The hardware is finished.

Three new photos are uploaded to the gallery and 2 were deleted as they no longer represent the current state. The new photos focus on the stepper mechanicals. To mount the focus motor I had to drill and tap the back of the scope, which was a little nerve-wracking as I was not sure how much metal there was. I did take things apart completely and could measure the cast thickness near my drill locations, but could not measure them as I did not have deep enough calipers.

I also have made the Arduino control case larger because the original case, based on a RAMPS case, was cramped when it came to wiring. Instead of my hacked together protoshield, I bought a proper shield from Digikey and rewired everything, taking the opportunity to add a reset button and "centre" button. The latter will move the XY stage to centre the slide under the optics; seems like a nice thing to have.

The XY homing algorithm works nicely and I have X motion working with the mouse. Y will be the same, just different motor address. Focus will be the easiest because I don't have to worry about endstops or coordinates. The focus will control the "fine" adjustment knob since that's what you will use most one coarse focus has been set by hand.

The wiring between the scope and control boxes is still kind of ugly, but it does work.

Tomorrow I will finish code and test so that it's ready to be demo'd on Thursday to 16 campers at the U of Alberta DiscoverE "Amazing Arduino" summer camp. Should be fun.