Holiday weekend fun

So I sit here downing a Coors light and putting the finishing touches on the hand controller box for my DIY motorized focuser. I had posted a link a long time ago but tabled the project. After imaging Jupiter the other night with the DBK camera, I decided a motorized focuser was not a luxury item, but rather was an essential needed device. I still think that my final images were a little soft on the focus, so hopefully this will remedy that. Looking at the JMI MotoFocus designs, I figured that the price was just too prohibitive, and since I am always on a low budget, decided to go the DIY route explained in the following two links:

http://emediadesigns.com/emediadesigns.com/focuser/

http://www.cloudynights.com/ubbthreads/showflat.php?Cat=&Board=nexstar&Number=5038166&Forum=,,,,f36,,,,&Words=focuser&Searchpage=4&Limit=25&Main=5038166&Search=true&where=sub&Name=&daterange=1&newerval=&newertype=w&olderval=1&oldertype=w&bodyprev=#Post5038166

I had a bunch of various parts laying around so I decided to tackle the hand controller, which I am glad to report is complete. It really was pretty easy, but as I found out earlier soldering is a frangible skill. After scalding the hell out of my thumb on the iron, I decided I need to do it more often (incident occurred pre Coors light BTW). Only deviation from the above mentioned plans is that I decided to mount the battery container on the outside of the box so that I would not have to unscrew the cover plate if I needed to change the batteries. Being clumsy I also decided to make the box bigger so that I could manipulate the controls easier in the dark. I am pretty happy with the results, now all I have to do is cannibalize a phone or ethernet cable and attach some mono plugs. I then need to obtain a servo and cut the stops out of it so it will work in full rotation. Fashion a mounting bracket to connect to scope and I will be in business at a quarter of the cost of the JMI unit.

I will post updates as I complete the project.