DL replied to the topic 'Automated Flat Panel Control' in the forum. 2 years ago

I use a 3d printed shutter, connected to this servoservo . It's purched on a 3d printed platform at the end of my dew shield. I use the servo blaster driver to control its opening and closing. I attached an EL panelEL panel to the inside plane of the shutter and while flats are not 100% automated, the servo blaster driver is picked up by Kstars and allows for automated darks and biases. And a remote triggering of flat capturing sequence.

The only problem I'm still trying to tackle from a DIY perspective is 100% automated flats. Which would then let me capture flats while using the Scheduler module. For now I have to manually engage the EL panel when I need to capture a fresh batch of flats and current configuration is not dimmable, but that will be changing soon.

To do this, I use the astroberry relay driver to flick on an RPi relay hat . Since I'm using a dedicated astro camera I can take advantage of the ADU auto flat capture feature within Ekos. So at least part of the flat capture process is automated.

Hope this helps.

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