Compustar output for Dome support

10th December 2019: Updated for firmware 1.90!

Beware! This is a pretty technical post. Reason is, these informations are useful to everyone who wants to build an automated dome controller for the Compustar. Therefore, useful to no one, I guess…

Compustar 64K firmwares, starting with version 1.80, output a dataframe that can be used to …

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An ASCOM driver for the Celestron Compustar

Update 17th January 2020: new version 1.3!

After a few versions of the Compustar firmware that I used as a way to better understand the intricacies of the Compustar firmware, I was ready for the major task of adding enough support to implement a full ASCOM driver to connect the Compustar to a modern PC …

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Hardware modifications for the Celestron Compustar

In this post I’m describing all the hardware modification that can be done to the Celestron Compustar to improve or enhance its operation. The first of these modifications was previously posted in the “New Compustar Firmware” post, but it has been now moved here.

A non volatile memory AND real time clock for the Compustar …

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The Compustar schematics. Part 2: the display board

This is the second part of the Celestron Compustar schematics. You can find Part 1 here: https://www.aemfoto.it/wp/2017/05/31/the-compustar-schematics-part-1-the-microprocessor-board/.

As I did in part 1, since there is no silk screen on the board, the designators (IC1, R1, and so on…) are just made up, and may also be quite randomly assigned. Moreover, I’ve not put in the …

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The Compustar schematics. Part 1: the microprocessor board

One of the things I’ve made to understand how the Compustar works is to reverse engineer its schematics.

Now I’m publishing this schematic and a 3D rendering of the board both to explain in little more details how it works and to aid anyone who has to repair it. This will be a two part …

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New Compustar Firmware

Update 27th December, 2017:new version 1.70!
Update 29th March 2018: new version 1.71!
Update 19th December 2018: new version 1.80!
Update 28th November 2019: new version 1.90!

One of the reasons that made me write the Compustar Emulator (see here for the full post) was that I wanted to make changes and …

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Compustar emulator

Update 6th December, 2017: new version 1.09!
Update 27th December, 2018: new version 1.10!
Update 12th November, 2019: new version 1.11!

Don’t you know that feeling, when you just want to do something, but not enough to start actually doing it…. and then something else make you think again to that project, but …

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Canon 5D and 350D/Rebel XT driver/library for Windows 7/8/8.1/10 64bit

Last update: 5 January 2021

I used the original Canon library (and in particular the Canon Utilities software) on my old Acer Ferrari PC witth Windows XP for nearly 10 years without any problem, and I was very happy about that. But a couple of years ago I moved to a more modern Windows 7 …

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EqPad: an Arduino joystick for Eqmod

Using regularly EqAscom to drive our EQ6 mount, we found the necessity to move the telescope in an easy way without having to use the PC keyboard or mouse. Since EqAscom can use a joystick to do this, we realized a dedicated joystick.

 

Mode of operation

In addition to the standard four movement keys …

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