The problem: My childhood home blocks Polaris, the north star, which is important for polar aligning the mount for my telescope. The alternative way to align the mount is through a 3-star alignment. The mount provides the 3 stars, and since I do not know where they are in the sky, I struggle to align my mount.

The solution: I built a gimballed laser prototype to point out the stars. The inputs are the right ascension (RA) and declination (DEC). Since RA and DEC are effectively fixed, the prototype uses GPS to compute where the laser pointer is, and where it needs to move (with the help of some orbital mechanics), to point out the star with the laser. An overview slide deck is below.

Sky-Trcker-v1Download

The video demo is below:

My favorite aspect of this project was the stateflow operation of the menus. I used some of the skills I picked up from my internship programming PLCs and applied it here. The diagram is below:

A friendly reminder to NEVER point a laser in anyone’s eyes or at ANY land/sea/air vehicle.