Arduino!

Such a long time since last post, and so many adventures..... AO 51 has passed away :(, 10 meters has come alive(!!), and I acquired an 8+ft aluminum satellite dish which I plan to turn into a radio telescope. Very exciting! I also acquired a SignalHound analyzer which I intend to use as my initial radio telescope receiver,

and just a few days ago started playing with a Arduino Uno control system.

I am thinking of welding/building an Az-El mount for the dish and using the Arduino or something like it to point the dish in the correct direction. Ideally I will be able to input the declination and right ascension of an object, have a program identify the current universal time and the location in the current sky of the object, calculate the position of the azimuth and elevation rotors, activate the motors and point the dish at the right spot, and then track the object as it circles the sky. I think I have a basic grasp of how to do the motors and how to let the program know where the dish is pointing at any particular time, but the other aspects are going to take some work. But that is a lot of the fun!