Telescope Control

I am looking for software to connect an optical encoder to KStars or other desktop planetarium software for computer tracking control and imaging target acquisition. We are building a tracking platform for ball type telescopes. The optical encoder will be a common optical mouse mounted against the ball. The software will need to translate the angular movement of the ball to the angular movement through the celestial sphere. I believe a simple modification of the current mouse driver would work. Operation of the software would involve indexing the software to the scope by multiple star alignment. A later addition will involve stepper motor control to perform tracking for astronomical imaging. All software will be licensed under the GNU license and will be open source. Software will be INDI compliant. Additional compliancies also accepted. ## Deliverables The goal of this project is to create a new telescope project for amateur telescope makers. Our hope is the design and allied documentation and software will advance interest in a fascinating hobby, amateur telescope making and by extension amateur astronomy. The last major design change was the Dobson alt / az mount. This simple mount has morphed into many exquisite designs and projects. We feel the ball telescope is the next step. Pioneered by Edscorp as the all plastic Astroscan, the concept was carried to the next step by Mag 1 Instruments as the Portaball. Recently amateur telescope makers have begun to make ball telescopes. One individual published a motorized tracking mount. That scope can be viewed here .. [login to view URL] Here is another picture of a home made ball scope found about half way down the page .. [login to view URL] We have a team working on simple ball manufacture that any amateur builder could do. We have a team working on simple finders, on mounts for the telescope, even alternate optics. However the main stumbling block has been tracking instrumentation. Modern scopes use two encoders ,mounted on the altitude and azimuth axis, to precisely position the telescope. These can be simple encoders or stepper motors to track the sky. Examples of this technology can be viewed at .. [login to view URL] as well as by googleing telescope tracking. Although a ball scope has an optical axis, it has no fixed rotational axis. The ball mimics the celestial sphere over our heads. We suspect that a single encoder mounted low on the ball will be sufficient to allow autoguiding or goto operation. In an effort to keep the design very simple I proposed using a optical mouse as the encoder. The mouse would have a fixed attachment to the mount that holds the ball of the telescope. The mouse would be mounted upside down with the optical sensor pointing up. The ball of the telescope would ride on the bottom of the mouse, there by bringing the optical sensor of the mouse into position to detect movement of the ball. As the ball moves across the mouse the mouse would detect that movement and cause the cursor on the computer screen to move accordingly. Because the ball of the telescope is not mounted on two axis but can move in any direction, the movement is analogous to the movement of a computer mouse on the desktop. The software that I am requesting would interpret this movement to affect the display presented by any common planetarium software. i.e. as the telescope was moved from one star to another the software would display that movement on the computer screen via the cursor and when a star was centered in the telescope that star would be centered on the computer screen. This is an existing feature of KStars, an open source planetarium software freely available on the internet. The source code for KStars is also available. The software would need to have a feature to allow indexing the movement of the ball telescope in relation to the sky. This could be accomplished by setting a target in KStars, i.e. Polaris, centering that target in the telescope, acknowledging that the scope was pointing correctly by pressing enter, or clicking a mouse button. A second target could then be acquired in the same manner and the software would then be correctly configured to interpret the movement of the ball telescope in relation to the sky. Once this basic one to one relationship is established the computer could then be used to control motors to allow tracking of objects in the sky for imaging. Once again this a common feature of KStars and the code that performs this function can be viewed there. However! the focus of this bid request is to develop the software that allows communication between the telescope and the computer via the optical sensor of a common optical mouse. Once that piece has been developed and proven extended features will be explored. A simple test bed could be mocked up using a laser pointer mounted perpendicular to a ball. Any ball would work but a larger ball is easier to manipulate and more closely resembles a ball telescope. A old bowling ball would be a good choice. Create a simple three point mount that allows room for a mouse to be positioned as described above. When your software is written you could test it by pointing the laser pointer at one corner of the room, set that reference as described above and then set a second reference using the opposite corner of the room. If your software is functioning correctly pointing the laser pointer at the first corner should return the first target to the center of the computer screen.