My astronomy project:
EQ6 Mount and OnStep driver

Contents:

1. Introduction, EQ6 and OnStep
2. Hardware
3. To be continued

Note:
I take no responsibility or liability for what are written here, you use the information on your own risk!

1, Introduction, EQ6 and OnStep:

Three years ago I rebuilt my EQ mount to a belt drive system. I kept the original driver, that caused me some problem when I moved from Windows to Linux control system. The EQMOD driver in Linux didn't have the function to setup custom gear ratio. I had to change in the code of the driver which I couldn't handle myself. Luckily my friend know how to setup a develop kit into the Raspberry and he guided me how to. Now the EQMOD has developed to 64-bit architecture and with that a lot of changes in the code. One other problem is the original hardware driver has a bug (RA drift compensation) that cause me problem when doing this. All these together force me to make another solution, I plan to replace the internal controller board with the open source OnStep driver.

More to read about OnStep:

• https://onstep.groups.io/g/ main/ wiki/ 3860OnStep
• https://github.com/hjd1964/ OnStepX OnStepX

This is how I rebuilt my EQ6 mount to belt drive: EQ6 mount DIY belt drive.

The original controller board with its driver is installed behind this lid of the EQ6 mount.

Plenty of space to place a new circuit board here.

I will 3D-print a new lid where I can attach brackets for circuit boards and other things.

The original circuit board. The black/red cables are a modification from me to make it better, another DC plug with a lock.

The base lid I had designed long time ago, now I will add all extra I want to have here. But first I must learn more about OnStep and what circuits to use.