I’m thinking about an IoT Polar Aligner. The main idea is to use a Raspberry Pi W with the camera module to find and detect the North Star and display it on the mobile phone. The final goal is to connect it with servos so that it can automatically align itself. Does anyone know of a similar open source project?

Crosspost: https://mander.xyz/post/20076533

  • @slackj_87English
    3•25 days ago

    There are already several software solutions for polar alignment; NINA, ASI Air, SharpCap, StellarMate etc. Of those I think only NINA is open source. They all use the primary imaging camera and the mount to calculate the polar error and display that for the user to manually correct. So the alignment part is already solved.

    You’d need to figure out a good mounting solution for whatever servo/motor used (and this will likely be very mount dependant) and then just translating NINA’s (or whatever’s) output into actions for the motors.

  • cedric
    1•25 days ago

    @xurxia that seems very close to what a polemaster does, except that the rotation of the mount is manual (via hand controller, computer control, or manually).

    The problem is that the alignment will require adjusting the alt/az screws on the mount to improve the alignment, which isn’t easy to automate (they need to be firmly tightened to avoid any movement, especially with heavy equipment).