The DIY guy

This is the second blog post about some DIY hardware I have made for controlling the telescope on equatorial mount based on AstroEQ platform, fully open source hardware. for more info about AstroEQ--- https://www.astroeq.co.uk/tutorials.php See what is an equatorial mount -- https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Equatorial_mount The board is fully an open source hardware based on ASCOM, EQMOD and AstroEQ, driven by powerful 8-bit microcontroller Atmega2560 (incorporated in Arduino boards). The board acts as shield for the Mega2560 boards available in the market and is capable of converting any equatorial mount telescope into a motorized telescope with both axis control and it will let you do through the PC or laptop... yay.. sounds interesting. Let us see what is required to do so..... First of all you need a telescope mount which supports mounting motors on that (either single axis or double axis). Once you have telescope mount, you have to do some basic calculations for

Why to use shield when you can customize with wires Exactly, because of the last word in the point made above. WIRES , they are the ones which make your project or instrument look very old fashioned and ugly. This is the reason why people prefer PCBs over breadboard. The shield which you have got takes care of that and ensures you have a smaller number of wires (Coming only from the sensors) in your project. Connection guide The relays operate through a phototransistor of Toshiba optocoupler, connected to the digital pins of the Arduino board. The optocoupler isolates from any short circuit happening on the output load which is to be connected. The Bluetooth is standard HC-05 Bluetooth module (Supplied with the board if opted). The overall design of the board is user friendly in the sense, user can change the Bluetooth modules if it goes bad by any chance. Bluetooth communication is a serial communication and can be programmed via Arduino IDE available for