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Mount Upgrades
A collection of mount upgrades you can do to improve your setup.
Telescope Upgrades
Collection of telescope upgrades
Miscellaneous DIY Information
Software
DIY Electronic Autofocusers
DIY Dew Heaters
Motorising a mount
One of the common upgrades done to mounts with manual controls is a motor upgrade. Out of the box some cheap mounts don't come with any, so slewing to the desired target and tracking it all needs to be done manually. Sometimes there is an official motor kit av...
Mount Tunes
EQ3 Hypertune
The EQ3-2 from Sky-Watcher and CG-4 from Celestron are great little beginner mounts for lightweight setups. Their performance is acceptable for how little they cost, but there are ways to improve things. It is recommended to regrease the internals every once i...
Adding Motors
The first step in motorising a mount is adding the motors itself. The most common type of motor used in this type of upgrade is a NEMA 17 stepper motor. These types of motors have standardised dimensions and allow a controller to have the motor make precise ch...
Sky-Watcher Crayford focuser 2" 3D printed motor case
curly_cz on thingiverse created an excellent case for a belt driven electronic autofocuser for the Sky-Watcher Crayford 2" focuser commonly found on the EvoStar 72 ED and the N 150/130 PDS. It is just a housing for the motor and a connector, the rest of the el...
Connectors & Cables
Doing things right is hard, especially when it comes to connectors. That is why this summary was created to help out. Power connectors Barrel jacks are extremely common because they are simple, can handle high currents and can survive many mating cycles. D...
OnStep Mount Controller
By far the most common way of making a controller to motorise a mount is by using OnStep. This is an open-source software project aimed at creating an easy to use way of controlling a mount with a phone, computer or handheld controller. Just like with the mot...
Discord Servers
There are a number of Discord servers where people are happy with anwser DIY related questions. General Astro-related DIY: AstroBiscuit: https://discord.gg/XD2HvWPYH6 Telescope making: Observational Astronomy: https://discord.gg/YDveQ2W6mQ OpenAst...
Making An ESP32 Microcontroller Board
The ESP32 series of microcontrollers from Espressif have become very popular among hobbyists and in the astronomy sphere. This page goes over the basics of making a custom PCB that uses an ESP32. You can apply the information here to your projects, whether it ...
Raspberry Pi INDI Network Bridge
The Raspberry Pi is used a lot within amateur astronomy to control all sorts of devices like cameras, mounts and focusers. This is commonly done with the StellerMate (paid) and Astroberry (free) operating systems. However a bottleneck with this method is the s...