Doug (me) gave a presentation on "Controlling telescopes with Linux". I brought in my Discovery 15 inch Truss Dobsonian telescope and hooked up a Linux (Fedora) laptop running Kstars to my Argo Navis (http://www.wildcard-innovations.com.au/) Digital Telescope Computer which is connected to sensors on the telescope. As the telescope is moved, the Argo NAvis DTC updates the Kstars planetarium display.

I talked about the Kstars Open Source project and how I got involved by requesting the developers add support for the Argo Navis DTC. The device driver developer Jasem, located in Kuwait, was very receptive to adding hardware support for my DTC and it only took about a week to implement support for the Argo Navis. I also helped him debug a "Meade" telescope driver. The next release of KDE will include the addition of Argo Navis support and the updated Meade driver but you can get the latest version of Kstars via instructions I will post shortly. Picture of the telescope are on the LUG website in the "xcGallery" section.

We were short two tables this meeting, due to Nick using them for selling some used Apple computers on consignment, but it wasn't a real hardship since only about 3 people brought computers. There are some real bargains at C23 if anyone is interested.

We collected about 29.00 for the projector fund. There were some suggestions concerning our requirements. Having given many presentations, I suggested it have at least 1024x768 resolution.

My thanks to Roly for managing the projector fund and to Toga for keeping our server updated each month.

We are looking for volunteers to give presentations, organize "Installfests", manage content on the website and other things so if you have a little spare time and feel inclined in any of these areas, please give us a shout.

See you next month...

Regards

DSP