Observatoire du Prieuré Gradignan

Motion Control System description

To make it a short story, I was badly ill between November 1997, at the time I was designing this system, and say August 1998. Now I am far better, still I am a bit too tired and do not consider building more mechanics, electronics, and the like : I now have  an LX-200. Let the glass and file pushers be blessed, but life is really too short.

As a consequence, the Motion Control System, though usable, will not be used anymore, at least by myself. However, the design, including schematics, existing interface software, and relevant information is available free of charge for the asking.

There is now (10/2001) a slight possibility that this software be reused for a big amateur telescope at Pic du Midi Observatory, along with a Delta Tau Pmac motion control card.

Full picture - Ensemble (Nature Morte)

You may notice that what was actually built does not conform strictly to the specs as expressed in previous pages. I should really provide better descriptions, however, for the time being, there are images that are worth hundreds of words.

This is the whole system: a main bus card carries, from right to left, a parallel port interface card, a general purpose I/O card, two axis control cards, and two power amplifier cards (full bridge configuration). Though empty by now -this was a warm week-end at the seaside-, the bottle of Scotch Whisky gives the scale...


Here can be found an axis control card and power amplifier couple, along with an I/F and GPI/O couple. In a telescope application, the GP I/O card is used to interface with the control handpad. All six cards can be seen in the following pages

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copyright © 2001-2010 robert soubie ; dernière modification le 30 janvier 2010 00:08