telescope mounts fitted with a SynScan Wi-Fi adapter. Maybe you can check the existing samples and do integration. This firmware allows the SynScan V4/V5 hand controller to work as a transceiver between a computer's serial port and a Skywatcher GOTO telescope mount's hand control port. Pricy, but very nice and powerful. In the end, as we also wanted to have remote control and we were suspicious that LattePanda will not be enough we decided to go for Jetson Nano. That’s for sure I have seen your project and I was really impressed from it. It could not handle the video capture properly. We ended with 1:5 planetary transmission allowing us to have 36864000 (micro) steps per revolution with internal 1:144 mount transmission ration. The SynScan hand controller is now available as an app on your smart device. I stopped any relation with Chinese firm. We also wanted to try some real-time image processing. I was looking over NVidia forums if this can be a hardware problem and I’ve found that Nano is really capable of 5Git USB 3.0 transfers and Xavier is capable of 10GBit USB 3.1 transfer. I would like to be able to stream 1080p@60@40Mbit on local LAN although in the end it will not be needed. Inside is the motor control electronics card. Telescopes with price and special deal. I did something similar but more simple i guess. We are serving astronomers with high precision mechanics and electronics since 1996 around the world. We’ve found, that if motor drivers are piece of crap, no accurate navigation and tracking can be made. I will follow it if you post some informations here. You can adjust the width to fit the dovetail that comes with your telescope. After some research I have to say the original ZWO API library is piece of crap in meaning of USB data transfer handling. This version of the SynScan app is suited for novice users using alt-azimuth mounts. The GStreamer pipeline was simplified so no conversions are done by GStreamer at all. We are your source for astronomy telescopes, eyepieces, astroimaging cameras, and more! You can change the gear ratio settings, microstep resolution, motor winding … I was not able to get reasonable and stable frame rate at highest possible resolution the ASI290MC can give us. Bot of them were losing micro steps time to time. I tried to write to the ZWO on their forum and they told me they will fix the library and also they will not make it open :) So hopefully they will do it. The Orion AstroTrack Drive works with Orion EQ … You are in multinational forum, please don’t generalise and have a minimum of education. Out of the mount control we want to be able to capture video and images and possibly process them. We’ve found we need at least 0.5 arcsec (micro) step resolution to eliminate driver and stepper inaccuracies. So I ordered Xavier NX devkit as there is USB 3.1 and I was hoping it will be better. Captured data will be stored on the disk. The final list of features should be: EQ / AZ mount control; Stepper motor Mount Control (RA/HA or … To control a computerized telescope mount with your PC requires some additional software and drivers such as ASCOM. Ursa Minor Pro Planetarium and Telescope Control Software included Ursa Minor's MC3 is an universal stepper motor controller for medium to large telescope mounts. Document of jetson_multimedia_api: Hello, unfortunately, the camera does not support UVC. I also can process it, but I need to check the result somehow - ideally display the result on the screen. The current GStreamer command line for Logitech c270 v4l2 compatible camera to stream h264 video through Janus WebRTC is: Powered by Discourse, best viewed with JavaScript enabled, Jetson Telescope Mount Controller with Video Capturing and Processing, Jetson Linux Multimedia API Reference: Main Page, Electronically Assisted Astronomy with a Jetson Nano, Problems with SDK on Jetson NANO - ZWO User Forum, ASI178 Camera Performance on Rasperry PI 4, Stepper motor Mount Control (RA/HA or ALT/AZ directions), Stepper motor Focuser Control (manual/automatic camera focusing), GPS, Temperature / Humidity / Pressure sensors, Assisted mount “north orientation” placement using Magnetometer, Assisted mount “water leveling” with Gyroscope/Accelerometer, Finder camera image capture / processing (for manual sky object navigation), Main camera image capture / processing / storage (planetary and DSO objects), high resolution long exposure image capturing / storage, possibly realtime image processing and stacking, Guiding camera image capture / processing (mount and control error correction), Automatic object navigation and tracking (Goto), DSO, planets, moon, sun, asteroids, satellites, Autoguiding / tracking with necessary error corrections, Externally (INDI) controlled tracking / guiding, object detection, cyclic error calculation and predictive correction, TMC5160 motion controllers in motion controller mode, BME280 temperature / pressure / humidity sensor, MPU9255 magnetometer/accelerometer/gyroscope, 2x LOGITECH C270 USB camera (polar alignment, pointer scope), 1x ZWO ASI290MC (COLOR) (planetary imaging, guiding), 1x ZWO ASI1600MM PRO (MONO) (deep space imaging), code must be reworked, but it works somehow. Considering zwo (in fact considering Chinese firms), they use you as much as they can but they will never help you if there is not direct interest for them even if you buy their products. I have a Skywatcher Synscan Wifi Adapter (no hand controller). During last almost 3 years we found that to build such gadget is really tough task. The StarSeek Wireless Telescope Controller plugs into the telescope mount's serial (RS-232) port, which on Orion GoTo telescopes is located on the GoTo hand controller, while on some other brands the serial port is on the mount itself. Impossible to get any kind of support with French firms. Its job is to run the stepper motors for the RA (Right Ascension) drive axis and the DEC (Declination) drive axis. Just got telescope control working via PC last night. Read our guide! Most of described functionalities (except video capturing and processing) on SBC were tested already, at least on the table. I had to “hack” the API and implement streaming on my own, but currently I can use just one resolution / frame rate. Complete guides and manuals for all our product range. Please note that most of the cpu usage (about 20%) is consumed by the capture video capture application. The first version we’ve built was based on RPI1 and DRV8825 stepper motor drivers. For this purpose I tried the Logitech C270 WebCam which is supporting V4L so it was easy to capture / stream the video using FFMPEG in software mode and GStreamer in Hardware Encoding mode. How a GoTo mount works. I also switched to 30fps but the video incoming from the camera must be then image/jpeg format. This app supports ASCOM on Windows PC. In order to have the most accurate and smooth movement we need to use more powerful CPU with RTOS running on it, ASIC or some smart stepper driver. 71 96 2. Hello, We are designing astronomy telescope mount controller with video processing platform. Reading your posts above, can you connect directly to the mount via the wifi dongle or connect to the dongle via the synscan pro app? Yesterday I was looking if somebody else was fighting the same problem and I have found a “patch” to the ZWO camera library: Hi! Ideally we wanted to leave at least notebooks we use for image/video capture at home. Once the alignment is complete, you can use The implementation is based on gstreamer. Janus WebRTC Server. Once this project will be completely done, everything will be released as open source so everybody will be able to build his own gadget for astrophotography or the use software as example for another project development. SkyFi is a patent-pending WiFi-to-Serial adapter, designed for wireless telescope control. With any one of three connection methods from your PC to the mount, CPWI’s telescope control and Sky Viewer display makes selecting your target easy. Don’t worry about my education. Telescopes are the core of any astronomy system and vital pieces of equipment, hence the reason for the essential plethora of their accessories. Take control of your telescope! Two years later, when we changed stepper drivers for TMC ones, we realized that DRV8825 is not a driver for applications where high accuracy is required. You probably lready saw my topic here : Wish you the best for this beautiful project. To control a computerized telescope mount with your PC requires some additional software and drivers such as ASCOM. We’ve also found that wrongly soldered wires or shorts costs a lot of money, especially if SBC is fired out (1 PI, 1 Panda, many Arduinos, many motor drivers). Uses 8bit microstepping, AAG Cloud watcher compatible direct parking via the AUX port. I prefer to use some low level APIs such as EGLStream to pass the data from CUDA to OGL Texture or to Video Encoder. It was relatively easy task despite the fact that motor and mount axes have different diameters and it was hard to find GT2 pulleys in Europe. Has anyone managed to reach the maximum number of frames declared by the manufacturer on the Raspberry PI for full resolution (> 40fps)? Once we first navigated to Saturn and it held almost still in the view we were lucky so much. Currently I have just one question. Configurability: OnStep has parameters for different gear ratios, and different motors with varying steps/microsteps. 3D Printed EQ Mount with OnStep goto controller for small telescope or DSLRMore info on https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2748281 The red maplight function has migrated to button 7. It can also get this data from a GPS receiver connected to the telescope or built into the telescope mount itself, and the mount controller can have its own real time clock.. Alt-azimuth mounts. This allows ASCOM-based astronomy software to use TheSky (including TPOINT and ProTrack) as a smart telescope controller. First we thought that RPI will be enough for everything. Another additional motor on 3d printed holder is mounted on focuser now. SkyGuider TM Pro Camera Mount Full Package Price: $498.00 . Out of the mount control we want to be able to capture video and images and possibly process them. by RomanHujer Nov 10, 2017 . This is 0.03 arcsec step for 256 micro steps what is good enough. just a small update. Serial Data Communication by U.S. Converters LLC : Controlling a Telescope over WiFi - Serial Accessories Serial Port Cards RS232 to RS485 / RS422 Converters Serial to Ethernet Converters USB to Serial Adapters (RS232) Wireless Serial Solutions Custom Items / other converters USB to RS485 / RS422 Converters MOXA Brand Converters Lantronix Brand Converters Discontinued Products It worked well but we were not able to test if it will be also possible to store the data on another USB drive before… it burned. In the end, I will stream 3 videos (1x 4k@30 max, 2x 1080p@30 max) at once from 3 cameras - the main one, the guiding one and the pointing one. Later we found that the planet is moving forwards and backwards in the eyepiece. We learned a lot of stuff. Uf. Contribute to meetecho/janus-gateway development by creating an account on GitHub. After another 2 days of writing the libusb wrapper and avoiding calling of stream handling functions from the ZWO library it was possible to achieve expected frame rates with 0.7% CPU usage. What else? Connecting a SynScan telescope mount to a computer for control can give the user a number of additional useful features over using the supplied hand controller. The second v4l2 compatible camera is streamed to the Janus completely using the GStreamer with no additional custom software involved. I was trying to tune the GStreamer HW encoding for a while but I didn’t find a big difference in various settings of the omxh264enc encoder. The target app will use 15 or 30 fps - it will be fair enough for the target usage so bitrate around 10Mbit will be enough. Celestron PWI (CPWI) Telescope Control Software unleashes the full pointing accuracy of your new Celestron computerized telescope. I am using the following WebServer / JavaScript player to stream the MPEG4 (H264) video from Xavier to any device. We thought it is a mechanical problem first. Also, we have 5 times bigger holding torque what is definitely a good thing. As a very versatile and convenient feature, it will fit almost all modern telescopes. This adapter sends serial (RS-232) commands, received with a wireless connection, to the handset of the GoTo mount. I splitted theproject post from problem posts. Also, the captured data will get processed by CUDA - debayer, color depth conversion, color format conversion and displayed on screen or H264 encoded and RTSP (or HTTP) streamed to the controlling device (such as mobile phone). We don’t have experience in capturing through libusb. The performance is satisfying - 1936x1096@170 FPS, CPU usage around 55% and GPU usage around 60% but there will not be OGL rendering in future. And most of all, we hope you'll enjoy the products as … Solar Finder Scope for Vixen/Synta Telescope Mount . I need to hack it more or I have to convince ZWO to make API open source. You find a WIFI virtual hand controller for Android devices on Play Store (Pulsar Hand). We mainly wanted to have most of the stuff in compact piece and to plug as low count of cables as possible. The whole thing was gamepad controlled. GoTo mounts are pre-aligned before use. These valuable additions to your telescope let you maximize its usefulness and fine tune your night-sky observing experience! For more information see Working with TheSky (section 1). Later we thought it is a problem of Linux timer in the RPI or that the timer is not accurate enough because of the Linux is not RTOS and time slices are not predictable. The hand controller allows you to set functions such as tracking speed, autoguide rate, lat/long coordinates and much more. Today we're proud to provide quality products direct to your doorstep through an experience you'll enjoy. Read more ... We guarantee the highest quality and tehnical support for all Gemini Telescope Design products. Video player for browser that is able to play realtime low latency h264 video stream from websocket. Thanks for it NVidia ;). Now I will continue with video encoding (I try to pass data directly from the CUDA to encoder) and streaming. Orion XT8 Dobsonian Telescope GoTo Modification . Stream was lost time to time, framerate was unstable, CPU usage was really high - terrible. I lost a few days with trying to send the video to the HTML5 Video Element using various methods, but I didn’t find a way how to get the latency under few seconds (4 or more). telescope dew controller free download. I am using Janus WebRTC server and the streaming demo. The performance of ZWO camera is really bad on the USB3.0. Hi, The self-explaining command I used in the end is: Please note the WS-AVC server was listening on port 5000 for incoming video to re-stream it to any client connected to it on 8081 over WebSockets. This allows me to stream 1080p@30 with about 30% cpu usage. Currently we are working on video capturing. We decided for last variant and the final version will be built on TMC5160 motion controller which allows us just to send target position and/or speed to the driver. This page was created because it was very difficult for me to find information about OnStep. With the push of a button, you can access NexStar+’s … I am glad bought Xavier. Goto/tracking parts was not touched yet. Manuals are available in PDF format, some available in video format on our YouTube channel. Announcing DeepStream 5.0.1 Later after some experience it was confirmed that 1:1 ratio is not enough to achieve needed tracking accuracy (even with 256 micro steps). Open Source: OnStep is fully open source. The SkySafari Plus and Pro versions add the possibility to remote control your GoTo telescope mount using the special SkyFi adapter. It all started with a great idea and a little hard work. Micro stepping alias stepper motor control. Install a computer inside with the control software necessary for the telescope and accessories. 3D printed - EQ telescope mount with OnStep goto controller . This cordless, precision DC servo drive allows motorized tracking of objects in space as they appear to migrate across the night sky due to Earth's rotation. Most of the C++ software is in pre-alpha state and ready to be integrated together. This mount comes with all the features you would expect of a professional telescope mount! Orion AstroTrack Drive for EQ-1 Equatorial Telescope Mount. Opencv is interesting but too slow and opencv with cuda is useless from what i saw. In the end it will be necessary to process this video in custom guiding software or INDI driver will be used in order to be possible to use 3rd party guiding software - as there is requirement to track satellites precisely, custom guiding software will be probably needed. Very high CPU usage and problems with the video stream. Foremost among these new capabilities is the ability to simply click on an object shown in a sky mapping program on the PC and have the telescope move to that object. If you have a computer-controlled GoTo telescope, SkyFi can use the WiFi capabilities built into your Mac, PC, iPhone, iPad, or iPod Touch to point your telescope in the sky. So I ordered a devkit and when it arrived I was really disappointed. It is for updating the motor controller's firmware, or controlling the telescope mount with the application "SynScan Pro for Windows". From November 2009 Gemini Telescope Design is offering this new version that retains all the key features of its predecessor but adds a host of new valuable functions making it especially suitable for remote control. Nevermind, thanks for info I’ll keep you updated about the project status. 1. Since then it is increasing only as we have bought more optical components and more accessories to be taken with us but it is different story. Hi, This adapter sends serial (RS-232) commands, received with a wireless connection, to the handset of the GoTo mount. 2. Another small update - I Switched to WebRTC and it works much better than software JavaScript decoder. It will also drive your DIY mount, Fork or German. But it is not powerful enough to drive two stepper motors accurately all the time, especially at higher speeds - the cpu frequency together with relatively expensive interrupt handling is not simply enough to drive 2 motors with possibly 3rd motor for focuser. Sorry for that. The SkySafari Plus and Pro versions add the possibility to remote control your GoTo telescope mount using the special SkyFi adapter. Time and latitude and longitude are updated every time Pulsar2 is switched on. The EQ6R-Pro mount from Sky Watcher has a dual-width saddle that allows mounting of Vixen and Losmandy dovetail plates. mount or telescope. Later on, hopefully some real-time filtering will be applied on the video / images being captured and stored. We are designing astronomy telescope mount controller with video processing platform. The natural evolution of Pulsar1 is the Pulsar2 GoTo Controller. Telescopes with mount group by optical design. The wear resistant design keeps its performance over time. For running deep learning inference, We would suggest use DeepStream SDK. It’s about the same with French firms. Friction mounts have no backlash at all, guide perfectly, enable longer autoguiding exposures, etc. Arduino Nano Dew Controller Pro (DIY) A 3-channel fully automated Dew Controller (DIY project) based on Arduino Nano for telescopes. The GT2 pulley ratio is 1:1 - there is no space on the mount to make bigger ratio but we expected that bigger ratio will be required because of bigger torque and step smoothness. For using hardware encoder, please refer to 01_video_encode. Out of the fact the browser is using hardware for video decoding the latency further decreased (but I still didn’t measure). The telescope mount will spend a lot of time running at sidereal speed… so it is important to get right. I wanted to buy it anyway, you just made me to buy it now :). SkySafari is a great astronomy app for smart devices like the iPhone, iPad and Android. Later we decided to try different platform - LattePanda. I was suspicious there is some bottleneck on the internal PCIE BUS. I didn’t do any measurements but I guess the latency was under 200ms in total over gigabit ethernet network. Date and time are also shown. Independent incremental encoders can be added, Connects to the PC via USB, Serial or LAN ports, ASCOM and INDI (Linux), Allows direct access from the internet (Internal web server), Steppers are driven in 2 speed dependent modes, ensuring silent and silky smooth tracking AND high goto speeds. Did you experienced any problems with performance of the ZWO API? In order to be possible to motorize the mount we had to find a way how to fit motors on it and how to fix them there. At least the part where no camera related data and code is present. It is required for the Paramount mounts, and may be used with TheSky controlling any other of its supported telescope types, or via its built-in outbound ASCOM support , and then using ASCOM telescope drivers. Please see EGL problem post for details. It can be adapted to almost any mount that you can attach stepper motors to. 71 127 6. It is not that bad. The frame capture is through v4l2 interface. I wanted to contact you later when I wanted to implement video / image filtering in order to discuss some CUDA and math stuff. From November 2009 Gemini Telescope Design is offering this new version that retains all the key features of its predecessor but adds a host of new valuable functions making it especially suitable for remote control. This application is used to update the motor controller's firmware of a Skywatcher telescope mount, which has a built-in Wi-Fi module or an external SynScan Wi-Fi dongle. by viyh May 9, 2016 . Another lesson we learned: don’t trust no-name manufacturers. Single tracking speed in one axis was also possible. Is the Sky Watcher EQ6-R Mount Compatible with my Telescope? The final list of features should be: EQ / AZ mount control Stepper motor Mount Control (RA/HA or ALT/AZ directions) Stepper motor Focuser Control (manual/automatic camera focusing) Joystick … OnStep provides much more features than most commercially available telescope controller. Friend of mine got SkyWatcher 8" and EQ5 unmotorized mount as a present almost 3 years ago. The Celestron NexStar+ EQ Hand Control is the standard computer accessory on all current equatorially mounted Celestron go-to telescopes: Advanced VX, CGEM, CGEM II, CGX, & CGX-L computerized telescopes. We’ve found that stepper motors and drivers are not accurate enough, especially in micro stepping mode and with high load.