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It’s a good job we (usually) have other astro interests when the weather is foul…
The Lowspec3 with calibration unit is mounted and working well.
The photo below shows the UVEX3 and Calibrex guiding and calibration unit (by Christian Buil et al).
It works astonishingly well.
A few mods of course. Two x 50mm doublets in the guider for better quality images, a Shelyak photometric slit used instead of the Alpy and a “larger” servo power board for better ‘screen’ performance. Otherwise it’s the Nano control board as specified.
The photos show the calibration unit with the top removed and running the sequence of wavelength, Flat and Dark/Bias frames. You can see the bulbs illuminated through the M42 apperture. The unit operates in manual mode (pushing a button on the unit and cycling through the sequence) or remote mode using an app. Both work well.
I have Nano boards with bluetooth and wifi and will operate wirelessly.
I have similar units based on the Richard Walker circuit and a couple of ‘chinese’ circuits that are spectrograph agnostic which I’ll post later. They’re being developed with some US friends for a fully autoimated DIY classical spectrograph.
Hi Bill,
The photo shows two elements of what will be a fully robotic remote controlled spectrograph – based on a classical optical design. This is being developed by myself and half a dozen American friends some of whom I’ll mention directly.
The large board houses the RW ‘book’ circuit modified by Clarke Yeager to allow remote working. He designed the PCB which also houses a Nano BLE Sense for control of focusing, slit illumination, grating position, etc. We envisage mount sensing, direction and environmental monitoring too. The smaller box is a calibration injection unit, designed by Jerry Foote. Software is being written by Tom Smith and the overiding architecture is by Wayne Green. They’ll probably use a Pi/Odroid from overall command functions. I’ll go with whatever they decide. (A guy called Woody Sims keeps us in the real world!). There are several others who bring unique skills to the team but I’ll spare the roll call but they’re all under the Society of Astronomical Sciences out of the US west run by Bob Buckheim.
It’s a neat team and we recently published an update paper. More to follow as we make progress.
Great work ! Great! I’m also interested in the remote control electronics. I am looking at how I can further automate my LHiResIII for remote control. Especially the focus of the internal doublet and also a control to change the grating position so I can also set a different wave range. so 2 motors should be implemented. I have already seen some examples in the field of mechanics. I would also like to do the controls with an Arduino, but my software skills are rather poor. So all tips, possibly links to website , where I can find info, are always welcome.
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