Announcing the HomeBrew Gen3!
This is a printed circuit board (PCB) based design for a HomeBrew interface to Celestron telescope AUX ports. The base design consists of the PCB with an ESP32 DevKit-V1 module and assorted interfacing parts, and provides 2.4GHz WiFi, classic Bluetooth, and Mount-USB interfaces to the telescope, as well as an optional GPS receiver. Fully compatible with CPWI, SkyPortal, and SkySafari+/Pro apps.
Unlike most previous HomeBrew designs, this one gathers in the past two years of experience-gained, and the resulting design works on all Celestron mounts with AUX ports. Or at least all of the ones I've tried it on thus far!
This includes the venerable Nexstar-GPS (NXGPS) mount from the early 2000s, on which this device works with CPWI, SkyPortal, and SkySafari+/Pro, unlike Celestron's own WiFi devices. A variation of this project also fully supports StarSense AutoAlign on that same mount, as well as on all others.
Here's what it looks like, assembled but not packaged in any way:
That's the "basic" version, with a ton of features and solid functionality. Suitable for almost everything. A GPS receiver can also be plugged into the 4-pin header on it if desired.
A pair of PCBs can be combined to produce a dual AUX bus version, known as a Relay or Bridge device. This is the configuration that is most useful on old mounts like the Nexstar-GPS, because it enables a StarSense HC and Camera to be plugged into the "Relay" side and work with old mounts. It is shown here with the optional BN-180 GPS receiver attached:
Edited by mlord, 10 December 2022 - 09:18 AM.