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A Community Devoted to the Preservation and Practice of Celestial Navigation and Other Methods of Traditional Wayfinding
Re: Digital Sextant
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2020 Sep 11, 09:37 -0400
From: Don Seltzer
Date: 2020 Sep 11, 09:37 -0400
The sensor is probably an optical encoder. I once toyed with the idea of making a sextant instrumented in that manner. It would have required a 15 bit encoder to resolve 1 arc minute. Absolute encoders of that resolution were prohibitively expensive, particularly in a package that small. Incremental encoders, which would have to be properly zeroed at turn on would be more likely candidates, but would still not be cheap.
The expensive, custom made, bulky electronics package mounted on the sextant does not make a lot of sense. Better to design a bluetooth interface to a smart phone and put all of the functionality into an app.
Don Seltzer
On Thu, Sep 10, 2020 at 12:40 PM Greg Rudzinski <NoReply_Rudzinski@fer3.com> wrote:
Interesting arrangement but... a bit bulky and doesn't sense vertical. I didn't see in manual any description of how the arc sensor functions. Can it take a wave and keep on ticking ? I'm thinking that a digital camera system would be better.
Greg Rudzinski
