Hi,
Over the last few years I’ve developed an App that uses gravity to point a telescope at stars. In addition to the pointing algorithm and display it runs an editable star database, an automated calibration program, and an array of real time bluetooth connected sensors at high speed. Its moderately complex so I’ve prepared an overview, a description of the four pages and their blocks as well as a summary of the theory behind the instrument, an outline of the mechanical assembly process which is extremely simple only requiring a few handtools such as scissors and screwdrivers, and a description of the calibration process. The project may be of interest to amateur astronomers who want to add digital setting circles to an equatorial telescope, particularly if they are looking for low cost and ultraportability.
As there is quite a bit of documentation behind the project can anyone advise me where and how to publish it?
That sounds real interesting. You could post all your documentation, images, files here in the topic. You can use Markdown to style your texts in this post.
@PeterO Depending on the nature of the documentation, you could also consider registering a domain name and hosting the documentation using GitHub pages. Once you have it published, I think it’d be great to post a write-up on our website as well.
Thanks for that quick response - it sounds like an excellent approach for getting feedback and perhaps some astronomers who would like to try it out. The overview would provide enough material that I could summarise for a note in the AI General forum and a news item would be a real bonus - I’ll list the draft files I have so that you can get an idea of the publication scope and I could make these available for download using Google drive:
An.aia file for a four screen project
Two curie/nano module program text files each managing five sensors
An 11 page operation and calibration manual (Word document - 50% images)
A 31 page App block description manual (Word document with mostly block images)
An 11 page project overview including theory (Word document - 10% images)
An 18 slide interactive Powerpoint presentation hopefully as part of a telescope demo for a seminar at a NACAA synposium in Parkes Australia - I wouldn’t publish this last item until after the syposium
I did wonder about the domain name approach and Git hub - I have an unused domain name ‘PortableAstronomy.org’ that would be suitable but I’ve never used GitHub and wasn’t sure if it would accept aia files or the kind of documentation that I’ve listed. I’m a rank amateur at programming Java or Android for mobile phones.This is my first app but I’ve spent a fair bit of time trying to ensure it is bug free and a reasonable compromise between readability and efficiency.
Github is easy and (so far for me) free.
I like it for version control and it doesn’t mess with
the .png file internal structure and doesn’t break Blocks Editor
Drag and Drop.
Thanks for your advice it was most helpful and I’ve used it to come up with the following:
As suggested by you all, I’ll use Github to manage the storage and download of files, and write the overview and readme sections for a Github web page using my portableastronomy.org domain. I’ll probably model it on the kind of layout demonstrated by Abraham, using the tools suggested by Peter.
I’ll convert the Word documents to PDF files as they are too large and complex (layout, diagrams, equations etc) to be readily adapted to Markdown or HTML Also it would probably be faster and easier to read them offline. I’ll supply them as downloads together with the program files thus::
* 1x .aia file for the Project
* 2x .txt files for the Arduino/C++ code that runs the two Curienano sensor units
* 1x ,pdf file for the Overview (including: background, theory and hardware assembly
* 1x .pdf file for the Operator manual
* 1x .pdf file for the AI2 App blocks descriptions