It took a few months & a lot of chips, but the Dobsonian finally worked. Finally grounded the circuit board to the structure & that seems to have worked. The PCM modulation eliminated all glitches.

The movement isn't as precise as hoped. The only benefit we're probably getting is some stiffness to the movement when U want to manually move it. Can take 3 shots of the moon & track it with the RC controller in the time of another 3 shots.

There's no shaking at all.

1 other thing. Here's the movie of yesterday's still photos. 1 flight was stable enough to get a movie out of it. Unfortunately, it wasn't the 3deg/sec one.

Hi res still photo movie (0 min 39 sec)

The answer is yes. There is an exposed shutter signal on the A480's main board U can solder very carefully. With that out of the way, our first high resolution photos from space in over a year came down.

Programmed 2 panoramas at 30m. 6deg/sec & 3deg/sec. Still programming & praying to get the right shot. It's tempting to get one of these http://www.sparkfun.com/commerce/pro...oducts_id=9334 UART cameras. These could squeeze a video downlink on the 2.4Ghz band with no risk of jamming GPS like 900Mhz.

On tomorrow's manifest, it's more photography of ... U Know. Where....Continue Reading

So there isn't going to be CHDK support for the Canon A480. Your best option is to somehow port just what you need from an older CHDK to it or solder the shutter button.

Now some notes from your first flight in over a month.

13 satellites was the rule. No anomalies with the vehicle. The days of hair raising manual saves R rare.

This was the first high resolution still photography from the tri rotor. Obviously very blurry at night. Since vibration isn't that bad, attitude hold might work. The soldered shutter button no longer works, which leaves U with CHDK's crummy 0.25fps. It's not the connection. The days of 1fps R over. The sensor is so noisy, you're better off using video at night.

Tri rotor high res imaging (0 min 39 sec)

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