That's a pretty cool project! I've been considering building a GPS module for my 4se. Of course the stock celestron one would work fine in this case, but if I can build one it'd be a fraction of the cost. I'm just not sure if the protocol for the communications between the GPS and the nexstar chips is known. I'll have to dig into that and see if anyone else has done so. An added benefit of making a custom one is I could also have a small screen that could display the GPS info right at the scope without needing to go through menus to get to it. Although it's not often needed, for using my friends software, SatTraker, it does need the GPS coordinates to help with the maths to track I suppose.
should be easy enough to pull the serial protocol straight from the GPS module for parsing and displaying the details. never tried, but believe it is pretty standard. i did a quick search on google and appears to be plenty of HowTos
Jack of all trades Dave! pretty cool, lots of research on the web very resourceful.
Cheers Jason, nice when things come together!
Awesome MacGyver job there, Dave! Glad you got it going again...hope you're having a great week mate...peeing down here as usual! LoL! :)
Thanks Steve, weather not much better here for astro, no rain, but lots of broken cloud. Hope you clear up soon!
That's a pretty cool project! I've been considering building a GPS module for my 4se. Of course the stock celestron one would work fine in this case, but if I can build one it'd be a fraction of the cost. I'm just not sure if the protocol for the communications between the GPS and the nexstar chips is known. I'll have to dig into that and see if anyone else has done so.
An added benefit of making a custom one is I could also have a small screen that could display the GPS info right at the scope without needing to go through menus to get to it.
Although it's not often needed, for using my friends software, SatTraker, it does need the GPS coordinates to help with the maths to track I suppose.
should be easy enough to pull the serial protocol straight from the GPS module for parsing and displaying the details. never tried, but believe it is pretty standard. i did a quick search on google and appears to be plenty of HowTos
Thanks, the battery is MS412FE sii. It is 3v 1ma rechargeable. I am replacing with ML2032 65ma rechargeable.
@@lraeorion thanks for the info! I'll have to order a couple up as the other GPS unit is also playing up.