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3D Printed Baffle extension and reducer

Voyager 2 node array local field focusing

Grease on my ASI2600, this was easily cleaned!

Enclosed electronics

Roof AC control panel

Roof AC infrastructure

IMG_4518.HEIC

Roof AC real lights rough-in!

Flat panel prototype

Looks nice and neat, not typical

You can see the roof of the Annex covered in the snow a couple of weeks ago. Just swallowing up the screw drive opener for JRO. This is not good and is the driver for the automated roof snow/ice melt system.

TACS 7.1 in action on New Year's Eve 2020 across my 4 monitors imaging the Rosette nebula in narrowband on both my FSQ85 and RC simultaneously.

This is a screenshot of me imaging the Rosette nebula on the left with the RC and on the right with the Takahashi

Atik 16200 w/ Atik EF3 sporting Chroma 3nm filters and an Atik OAG leveraging a Lodestar carried by a Moonlite WR25 rotator and focuser on my 14" GSO RC telescope

Snow doesn't stop me!

Snow doesn't stop me! The roof was real heavy with it being 1/2 covered in snow. I had to help it open and close. If the snow melt system works well on the Annex, I may do the same for JRO's roof.

Latest News

1-Mar-2023 All the work I put into the Ultrasonic Park detection solution I created is now shelved. I mean, I wrote a python code, shell scripts, made a bullet proof reliable solution that would always run as long as the raspberry pi was up, but frost started to make the RC Ultrasonic sensor have unreliable readings for windows of time. This happened more than once late in the night when it is trying to close up. So, I have moved to "Plan B" which was a much simpler Active - Active IR sensors, hoping that being active they might not be affected by dew and frost like a larger reflector is. These are hard to aim, you can't see the IR with your eyes, but I found that my ASI224's inside my observatory an see them clearly so I aimed them a little better. The first night park detection failed for the RC. When I went out there to see in the morning, I only rubbed my finger on the front of the emitter, and it cleared enough frost off that the beam got to the detector and the relay fired. I designed and printed matching dew shields and had success last night as it closed up for clouds and everything worked correctly. Of course it did, I was awake watching from the couch.

3-Nov-2022 My first PLA correction baffle has deteriorated so I printed a new one-piece baffle. This new baffle only

needs about 1/2 a loop of electrical tape to give it a nice snug fit on the RC. You can download my 14"

Carbon fiber RC corrector baffle .stl here, pictures are below. New screw drive opener installed. Frost

has become a big problem with IR park detection sensors so I am trying to move to Ultrasonic sensors

which seem to be working. I have also moved to one SkyRoof for the observatory that is not connected

to either mount. Still working out all the kinks.

11-Sep 2022: I have both mounts working together autonomously! All the heavy lifting in AOPs is done, AOPs

has evolved to version 8.1.39. Only making minor tweaks these days. AOPs gives me the ability to

do many things regarding controlling operations. It allows me to pick which mount or mounts are in

play. It allows me to set a No second chance flag so that if it closes for weather and conditions

improve later it will not start again. I can set a Force Flag to force it to not start tonight or to start

tonight disregarding the weather forecast. Under normal circumstances, the forecast is the final

criteria used to determine if it should start.

18-July 2022: I've moved to Voyager Advanced for image acquisition!

Autonomous Operations v3 (AOPS) is currently in development.

Coming Soon: Control over forecasting and automation while facilitating autonomous operations!

I have not been very productive for the last 6 months. Mostly due to frustrations with the RC.