If there is sufficient interest I will gladly share the methods I am using on this project. Solve the engineering problems for the desktop toy servo rigging and the production system is just a few tweaks away from success. If you master this technique then there are off-the-shelf devices that use much larger steppers and servos which are commanded almost exactly the same way. Not a big deal.Īs far as the MiniSSC goes if there is anybody interested in tooling around with this device using PERL I would recommend the modules Win32-SerialPort-0.19 or Device::SerialPort. Aside from fully decomposing the source code for Stellarium's telescope RA/DEC computations I have come up with reasonably close numbers that say I am on the right track. I am using Astro::Coord and Astro::Time (J2000) to do the bulk of the translations. Incidentally, PERL has some rather nifty modules to aid in this endeavor. Given side benefit of Stellarium's eye candy I think this is a better design choice than to brute force do computations for the Sun Az and El. Now, rather than poking CTRL+1 I would rather script this action to get the desired position updates to the solar arrays. So, while it may seem totally rediculous to command a 'telescope' to track this way it is completely reasonable to do so with devices that are intended to gather maximum solar energy. Stellarium uses good enough models to keep a home brew of these devices pointed the right direction reasonably well.

I am looking for ways to command solar arrays, photovoltaic or reflective, to track the Sun through the course of the day. Ok, let me get you guys thinking outside the box.

Stellarium telescope control dobsonion