Night Sky Hacks 6/2/2026

[davehun]

Telescopes and Hacking

Plas Bodfa has a great selection after telescopes Charles who many of you have met / know has been doing some work with them and their equipment is ready to be taken to the next level.

The observatory would like to add some computer control to their growing collection to scopes to make finding and following space objects much quicker and simpler for the volunteer hosts and also allow some deep space imaging maybe even remote control so star gazing from the couch.

What's the plan?

Meet here at 7pm. We will start with a site tour.

Bring along your experience, laptop and pi's, rs232 adapters, soldering irons cabling kits etc and we will take a look at a few bits of software the hardware and see how far we can get.
There is a limited amount of space onsite but its covered and has power available.
This is some of the software that we would like to checkout:

• indi
• kstars
• astroberry

If the weather is good enough we will set up some scopes outside and see what we can pick up from outside
We will have some 3d printed telescopes and some astronomical cameras to look at as well as the more conventional Mead scopes

Equipment

@sixbitglitch can you add some details

Follow ups

We will have the opportunity to follow up in the future and if anyone is interested in becoming a volunteer scope host

[sixbitglitch]

The LX200 Scope

It is a Meade LX200 10" ACF

There is no GPS, i think its a early version of the forks

Mount

The motors all work, but no mechanical servicing has been done on them.
The RA axis manual micro adjustor knob slips and doesnt work.
The DEC axis manual micro adjustor knob works fine
Both axis locks work fine

Front Panel/Board

It has had its main io/power board/frontpanel replace by me for the slightly new and more robust version (still 90s)
I think it would be sane to check all the caps given age.
This is the power / io board i think we have

Old meades often blow there boards as they ask for 18v but lots of old power supplies supply over 20 when in use (im not good with power, dont ask me why). While testing it have been driving it with 16V with a chunky battery bank as i have also read that running them as low as 12v with higher amp capable power supply is a thing. What the actual requirements are im not sure, but it was working really nice with a power bank i have that chucks out 5-20v for laptops, and i was using it at 16V.

Focus

Focus works, but its rough, there is a focus motor kit that we have, but it might need some bolts etc.

Handbox

The handbox sadly exploded last time it was turned on. Tantalums nuked the 80s membrane ribbon to the keypad (which was already half broken), i will keep eye on ebay, but they dont often come up and are crazy expensive. I'd hedge our bets one making our own custom one would be easier in the long run :D

as seen in this post i just found today..... dammit

Control

There is a computer control port on it. and in a box somewhere i do have the usb to serial cable for this scope.

If I cant find it i may get some thing more old school... with a nice DB9 :D
https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/233717418648

I have once had it moving manually with this cable using ascom drivers and meade official drivers, all under windows at the time... sadly. I think i got stellarium to drive it too.

There is also a product called AutoFI that can be using as a wireless connection to controlling the scope

I will make sure there is one of the option there for the 6th, ideally the RS232 cable for trying stuff

Optics

The optics are in good condition, and a guy from anglsea astro brought his fancy SCT collomation camera to check collomation and and it should be good

We have field flattner lens and adapters for sony, cmount and eye piece cameras.

Future Uses

I personally have a SeeStar S50

For accessibilty when working with groups its perfect to be honest. Multiple tablets can be handed around all showing a feed from the scope and anyone can point and move using a map.

This would be the dream!

There is Fibre Internet and Wifi at the site