Smart Cover of a Night-time Telescope for Day-time Use

by cslab-upm in Circuits > Sensors

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Smart Cover of a Night-time Telescope for Day-time Use

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This device is a smart cover for a telescope that opens and closes according to the time of day. The design can be parameterized so it can be adapted to telescopes of any size. Follow the steps!

3D Mechanical Design

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The 3D mechanical design has been carried out in Autodesk Inventor. The exploded view is shown in this figure.

The mechanical design is based on an iris-type mechanism.

Adapting the Design to a Different Size of Telescope

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In order to adapt the mechanism to any size of telescope, it is necessary to install Autodesk Inventor and to change the parameter values from the Excel spreadsheet.

Building the PCB

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The PCB has been designed with Eagle program. The PCB schematics can be found in the project files.

Electronics Housing/Box

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The PCB is enclosed in a box for protection. This box has been made using 3D printing.

Watch the Video!

Firmware, PCB schematics, and mechanical design can be downloaded from GitHub (https://github.com/cslab-upm/smart-cover)