Installation

DeepSkyDad AF1 driver is included with libindi >= 1.7.6 Under Ubuntu, you can install the driver via:

sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa

sudo apt-get update

sudo apt-get install libindi1

  Features

DeepSkyDad AF1 is a budget-friendly belt driven autofocuser unit, intended primarily for astrophotography. As such, it does not include any kind of physical remote controller. It comes with stepper motor, MXL pulley, MXL belt, printed PCB circuit and very compact enclosure, which enables a lot of freedom when mounting. Mounting adapters are 3D printed and can be custom designed as per customer requirements. It is fully open sourced.

Main Control Tab

• Direction: Focus IN or Focus OUT. IN decreases ticks count, OUT increases ticks count. Selecting this controls the direction of the Relative Position property below.
• Relative Position: Set the number of steps from the current absolute position to move.
• Absolute Position: Set the number of absolute steps.
• Sync: Set the current focus position as the entered position.
• Reverse Motion: reverse direction of the motor, if focus in/focus out are reversed in relation to the focuser physical movement(depends on how the autofocuser is mounted).
• Max. movement: maximum position change in a single movement (in steps).

Presets

You may set pre-defined presets for common focuser positions in the Presets tab.

• Preset Positions: You may set up to 3 preset positions. When you make a change, the new values will be saved in the driver's configuration file and are loaded automatically in subsequent uses.
• Preset GOTO: Click any preset to go to that position

  Connection

Connect to the focuser using a USB cable. The connection type is serial and by default the port is set to /dev/ttyUSB0. The default baud rate is 9600. If you change the default port, save the changes by going to the Options tab and click Save configuration.

  Operation

  Options

The options tab provides several settings to tune the operation and performance of the focuser:

• Step mode:full (200 steps per revolution), half (400 steps per revolution), quarter (800 steps per revolution) and eight (1600 steps per revolution)
• Settle buffer: if set, focuser returns "IsMoving" as TRUE for specified time (in ms) after focuser reaches target position, letting it to settle a bit. Useful if your focuser has any play.
• Coils mode: Always on (recommended) - coils are powered at all times. Idle - off - coils are turned off when focuser is not moving. Idle - coils timeout (ms) - coils are turned off after a specified amount of time from the last move.
• Idle - coils timeout: timeout period for Coils mode "Idle - coils timeout (ms)
• Current - move: current used for moving the motor. More current results in bigger torque. 75% is recommended.
• Current - hold: current used for holding the position when motor is not moving (Coils mode "Always on"). More current results in bigger torque. 75% is recommended.

Issues

Coils mode: there are some scenarios when coils can be turned off after a period of time (e.g. manual focusing via software). But generally, we recommend you to use Coils mode "Always on" for autofocusing procedures, as turning the coils off results in lost position of the motor. Additionally, if coils are turned on at all times, motor holds the focuser position and prevents slipping.

when coils are powered (e.g. Coils mode "Always on"), the stepper motor is producing a hissing noise, which is perfectly normal.

With holding current set to 100%, motor can get a little warm after a while.

There are no known bugs for this driver. If you found a bug, please report it at INDI's bug tracking system at SourceForge. (You can log in with a variety of existing accounts, including Google, Yahoo and OpenID.)