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Astroberry Focuser with Adafruit Motor HAT

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This driver uses submodules, which are downloaded to /home/steve/astroberry-amh/build/libs/AdafruitStepperMotorHAT_CPP
Just delete the /home/steve/astroberry-amh/build/libs directory and rerun make install
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5 years 11 months ago #25523

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Victory! Thanks again. Not smart enough, yet, to understand why it worked but it did :)
5 years 11 months ago #25528

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SmackAstro. A couple things you might want to customize. Within amh_focusser.cpp
Define SPR to match your motor specs. Kaczorek set it to 400, but most steppers are 200.
Towards the bottom of the file you can define the stepper mode to one of 4 options
SINGLE (lowest power use)
DOUBLE (2x power use, ~25% more torque)
INTERLEAVE (50% more power, slightly more torque than Single, finer step size)
MICROSTEP (Very fine step size)

I recommend microstep, but you will have to adjust the I2C baud rate, see my earlier posts in the thread.
5 years 11 months ago #25604

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Hi, i am trying to reproduce this project on my Celestron 8 SE. But i found that Celestron 8 SE, there is no obvious way to measure the focuser tube traveling distance for one knob revolution.
Do you guys know how to work around this problem? is this parameter a must for the program to work?
Thanks.
5 years 9 months ago #26434

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It is not a must. My discussion on travel distance was to work out an estimate for limits to the maximum number of steps the driver will allow. The author was looking at 20,000 step limit, and I calculated the most I could possibly need, and was satisfied I came within it.
5 years 9 months ago #26437

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That's good to hear. I am glad that you are still monitoring the thread.
I need to look at the code more closely to figure out what exactly i need to provide for the focuser to work.

At the Ekos UI side, it looks i only need to set the ticks properties for the Max Travel

Settings
Max Travel: Maximum travel in ticks before the autofocus process aborts.
Step: Initial step size in ticks to cause a noticeable change in HFR value.
Tolerance: The tolerance percentage values decides when the autofocus process stops in the Iterative algorithm.
5 years 9 months ago #26438

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Hi all,

I have ordered te ADAFruit DC and stepper motor HAT for raspberry PI 3b+ to build my focusser. Any suggestions on the type of stepper motor I should buy with it?

Kind regards,
Gunther
Remote PI : Raspberry PI 3B+ with Stellarmate 1.16.2 /
Telescope : Skywatcher HEQ5 /
Camera : Canon 700D
5 years 1 month ago #34588

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It depends on the load you want to carry on a draw tube. In any case I would suggest 12V stepper motor with no more than 1A current. I have tested some 5V motors and they seem to weak.
5 years 1 month ago #34597

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No eBay APP ID and/or Cert ID defined in Kunena configurationHi Gunther, in addition to what Radek just wrote: from my experience it is critical to have a gearbox attached. Without, the weight of the camera may pull the camera out of focus. The gearbox is a little bit like a had break in your car. The one I am working with right now is this one:



This shows how it can be attached:

github.com/HelgeMK/FocuserParts/blob/mas...icture%20Focuser.jpg

To be honest, I do not know what the best gear ratio is.
5 years 1 month ago #34601

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Thanks for the input.

By the end of the week the Adafruit Motor HAT will be in my local store. I'll ask for a 12V stepper motor and try to get that to work. Then I will begin with step two: putting it on my telescope. I have a Starway Crayford Focusser with a 10:1 micro focussing. A canon 700D will be attached to it.



This will be my second electronic DIY project after putting the raspberry PI together. So I'm a newbie on this topic :)

Gunther
Remote PI : Raspberry PI 3B+ with Stellarmate 1.16.2 /
Telescope : Skywatcher HEQ5 /
Camera : Canon 700D
5 years 1 month ago #34612
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Yesterday I received my Adafruit Motor HAT earlier then expect. So I started working on my focusser. In the image you can see the Adafruit Motor HAT attached to the Raspberry Pi and to a hybdrid stepper motor. I connected the stepper motor as a bipolar motor.

After installing the python driver I made a script so I could test the stepper motor. It all works well :)
Next step was installing the astroberry-diy. I followed the steps written on GitHub. I can find the focusser in Ekos. There is no error message, but the focusser is probably not working cause he doesn't respond.
I used the command : cmake -DWITH_WIRINGPI=OFF -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr ..
The Adafruit Motor HAT is working through GPIO, should i use the option -DWITH_WIRINGPI=ON ? Or do I need to do something else?

kind regards,
Gunther
Remote PI : Raspberry PI 3B+ with Stellarmate 1.16.2 /
Telescope : Skywatcher HEQ5 /
Camera : Canon 700D
5 years 1 month ago #34690
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For Adafruit Motor HAT you should use other driver. You can find it here github.com/rkaczorek/astroberry-amh
Good luck!
5 years 1 month ago #34699

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