Harmonic Gear Driven Star Tracker

After some more testing of long exposures ive found that the wobble is nearly repeatable throughout all photos, it always makes a U or V shape. I took a time-lapse of the tracker at 5s intervals and found that the output does in fact wobble.

Now working to find the cause of this, my thinking is it is one of the bearing drives. Maybe if they are not dead straight then it could cause the flex cup to oscillate.

After a night out testing how the tracker performed, i managed to get a few samples that are usable (sort of a windy night). I took a 159s (photo with random stars), 140s (single landscape shot of milky-way) and a few 30s exposures (merged 4 of them to get the detailed vertical shot of the milky-way).

with the longer exposures i got some camera vibration either due from the motor or from the wind, or maybe both, or because i just learned that with longer than 30s exposures my camera will take 2 photos back-to-back to help with hot pixels. I will go out again soon and see if i can narrow down what happened! The good thing was 70% of my 30s exposures turned out pin-point with no trails, even the long exposures shot to have no visible trails which means tho tracker worked!

All parts printed and ready for a test tonight! Some parts are in need of minor changes such as; hex nut pocket hole width, bolt head pocket depth, and other minor things to make assembly easier. Photos updated as well.

Once i get some photos from the camera on the tracker i will add another update. Unfortunately there can be a lot of human error when aligning the tracker to Polaris, but i will try my best.