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Pier - DDM85 interface


palothes

Question

Hi all,

 

I am now planning the construction of a permanent observatory near Madrid.  I have preselected the DDM85 mount and I would like to share with you some doubts.

 

- Which method do you used to interface the concrete pillar with the mount?. In some observatories I saw the typical 3 long screws embedded in the concrete to which an intermediate levelling plate (not provided) is attached and over this the DDM85 plate. I find this setup not satisfactory since is connecting your extremely well machined (and expensive) mount over something that can be affected by differential thermal expansions etc. 

 

- What do you think is the best way to interface this mount to the concrete pillar?

- Is that crutial the leveling of the mount?. After all the polar axis in independently adjusted.

- I am thinking about a 3.5 meter pillar of 40cm in diameter with 1x1x1 basement. Do you think is adequate?

- Is there anybody using Linux to control de mount. Any plans to support it from ASA?

 

Many thanks in advance,

 

Pedro

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Hi Pedro,

 

To attach the mount on the pillar, I use a home-made pier:

gallery_47_9_13310.jpg

 

My pillar is 5meters and 30cm in diameter. And I have no problem wit it.

 

I should try to use Autoslew under Wine. But anyway, it will be of limited interest as I plan to use Sequence, which means MaximDL and Pinpoint. Running all this stuff under Wine is a very complicated problem.

 

Best regards.

 

Bernard

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Many thanks Bernard, very interesting your mount. Congratulations!.

 

I would like to know if there are any plans from ASA to somehow support Linux natively in the future. Or at least document the API with the mount so others could develop drivers for it.

Running ASA software using Wine would be indeed a complex thinhg to do.

 

Thanks again,

 

Pedro

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Hi Pedro,

 

Linux would be an interesting piece to do, but with only Autoslew running there it wouldn't help that much, would it? MaximDL, Pinpoint also would need some sort of Linux counterpart (I know, there are some pieces of software out there). I presonally would, at this point, miss all the scripting offered by ASCOM, as INDI doesn't look that complete to me right now.

 

But hey, Autoslew looks like a VisualBasic.NET application, so it should be relatively easy to compile using Mono for Linux ;)

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