Putting the "Ek" in "Geek"
Digital Setting Circles
Bluetooth Digital Setting Circles
May 31st
Craig Combes has taken my Digital Setting Circles project and adapted it for bluetooth! I’ve added his project description to my Digital Setting Circles pages. You can see it here.
Thanks, Craig!
Soldering 101
May 8th
For a surprising number of folks, my Digital Setting Circles project is their first introduction to electronics construction techniques–mainly, the art of soldering. If you’ve never seen it done correctly, soldering can be an intimidating prospect. Someone asked me the other day whether there were any YouTube videos of someone constructing my project (none that I know of). That got me thinking–there must be plenty of “how to solder” videos around. So I checked, and sure enough, YouTube has quite a few of them.
Sneak Preview: New ASCOM Driver
Oct 29th
Update: Yang reported an error with the driver not handling COM ports other than COM1. I think I’ve corrected that issue, so if you had the same problem, uninstall the driver, redownload it, and reinstall and give it a whirl.
If you’re using this new driver, please leave me a comment below and let me know.
I’ve been working on an updated ASCOM driver for my digital setting circles project for quite some time now. Yeah, I’m slow. At any rate, it’s just about ready for prime time, but I could use some beta testers to give it a whirl. (See below for a link to the download.)
What’s new, you ask? Well, I rewrote the thing, basically. It still bears some resemblance to the old driver, but it also now includes syncing and slewing capabilities, and an upgraded interface for performing the alignment process.
Netbooks for Astronomy?
Oct 18th
Being a techie kind of a guy, you’d think I’d be more abreast of the latest in computer hardware and gadgets. But up until a few months ago, I was pathetically unaware of the new class of computer hardware known as the netbook.
Netbooks first popped up on my radar screen when I stumbled upon an article describing how somebody was successfully running Mac OS X on theirs. That was (and still is) intriguing to me–OS X is supposed to be pretty slick, but I’ve always been put off by the Mac price tag. But I digress.
SENA Bluetooth Adapters with Digital Setting Circles
May 25th
Eddie from Australia wrote me recently to tell me about his success using a serial-to-bluetooth adapter to connect his Digital Setting Circles board to his laptop (avoiding the serial cable which is an obvious tripping hazard, especially in the dark during an observing session). Eddie is using the SENA Parani-SD 200 serial-to-bluetooth adapter connected to the DSC board, and the SENA Parani UD100 USB-to-bluetooth adapter with his laptop.
A Box for the Digital Setting Circles Board
May 25th
A question from a builder of my Digital Setting Circles project caused me to notice a plastic enclosure that another builder had used to contain the circuit board for that project. Oscar’s web page gives a nice narrative on how he built my project, and this page shows a nice enclosure with a clear plastic top he used for the project. The box came from Jameco, and it appears to be part no. 141832. Make no mistake–you’ll have to cut holes in the sides for the serial connector, encoder connectors, and battery connector, but at least the box is about the right size and looks to be easy to work with. I’m sure there are other suitable enclosures out there, as well.
If you’ve used another enclosure and liked the results, leave a comment below and tell me about it.
Adapting to USB…
Dec 21st
A comment that I receive frequently about my Digital Setting Circles project concerns the fact that it uses a serial port rather than a USB port. I guess manufacturers don’t typically include serial ports on notebook computers or PDAs anymore. In my own defense, USB was just coming into common use when I designed this circuit about ten years ago, and USB is more complicated and expensive to implement.
USB For Your Digital Setting Circles
Oct 21st
Jimbo Harris was good enough to tell me about his USB modification of my digital setting circles project. Jim found the FTDI TTL232R and was able to adapt his DSC interface to communicate via (and draw power from) the USB port.
