PerfectStar B


Fast Motors

My standard focus motors are designed for typical astrophotography needs, meaning that accuracy and high capacity (for heavy duty focusers and large cameras) are more important than speed.  But recently, a friend asked me to make a motor for visual use.  Using a focus motor for visual observing can actually be very helpful because it allows you to adjust focus without touching the telescope, thus avoiding the vibrations that generally happen when you touch a telescope.  The rotary knob on the PerfectStar family focus controllers makes for a very easy transition from direct focusing to motorized focusing.  Backlash compensation also […]


New Focus Control System (Finally) Available

I told you about PerfectStar B some time ago – it’s my new focus control system using bipolar motors instead of the traditional unipolar motors.  And I had intended to put it on my website and start accepting orders back in September, but ran into some software issues that delayed the release just enough to push it into the busiest time of year, so I didn’t get around to updating the website until now, even though I have already shipped a couple of these to existing customers. The “B” in the name refers to its use of/support for bipolar stepper […]


PerfectStar Goes Bipolar

In this case “bipolar” does not refer to a disorder, but to a type of motor.  The current version of PerfectStar, like most focus controllers, uses “unipolar” stepper motors.  The indirect reason for this is that I (and probably most of my competitors) designed the controller to be compatible with existing motors (and for the motor to be compatible with other controllers) despite some significant advantages of bipolar motors over unipolar.  I’ll provide more details on that later, but first, I want to point out some other changes. In the above photo we see the “front” end of the controller. […]