Motorized Flat Panel
Overview
A fully automated flat panel that lives on your telescope.
Flats are the most tedious part of an imaging session, and the easiest to put off until you are half asleep. This motorized flat panel stays mounted on your scope and captures them for you from start to finish, with nothing to hold up, drape over, or remember.
It opens and closes on command, sets its own brightness, and is fully ASCOM-compatible, so it drops straight into your NINA sequence. A full night, flats included, can run completely unattended.
The unit shown in these renders is the AT-65, built to fit 65mm refractors like the ZWO FF65 APO and Askar 65PHQ.
What it does
- Opens and closes automatically from your imaging sequence
- Self-adjusting brightness for consistent, repeatable flats
- Fully ASCOM-compatible, no manual steps and no babysitting
- Even, uniform illumination across the whole panel
- Stays mounted on the scope, set it once and leave it
- Compact, self-contained, and tidy on the rig
Why I built it
Taking flats was always the improvised step in my setup, a t-shirt over the scope or a tablet showing a white screen. It works, but it means being at the telescope at the end of every session. The rest of my rig already runs on its own, so I built a panel that handles flats the same way.
Status
It is an active build in progress. Right now I am deep in prototyping, designing and testing the hardware to make it reliable enough to run unattended, night after night. It is not ready to ship yet, but it gets closer with every iteration, and I am sharing the milestones along the way.
Want one for your scope?
Right now the AT-65 fits 65mm refractors. If you image with something else, tell me what you have and I will work toward a panel that fits it. Measure the outer diameter of your dew shield in millimeters, drop it below with your email, and I will let you know when there is one for your scope.
Or join the Discord for progress and first looks.
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