EQ-5 / CG-5 PIC Microcontroller based hand controller.
This is a DIY project to make a replacement hand controller for the EQ-5 equatorial mount.
The standard hand controller is vulnerable to overvoltage or reverse voltage destroying the 40 Pin microcontroller. It isn't possible to obtain a replacement microcontroller or even a hand controller, which results in having to buy the whole unit, stepper motors and all once again.
This project gets round that problem by allowing you to build your own replacement hand controller.
The Features include:
Smoother half step driving (approx.
20 steps per second) rather than the standard full step method (10
steps/sec)
Faster slew rates of up to 25x Sidereal rate.
The
ability to independantly switch the RA or DEC slew buttons... Very
useful when swapping between the eyepiece and webcam view.
Free
modifiable hex and source code for the PIC16F627(A)
Click here (or the image) for more details