In 2014 or there abouts Peter Cook put together an amzing little project.
The idea was to use a Raspberry Pi and Gyro sensors to create a "Push To" style mount for his telescope.
Instrumented Telescope with Raspberry Pi and orientation sensor A "Push To" telescope mount is like a fully automated "Go To" telescope mount, but without the motors. You must manually move the telescope, but because the >telescope knows where it is pointed, you get live tracking telling you where it needs to go.
Fast forward to 2022,
- the GY-80 module originally used is out of date.
- astropysics - a Python module used is no longer maintained
- SkySafari has a whole lot of new versions
This project is now an attempt to perseve the original hard work and begin to refactor the code. The needs I have are limited to the "Push To", image capturing and camera connection are not something I am focused on.
Testing in the original project was done in Sky Safari Plus 4.0, current testing is in Sky Safari Plus 7.0
Telescope usually setup as:
Scope Type: Meade LX-200 GPS
Mount Type: Equatorial Push-To (or any push to setting)
Auto-Detect SkyFi: Off
IP Address: That of the computer running this script (default 10.0.0.1)
Port Number: 4030 (default)
Set Time & Location: On (default is off)
Readout Rate: 4 per second (default)
Save Log File: Off (default)
In order to try and understand Latitude and Longitude, and how to convert that to degrees and then to radians
- Decimal Degrees Units to Degrees, Minutes and Seconds Converter
- Converting degrees to radians and vice versa
Example Greenwich
- 51.4934° N, 0.0098° E
-
Latitude : 51 deg 29 min 36.24 sec Longitude: 0 deg 0 min 35.28 sec
- Radians 0.898729 0.000171