Aligning the telescope: How should it work?

[ThisIsJustARandomGuy]

I haven't figured out how I want aligning the telescope to work. I'm currently using the following method, but a better way is needed, obviously:

1. Turn off the power supply to the steppers
2. Manually point the telescope at a star
3. Select that star in Stellarium
4. Click "current object" in the telescope section
5. Click "slew" and wait for the telescope on screen to point at the correct star
6. Reconnect the stepper driver power supply
7. The telescope now knows where it is actually pointing at and can track correctly

Suggestions for the display unit

• [IMPLEMENTED] A button in the menu of the display unit which would turn off the steppers and then ask for the alignment star (which could be selected from a list). Finally it would wait for the user to manually align the telescope. The user would then confirm the alignment and the steppers would turn back on.
• The same button and alignment star selection, but it would expose a way to directly control the two motors (Azimuth/Altitude) without converting to Right Ascension/Declination. After using the display to align the telescope, the user would confirm the alignment and the steppers would turn back on.

Suggestions for Stellarium

• [IMPLEMENTED] Waiting for the first "slew" command sent by Stellarium before turning on the stepper drivers

[ThisIsJustARandomGuy]

There is now a sub-menu called "Set Alignment" within which there is a small list of stars. Select one and the motors of the scope will turn off. Align the telescope manually and click again. If you selected the wrong star, perform a long press of the encoder button to go back. Unfortunately, the alignment will still be lost, since the steppers turn off as soon as a star is selected.

[MartinRobomaze]

Hi, I Recently I got a GOTO scope and looked at it's aligment process. At first it levels itself. It is probably using some gyroscope to do that. After that, it finds north. In this project a gps module can be used to find north. Then it is finding tilt - turns around and measures tilt of the scope. I think this part can be skipped. And after this it chooses two alignment stars. The scope will slew to alignment star and then you would have to put in center the brightest star - the alignment star. I suppose that this is done to improve the precision of object tracking. I assume that some or all of these alignment steps could be implemented in this project. Best regards, Martin.