On Apr 8, 2023, at 10:37 AM, Richard via groups.io <rmille64@...> wrote:

?

All,

Just thought I describe the configuration details of making a remote obsession UC18.

Putting an Intel I3 on your Obsession might seem a bit extravagant, but Primaluce offers a line of computers targeted at the Telescope market.

Start with the power that is available in remote locations:? battery power.? The Eagle4S that I purchased will use up to 1 amp at 12 volts.

My 55 amp hour battery is an AGM type so I outfitted it with a voltage regulator to maintain 13.8 volts until it runs out of power (about 11 hours driving my rig).
The Obsession gets all of the power through the powered ground board with a pair of rotating contacts.

The Eagle4S has:
1. Power distribution (2 ports that can provide up to 8 amps and 2 ports that can provide up to 3 amps).? There are also 3 ports that have programmable voltage output for dew heaters and fans etc.
2. an onboard SQM that measures the sky quality in a 5 degree FOV of the sky where the Obsession is pointing.? When I record my observations, I like to know the quality of the sky and record that value in a database.
3. an onboard GPS to know time and location of the observations.
4. 8 GB of DDR3 memory to run all my software:
? ? ? a. Stellarium to slew my obsession and help me plan my evening targets
? ? ? b. Pegasus control for my fancy USB hub (operates on 12 volts) that can run each port with a different protocol (USB1 - USB3) at the same time
? ? ?c. My own software written in Visual Basic to change filters, and collect data from all the sensors and Argo Navis and weather station
? ? ?d. Focus motor software control with temperature compensation
? ? ?e. and most importantly, Eagle Manager that allows remote control of the entire system.? The Eable Manager supports a web query so you can ask the Eagle to report all of it's sensor measurements.
A custom wooden bracket mounts the eagle4S where the wheelbarrow handles normally attach on the side opposite the alt encoder mount and points the SQM in the direction of the telescope target.

Argo Navis is tightly integrated with the ServoCat makes remote slewing possible after a 2 star alignment and setting the mode to "From Planetarium".

When I slew to the next target (from my recliner) the ServoCAT servos can use up to 4 amps (I normally see only a couple amps going to the servos).

At the end of the observation session, I copy all the new directories on the Eagle SSD drive to my NAS for post processing at a later date including the database updates that include all the "meta" data (about 50 fields) from the SQM, GPS, Argo Navis metrics, weather station parameters, battery monitor at the time of each image capture.

Post processing will include importing all the harvested data into a database.

Richard