ATM ? Motorized Chair for binoculars?

["Jan and Rod Shea" <jnrshea@attbi.com>]

Hi All,

Has anyone out there built something like a motorized table that you could
put a reclining lawn chair on, so you could slew easily in azimuth, while
lying down on said chair?  The idea would be to use it with hand held
binoculars, with an option of putting some kind of bino mount on the table.

I'm thinking of something like the azimuth part of a dob base, with cleats
to hold the chair in place, that would be driven with a cannibalized
rechargeable drill.  This would be attached to either a molded epoxy worm
gear setup, or a friction roller drive.  The drill could be mounted on what
would normally be the bottom of the rocker box, or could even be attached to
the drive gears by a flexible shaft.  The drill I have in mind seems to have
a separable speed control and forward/reverse switch, that you could put
into a box, to hold in your hand.

It doesn't need to track, but it would be fun/useful if it could slew
reasonably quickly.  I do think variable speed would be useful, given the
mass involved, to avoid acceleration and deceleration putting too much
strain on the system, and maybe launching you out of the chair.

Does anyone know of an inexpensive and/or easily built 12VDC control circuit
for surplus steppers or servos that a non EE could make work for this?

Thanks,

Rod