Originally Posted by
doorknob
I expect that I can help you put something together that will meet your requirements. I'm thinking that the microcontroller approach will be simpler than the programmable integer divider approach that I mentioned.
Do you have any experience programming microcontrollers (or are you interested in learning)? It doesn't have to be a PIC - something like an Arduino should work as well, and since you can get an already-built-up board you wouldn't have to wire it up from scratch. (I have an Arduino board, although I have not yet worked with it, but it should be fairly straightforward to program it.)
Also, do you need to control anything else along with the motor, or can you dedicate the microcontroller to driving the stepper? And, what kind of controls might you want to have over its operation (or is a simple on/off all that you need)?
BTW, I'm curious about the fork mount that you put together. Did you make it from aluminum or steel or plywood or something else? Do you have a picture or a pointer to some plans?
This is somewhat off topic, but I have a very ambitious long-term plan to build an aluminum, servo-operated, gimballed, two-axis azimuth/elevation fork mount for a small telescope (80mm refractor) that would have an attached digital video camera. My eventual goal is to be able to rapidly slew the telescope in two axes (from horizon to horizon, if necessary) under computer control, so that the telescope and camera can track moving objects in the sky such as birds, aircraft, fireball meteors, satellites, UFOs, and the like. So I'm on the lookout for practical plans for DIY fork assemblies, if you have any suggestions.