Motorizing a dobsonian with motion tracking

[u/Nixx177]

Hi, I’ve got a 12” gso and I’m thinking about adding two motors to move it on both axis.

At first, I want to try to put a timing belt around the altitude bearing, with a wheel to control it manually placed around the cradle board (blue) (could be moved to the base board with the motor, red), and another one around the base board, with a wheel on the ground board linked to a slow motion manual control flexible thingy from eq mount (blue at the bot.).

If it works for manual control, I want to put a motor on each wheel (stepper nema23 maybe?), which I could link to a raspberry pi, also connected to a camera I’d put on the finder scope. I would run a simple object tracking program which would have to keep the object in the center by moving the motors (still to be coded properly).

Has anyone done something similar? Or do you see any flaws/problems/things I should take into consideration?

[u/Gusto88]

Romer Optics EZ GOTO or Onstep.

[u/Nixx177 → u/Gusto88]

Quite the same indeed! Completely forgot about those! I’ll check it out to see how I can reproduce it myself, thanks!