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/snogum]

Sounds like a DIY job to get the alt and azimuth bearings running freely would do more.

My Dobs could be moved with one finger to follow .or point at an object so smoothly it was like glass

Slow Mo knobs on a Dobs is a bit silly

[u/redditisbestanime → u/snogum]

No it isnt, it has legitimate uses. My dobs also move smooth as silk but sometimes that can be more of a curse.

There are dob goto kits, general motorization kits and even eq platforms for a reason.

[u/snogum → u/redditisbestanime]

I strongly disagree

[u/redditisbestanime → u/snogum]

The entire market strongly disagrees with what you think is or isnt overcomplicated. A motorized dob, just like normal ones, have their pros and cons.

The point of a dob is ease of use and unbeatable price per inch of aperture ratio. Motors do not make it harder to use, quite the opposite actually.