Category Archives: barn door tracker

Hackaday Podcast Ep2 – Curious Gadgets And The FPGA Brain Trust

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In this week’s podcast, editors Elliot Williams and Mike Szczys look back on favorite hacks and articles from the week. Highlights include a deep dive in barn-door telescope trackers, listening in on mains power, the backstory of a supercomputer inventor, and crazy test practices with new jet engine designs. We discuss some of our favorite circuit sculptures, and look at a new textile-based computer and an old server-based one.

This week, a round table of who’s-who in the Open Source FPGA movement discusses what’s next in 2019. David Shah, Clifford Wolf, Piotr Esden-Tempski, and Tim Ansel spoke with Elliot during …read more

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DIY Guided Telescope Mount Tracks Like a Barn Door

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Astrophotography is an expensive hobby. When assembling even a basic setup consisting of a telescope, camera, guiding equipment and mount, you can easily end up with several thousand dollars worth of gear. To reduce the monetary sting a little, [td0g] has come up with an innovative homebrew mount and guiding solution that could be assembled by almost any dedicated amateur, with the parts cost estimated around $100. The accuracy required to obtain high-quality astrophotographs is quite demanding, so we’re impressed with what he’s been able to achieve on a limited budget.

The inspiration for this design comes from an incredibly …read more

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Arduino Star Tracker Raises the Bar

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Proving that astrophotography doesn’t have to break the bank, [Gerald Gattringer] has recently documented his DIY “barn door” style star tracker which is built almost entirely from scratch. Short of the Arduino and stepper motor, all the components were either made by hand or are standard hardware store finds.

The build starts with three aluminum plates which [Gerald] cut by hand with an angle grinder. He then drilled all the necessary screw holes and a rectangular opening for the threaded rod to pass through. He even used epoxy to mount a nut to the bottom plate which would eventually attach …read more

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Build This Barn Door Tracker Today, Take Stunning Shots of the Galaxy Tonight

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Think you need some fancy equipment to get stunning shots of the night sky? Surely those long-exposure shots that show the Milky Way in all its glory take expensive telescopes with complicated motor-driven equatorial mounts, right? Guess again – you can slap together this simple barn door tracker for a DSLR for a couple of bucks and by wowing people with your astrophotography prowess tonight.

Those stunning, deeply saturated shots of our galaxy require a way to cancel out the Earth’s movement, lest star trails ruin your long exposure shots. Enter the barn door tracker, a simple device to let …read more

Continue reading Build This Barn Door Tracker Today, Take Stunning Shots of the Galaxy Tonight→

Build This Barn Door Tracker Today, Take Stunning Shots of the Galaxy Tonight

Posted on by

Think you need some fancy equipment to get stunning shots of the night sky? Surely those long-exposure shots that show the Milky Way in all its glory take expensive telescopes with complicated motor-driven equatorial mounts, right? Guess again – you can slap together this simple barn door tracker for a DSLR for a couple of bucks and by wowing people with your astrophotography prowess tonight.

Those stunning, deeply saturated shots of our galaxy require a way to cancel out the Earth’s movement, lest star trails ruin your long exposure shots. Enter the barn door tracker, a simple device to let …read more

Continue reading Build This Barn Door Tracker Today, Take Stunning Shots of the Galaxy Tonight→