Chuck, David, etc. The Sky Commander is indeed what I have; a bit pricey ($400 or so) but was very plug and play for me; the guys at Astrosystems build the TeleKits with that particular set in mind, and so the ground-board piviot bolt is pre-drilled, the alt. bearing has a flat smooth area for mounting the other encoder, etc. The entire installation took me all of about 15 minutes. The kit (for my dob anyway) consists simply of 2 small optical encoders that have an RJ-11 plug; one mounts into the top of the pivot bolt of your rocker box (you normally have to drill a small hole into the bolt for the encoder to fit down into, then secure it there so it won't slip (in my case with a tiny set screw in the side of the bolt), and is held in place with a small metal bracket to the rocker box; you only need about 3/4" clearance between your mirror box bottom and the rocker box pivot bolt so the mirror box doesn't collide with the encoder as it swings by -- the encoder is pretty skinny). The alt. encoder was attached with double-sided sticky tape to the alt. bearing, and the kit has a long skinny piece of steel that clamps onto the bearing and anchors it to the rocker box with 1 screw (it ends up being a lot more stable than that might sound). The cables consist then of 2 RJ-11 (phone jack) cables that tie together to an RJ-45 (slightly bigger) plug that goes into the top of the "computer" unit -- that's it! The computer unit also has another RJ-11 serial interface to plug into a laptop or other computer if you want to use it with software such as "The Sky", etc; the website even has their own downloadable free software for simple operation if that's what you want. The setup includes instructions for use on fork-mounted, dobsonian, and German equatorially mounted scopes. Because my scope is unusually long (at f/6.25 that comes out to be 100 inches for a 16-inch mirror) the cables are a tad short for my liking, but for most others out there I suspect they are more than adequate. The only thing they really don't address is a decent "holder" for the thing. A lot of people use velcro, but I'm not a real big fan of that. I'll probably end up fabricating some kind of tray that hangs off the back end of the mirror box. As far as being "bulky", I don't know how you could get it much smaller (I suppose it could be a bit thinner and lighter). The documentation is excellent. The controls are fairly intuitive, and the (adjustable)back-lit green lcd has about half the battery drain of competing led models; it's easy to read in the dark, and can actually be operated with gloves on (there's only 6 buttons on the thing). Plugged into an external battery, it has a small heating element in it to keep the display working in very cold temperatures as well. Overall I'm very pleased with it. Hopefully I didn't do the overkill thing with my description here! Rich --- David Dunn <david.dunn@albertsons.com> wrote:

The one that has been tempting me it the Sky Commander. It looks like it might be a little bulky though. Here is the web link. http://skyeng.com/

Dave

-----Original Message----- From: Chuck Hards [mailto:chuckhards@yahoo.com] Sent: Tuesday, January 15, 2002 11:07 AM To: Utah-Astro Subject: [Utah-astronomy] Digital Setting Circles

While we're on the subject, can anyone recommend a commercial DSC package? Rich?

If so, are installation kits available? (Dob, Eq., etc.)

Im not interested in kits that require soldering or electronic component assembly. "Plug 'n Play" is preferred.

Thanks

Chuck

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