Refractor Telescope iPhone Camera Mount

Hi - Thanks for checking out this project! This is my first attempt at a compound object: in this case, an iPhone 5s holder designed to mount to a Celestron 90GT ("Costco Special") stargazing telescope.

This is a complete package of the files required to print this asset. It includes scad, stl, and a thing file for the mounting clamp and the ring. You can supply any printable iPhone case that has a hole for your camera. The scad files can be modified to fit most any telescope, and the iPhone case can easily be swapped out; just make sure there is a hole for the camera. The ring and mount clamp can be adjusted to work with other telescopes by scaling it or modifying the supplied scad files. The ring should fit a standard 34mm eyepeice, and, the clamp should fit most refractor telescopes where the eyepeice holder travels with the focus knob in and out of the main tube. In this version the diameter of the holder is 44.5mm.  You may need to play with the size of the triangle portion of the clamp to adjust the distance between the camera and the tube to accomodate a longer or shorter eyepiece.

Directions:

Print out your favorite phone case, the supplied ring, and clamp. A case with a flat back is preferred.

Assembly Instructions:

Use the pictures to guide your assembly. The ring goes over the eyepiece and should be centered over the camera. If your case has a circular camera hole, it should be easy to center the ring over the hole and glue it in place ahead of time (not yet!). The clamp goes on the neck of the eyepeice holder, and should be positioned to support the phone so it can sit perpendicular to the eypeice. Turn your camer on and point the telescope at a bright light source (not the sun!). Position the phone so that it sees in the "hole" of the eyepeice - don't worry about focus right now. When you focus the scope to match your eye, the camera should lock in.

It can help to position the eypiece so that the camera is lying on-top flat in order to get things positioned. You can use a maker to mark the position of everything. But, I found it was easier to simply center the ring over the camera hole and glue it in place and then "wet" position the clamp once I got things in the right spot.

After testing with no glue, use superglue to affix the eyepiece guide and clamp to the back of the phone case. The goal is to cener the eyepiece image in the phones camera viewer and so that the phone case is parallel to the tube, and perpendicular to the eyepiece.