I'm using a Raspberry Pi with a GY-80 orientation sensor to turn my basic SkyWatcher EQ2 mount into a computer assisted "Push To" telescope - which can pass this information to planetarium software like SkySafari on my iPad/iPhone. To do this I've written a little Python script (telescope_server.py) which runs on the Raspberry Pi, and translates the orientation sensor information into RA/Dec angles. The Raspberry Pi listens to Meade LX200 (or Nexstar) serial protocol commands received over TCP/IP, and responds with the orientation information.
SkySafari Plus v4, showing telescope direction from a Raspberry Pi |
Indoor testing has gone well so far... I can rotate the Raspberry Pi and watch the blue cross-hairs on SkySafari change position. The locations look sensible (and drift naturally due to sidereal rotation). There is a bit of jitter which may need some smoothing.
Part of the idea came from reading how easy it is to have SkySafari talking to telescope via a Raspberry Pi running a WiFi to serial port bridge (similar blog post), mimicking SkySafari's expensive but neat SkyFi box. I was also impressed with Simon Box's instrumented Dobsonian telescope (measuring altitude-azimuth angles directly) connected to Stellarium (Update: and this similar instrumented telescope project called scopebox), and Leon Rozengarten's project building an Arduino telescope controller using the HMC6352 and ADXL345 sensors (video, code).
This project meant integrating lots of different stuff - serial communication protocols, I2C sensor chips, Inertial measurement unit (IMU) / Attitude and heading reference system (AHRS) calculations, quaternion mathematics for rotations, sidereal time, angle conversions, etc. Here are a few notes... my Python script telescope_server.py is on GitHub.