I messaged email for that TSC Raspian RPI3 image thank you! I am attending an out of town conference early next week but I will take a look at it as soon as possible.

Rob I appreciated your comments about sizing and other considerations for steppers. I have a garage sale LX3 8 inch SCT that I have done a full tear down on. I was able to replace a connector and the power supply and restore it to full electronic functionality. l think it is probably worth keeping it intact as is, given that even old hand controller still works, but I thought while having it torn down might allow me to play with a stepper and see how RPI tracking might work. I suspect something in the NEMA-17 15:1 as recommended might handle the load just fine properly balanced but if I were investing already in a geared stepper maybe a 23 would be good for other experimentation.THe phidgets board I want to have anyway has isolation and safety features.

After attempting to image on ALT/AZ on a wedge for abit I am at that point many people arrive where they feel they want to drop the money for an ATLAS or CGEM or such more robust mount. I frankly would rather use that investment as an opportunity to fashion a custom mount at my fixed dark sky location. Portability is not an issue. I would love to build something hardware wise simiar to this astro.neutral.org/homemade-diy-gem-telescope-mount.shtml using rpi stepper control.

I have access to a motivated and talented machinst who owns a professional shop with astronomy interest but no experience in mount design. Have any of you seen a ATM mount design you love that would support payload similar to the ATLAS or CGEM mounts that I could use as a good starting point to specify my own design? I liked the demo of the TSC GUI and the fact it still operated with Kstars etc.

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