According wikipedia, autoguider is an automatic electronic guidance tool used in astrophotography (usually in amateur astronomy) to keep a telescope pointed precisely at an object being photographed. This prevents the object from drifting across the field of view during long-exposures which would create a blurred or elongated image.
These things are available for 400$+, but i thought it would be a good fun to build one myself.
The first version was not a real autoguider, rather a remote control for the stepper motors which received input from the pc, where the real guiding happened. This version had a PIC microcontroller.
The second version, based on mbed platfrom, had a basic camera and a small LCD. This had strong limitations, but it was a real autoguider which worked. It was not efficient enough to be used on telescopes, but i made nice photos with Canon DSLR using this guider.
This blog is about the third version. The main hardware component is a rapsberry pi b+, but an arduino pro mini is also used to control the motor driver. Additional hardware components are the 320x240 touch screen LCD and the raspberry pi camera.
These things are available for 400$+, but i thought it would be a good fun to build one myself.
The first version was not a real autoguider, rather a remote control for the stepper motors which received input from the pc, where the real guiding happened. This version had a PIC microcontroller.
The second version, based on mbed platfrom, had a basic camera and a small LCD. This had strong limitations, but it was a real autoguider which worked. It was not efficient enough to be used on telescopes, but i made nice photos with Canon DSLR using this guider.
This blog is about the third version. The main hardware component is a rapsberry pi b+, but an arduino pro mini is also used to control the motor driver. Additional hardware components are the 320x240 touch screen LCD and the raspberry pi camera.
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