But i noticed the standalone mode didn't work; is it normal for this version?
The standalone stuff before this version was never finalised. I've been making changes to it since then to settle on the most versatile approach.
I'll do a more complete write up later, but the gist of it is there are 5 pins involved in the hand controller. The four ST-4 pins are the NESW buttons (simple push button to GND). The fifth pin is the pin named IO0 in the schematic. On the Arduino Mega this is D21, on the AstroEQ PCBs it is pin4 on the GPIO header.
For the basic mode this extra pin is used firstly to detect whether to enter standalone mode, and secondly to control the speed. When the IO0 pin is pulled low, the firmware will enter standalone mode, disable the serial port, initialise the motors, enable sidereal tracking, and then the ST4 pins become NESW buttons. To switch back in the PC/EQMOD mode, simply unplug the power cable and plug back in. The IO0 pin can be pulled low at any time to enter, it doesn't have to be low at power on.
Once in standalone mode the IO0 pin controls the speed - if it is floating, the NESW buttons will move the mount at 2x sidereal speed relative to the stars (1x East, 3x West, 2x North/South), and if it is pulled low the buttons will move the mount at the goto speed as set in the config.
In order to use the standalone mode, the IO0 pin will need to be wired up to your controller.
- On the V4.6 hardware the necessary connections are already made on the PCB.
- For V4.5 you will need to solder a wire between IO0 (pin 4 on the GPIO header) to pin 1 on the ST-4 connector, and also solder a 1k resistor between IO0 and IO2 (pin 2 on the GPIO header).
- For V4.4 do the same as V4.5, but also if you don't already have the ST-4 port installed, solder on the ST-4 connector and solder wires 1:1 mapped between JP1 and JP2 in the PCB
- For V4.3 and earlier there is no GPIO header and/or no ST-4 footprint. If you follow the DIY schematic on the "Build your own" tutorial, you will have to solder wires directly to the correct pins of the MCU socket on the back of the PCB (remove the MCU first!).
There will also at some point in the future be an advanced hand controller which uses the same pins as the basic one. This will require the above resistor mod on older hardware in order to work. Because I understand not everyone will want to make that mod, I am going to add an option in the configuration utility to enable/disable the advanced controller mode so that hardware without the resistor will continue to be compatible with this and future firmware updates.
