Project Description
Our interdisciplinary team (consisting of Computer Science, Mechanical Engineering and Electrical Engineering students) was tasked with designing an open-source scale model of the current telescope that exists at the UCF Robinson Observatory on Ara Drive. The existing 20” telescope, manufactured by RC Optical Systems, is currently offline due to issues with the control hardware, firmware and likely software configuration. It was also observed that the telescope produced blurred images when tracking stellar bodies. The current telsecope control box is about 10 years old and is believed to be the root of the problem. The control box is proprietary and there is only one single individual that services this equipment who must be flown out at a significant expense for any repairs. Our scale model controller should be designed to be capable of serving as a 1-to-1 replacement for the existing proprietary hardware. In addition, it will allow a second senior design team to follow behind us and use the scale model as reference to perform rehabilitation work on the Robinson Observatory. Lastly, the scale model will be open source, meaning that hobyist astronomers will be able to recreate a fully functional, computerized telescope mount at a much lower cost than has been traditionally available.
