On 9/28/2010 Kirk Wallace wrote: > On Mon, 2010-09-27 at 10:42 -0700, Mike Payson wrote: >> > Not technically a PDA, but this would be easy to install in a pendant and >> > should do everything you need: >> > >> > http://andahammer.com/mini3/?PHPSESSID=c47b0c96938c86847ccf80119dab7d42 > > From my brief look at it, it looks ideal (34 GPIO pins, yea). I would be > mounting it, or the display at least, at the focal point of a lens of > the same size as the display area. This will project the image up to a > clear glass panel, tilted 45 degrees to the telescope view. The user > looks straight through the glass to see stars and also the reflection of > the screen. > > (eye)< \ (glass) > (view of screen and star) \ > <==> (lens) > [--] (screen) > ---------------------------- * > | (telescope) | (star) > | | > ---------------------------- > /|\ > / | \ > / | \
Wow, Kirk, as a guy who never got past grinding a mediocre 6inch reflector 50 years ago but still loves skywatching, I love your application. It looks like a winner. Were I in your shoes, I'd pilot this application by running the software on a vanilla low-power motherboard (of which we've had several discussions on this list) and lashing up a display out of whatever was at hand. That way, I'd be sure I could run Kstars and anything else I thought of along the way, I'd have the parallel port, and I could play with display technologies to find what works best. Among other things, this would allow me to keep some mass off the telescope tube. If I decided to start with a PDA, I'd consider running a vnc client on it (just like I'm trying to do on my Insignia Infocast) so I could do the serious processing elsewhere. This was the approach I took some years ago when I was using HP/Compaq iPAQs to prototype first-responder applications at work. Good hunting and please let us know how it works out! Regards, Kent ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ Start uncovering the many advantages of virtual appliances and start using them to simplify application deployment and accelerate your shift to cloud computing. http://p.sf.net/sfu/novell-sfdev2dev _______________________________________________ Emc-users mailing list Emc-users@lists.sourceforge.net https://lists.sourceforge.net/lists/listinfo/emc-users
