Re: Re: ATM Microcontroller based telescope driver III

[gjnelson@absamail.co.za]

Martin

I did not realise that there was so little memory available in the 
EEPROM that you are using. That would make it a little more 
difficult. 

The way I understand the tour working is you make a list of objects 
that you want to look at and then open the list and the telescope 
will goto with a press of a button on the handpad. The lists can be 
as long or as short as you like.

Though if the user can upload the lists easily he can make them up as 
he wants. 

Is it not possible to use external memory? I am sorry that I can only 
give ideas I have absolutely no skills in PIC's though I do know that 
they exist. 

Maybe the option you have chosen for a farily comprehensive list will 
be the better option.

Kind regards

Geoff

> 
> 
> 
> 
> >gjnelson@absamail.co.za wrote:
> >
> >The only suggestion I could think of making was to make a simple
> >method of uploading a datafile for a tour of the sky. Similar to
> >Mel's grand tour function in scope.
> 
> Hello Geoff,
> thank you for your nice comments on my project !
> 
> I plan to add a user defined database to the menu.
> The database can be downloaded via RS232 connection into the 4 kBytes
> EEPROM of the controller. The EEPROM is specified to be programmable
> at least 100000 times.
> 
> But only about 1 kByte of the EEPROM can be used for this because the
> software needs most of it for parameters and PWM tables.
> 
> Can you give a suggestion for a good compromise between:
> (1.) Many objects, indexed by numbers and having RA/DEC positions only
> (2.) Not many objects, but individual names and more info to display
> 
> How many objects are usually contained in a 'grand tour' ?
> 
> As an example for (1.) the NGC catalogue will give only positions
> (compressed into 4 bytes per object). Some NGC objects have A/B/C
> suffixes. They must appear as one object only so the NGC number can be
> used as array index to access the position data. As an example for
> (2.) the 64 alignment stars show individual names like 'UMi Alp '
> taking 8 additional bytes each. Every info field added will need 8
> bytes more.
> 
> 
> Best Regards and a happy new year to everybody !
> Martin
> http://martin.cibulski.bei.t-online.de
> 
> 
>