I've spent the last couple of weeks working on a minimalist observatory design. It will be a four-foot cube with a roll-off roof based on 44" full-extension drawer slides. I'm using Home Assistant to do the observatory automation using Shelly wireless relays and a relay control board driving a gear motor/timing belt, SwitchBot Thermo-Hygrometer and Fingerbot (their relays suck), a Tapo (TP-Link) C246D wireless pan/tilt/zoom camera and a Bluetti EL100V2 power station. It will have a 200 watt solar panel sitting next to it keeping the Bluetti charged.
The roof motor control is all wired up and working in Home Assistant with open/close limit switches, a "Parked" sensing and power-enabling switch, and manual jog buttons. The Tapo camera is integrated, displaying views from the Pan/Tilt and Fixed cameras, controls and presets, and I also have full control and monitoring of the Bluetti power station. I'm monitoring the temperature and humidity and turning on crossflow ventilation fans when the roof is closed based on a dew point calculation or high temperature. I'm working on the mechanism to raise and lower the camera so the pan/tilt camera looks through a small polycarbonate dome in the roof when the box is closed up and can still monitor the state of the scope with the fixed camera all the time.
The final part was remote access to the ASIAIR, and we will have that wrung out soon.
I have to buy some materials and get started building the box. To begin I think I will just have it on skids and keep the scope on the tripod so that I can "easily" move it and settle on the best location. Once that is determined I'll set a pier in the ground.
I'm 72 and not as energetic as I used to be, but I expect to start building in the next couple of weeks. More details to come. I suppose I will have to share it all on GitHub.
