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Marty built his control in a larger project box than I did.
I wish I had done the same. I went to a lot more effort trying to cram the two IC chips, the voltage regulator circuit
and the four reed relays into a smaller box.
Marty seems to be refining his UART/LX200 interface circuit, so instead of showing it here, use the following link to visit
his page: Link to Marty's Guider.exe site
Click on the picture to see a larger image.
As I built my UART I wasn't sure how I would eventually power it, so it wound up with two power imputs. There's a DC plug on
one end to input 12 volts. Inside there's a 7805 voltage to regulator (Marty's design, not mine) to take the 12 volts and output 5v.
Later, I got smart and added the PS/2 plug to draw 5 volts directly from the laptop which will run Guider.exe. The Quickcam also
uses the PS/2 plug for its power. Radio Shack sells a "Y" PS2 plug so
I hope to power both the camera nad the UART from the same computer.
Click on the picture to see a larger image.
Here's an image of the Celestron's CG-5 hand controller/drive corrector openned up. From all evidences,
this a generic controller used on many Chinese clones, including the EQ-4. I used a piece of mouse cable because it was
in my junk box. The grommet came in handy. At one end I used a eight-pin CAT connector because I had an eight pin crimping tool. A six connector
phone connector would serve. The board that holds the two RA and two DEC push buttons is folded back.
Click on the picture to see a larger image.
Here's a close up of the tap from the UART into push button board. You can see my sloppy solder and a near solder bridge. Later, I moved these taps to the back of
the switches to avoid solder bridges.
Click on the picture to see a larger image.
Because I don't like to mess with a lot of cabling in the dark unless I have to,
I kept the cable coming from the hand control short and added a 8-pin plug. I use a CAT-5 union (Radio Shack again) to connect to a 15-foot cable
coming from the UART interface.
Click on the picture to see a larger image.