What is TSC? TSC is an open hard- and software project. It is based on t ON Semiconductor AMIS 30543 wit 1/128 microstepping and 3A maximum coil current are used. The boards are controlled via USB 2 from a Raspberry Pi3 currently. The programming environment used for development of TSC is Qt and C++. The... Continue Reading →
After a break of almost a year caused by CoViD - finally some activities again. I made a little introductory video on using the really cool Astroberry image - check it out at http://www.astroberry.io - and here is a few things that can be done... https://youtu.be/qh6pp1hliuM
The AMIS drivers work well, so I decided to put a real effort into the integration of a camera for guiding; INDI as an interface was always there, but the client on TSC was not very sophisticated. And so i worked on that, and with the advent of the Pi 4 and Raspian Buster, I... Continue Reading →
... some bugfixing and extensive testing. TSC now operates with two AMIS 30543 Pololu chips driven by two Teensy 3.5 boards - and it does that just fine. Hardware cost was dropped as an side-effect, and full support for meridian flips during GOTO-maneuvers when using a german equatorial are built in. Check the revised manual TSC_UserGuide... Continue Reading →
... and I spent it with developing new stepper driver interfaces. The Phidget drivers were not bad, but as their programming interface changed completely and they are fixed to 1/16 microsteps, something new had to come. And here it is - the AMIS 30543 controller, maximum current also 3.0A, maximum voltage 30 V, and a... Continue Reading →
Over the summer holidays, I got myself a ZWO ASI 1600 MM Pro - my first cooled camera. Control of the camera takes place via EKOS, but guiding is managed by TSC - so here we have approximately 140 minutes of light and approx. 40 minutes in each color channel with 120 s exposures; the... Continue Reading →
So there was the scarce coincidence - weekend, no moon and clear skies. I spent 3 nights programming fine details on the autoguider and taking exposures. There is some more fine tuning to be done, but in the end I had 42 usable 5 min. lights taken through the 13" Houghton with a Canon 1100d... Continue Reading →
So I spent a few hours in the workshop over the weekend, and what I got was two nice cases using Fischer Elektronik profiles. The upper image shows the TCP/IP handbox with the OLED display, and below one finds the case for TSC itself and the stepper controllers, the focuser board, the power regulators the... Continue Reading →
As said before, TSC is an open hard- and software project; its primary purpose at the time being is to provide a telescope controller based on a Raspberry Pi 3 Model B for large stationary telescopes. In order to get familiar with its functionality, there are a few starting points: A beautiful PDF of more... Continue Reading →
Telescopes, ATM and Computers 