Hi!

recently I trashed my Littlefoot V-power, an action that left my without a stepper controller for my rather heavy Houghton telescope. Beyond that, I was annoyed by the plethora of adapters, cables, additional programs hampered by Windows component updates and so on. So I programmed my own stepper controller on a Raspberry Pi 3, which features standalone autoguiding via INDI, observation lists and catalogs, an LX200 interface and a ST4 interface. Not all features are fully tested and everything is in a very early stage - but code is available and I documented the project a little bit. It can be found under TSC-Wiki alongside with the C++code. Comments are highly welcome ...
yours
wolfi

Hi there,
I'm very impressed by your mount, a real beauty
Br
/Markku

Will follow this with great interest! Would love to build my own mount - especially a large fork like yours (I hate german eq's
Thanks for making it open.
cheers
Gary

Great project! Thanks for sharing. I'm gonna follow it n github.

hi!
just a little update - more testing, debugging, hardware addons like a hardware watch and an internal USB/RS232 converter, all INDI cameras (theoretically) and above all a rather stable interface to Sky Safari, CdC, Stellarium , SkyTechX via ASCOM (thanks knro for INDI, btw ...) - screenshots are in the appendix of the wiki ... github.com/selste/TwoStepperControl/wiki/TSC
yours
wolfi

Hi,
HNSKY version 3.3.3_FPC for Linux is an INDI client.
Do you know about it?

hi!
no, i was not aware of that. good to know. mount control via indi is still on the to-do list, also for kstars lite ...
yours
wofli

Hi!
As things approach something that might be a release, i started a little blog on TSC and other ATM stuff ... tscatm.wordpress.com
Yours
Wolfi

... made a little video - ... mainly about slewing my big phat scope :)
yours
wolfi

... a few months of reduced activity. but now, here is the TSC HAT ... it does not feature the motor drivers but a temperature compensated clock, galvanic decoupled ST4 + 3.3V conversion, DSLR control and a USB/RS232 interface ... not being an electricla engineer, i still like my three pcbs (the right one is an alternative to the phidgets in future, an SPI controlled arduino mini with 2 RAPS 128 controllers), and the bluetooth handbox is also ready. fritzing and eagle schematics are on the github link
yours
wolfi

... and everything has a revision - so this one has now optocouplers for DSLR and ST4 instead of the venerable ADuMs i used in the first effort, and to the left is a homebrewn auxiliary motor board that drives two steppers for motorfocusing. these are by far not as powerful as the Phidget boards (the drivers are cheap A4988 drivers, and the controller is an arduino pro mini), but for a focuser they are more than sufficient ...
yours
wolfi

That looks like a very interesting project you got there, I do like the fork mount.
Are the stepper motors open loop or can you use closed loop ones with encoders?