# scope-shelf

A clip on shelf for a telescopes tripod

Using a Raspberry Pi with the 7-inch LCD for a telescope works really well, but it needs a place to rest near the scope because of the attached cables. A telescopes hand controller has a clip to hang it off of a tripod leg, this would be nice for the small tablet.

This is a clip on shelf that holds a tablet on the scopes tripod.

scope shelf

# JsCAD

This parametric 3D view allows you to create a scope shelf to fit different tripods.

# In use

Here is the shelf, printed in PETG, with a Raspberry Pi running PHD2.

scope shelf on the tripod

# Running

The jscad project scope-shelf uses gulp to create a dist/scope-shelf.jscad file and watches your source for changes. You can drag the dist/scope-shelf.jscad directory into the drop area on openjscad.org. Make sure you check Auto Reload and any time you save, gulp creates the dist/scope-shelf.jscad file, and your model should refresh.

# start

npm start or npm run start will launch gulp, and create dist/scope-shelf.jscad . It also watches for file changes and recreates the dist file.

# clean

Deletes the dist directory when you run npm run clean.

# inject

Run gulp to combine the source files and inject the dependent libraries with npm run inject. Libraries are found using a gulp plugin that looks for a jscad.json file in a package. These files are combined and minimized before injecting into the dist file.

# build

Build the vuepress static site by running npm run build. This script combines the readme with a vue-openjscad component to display a live view of the model. The baseUrl is set with the BASEPATH environment variable. It defaults to /scope-shelf/. When hosted on GitLab, the .gitlab-ci.yml CICD file uses this script to publish to GitLab Pages.

See the vue-openjscad package for information on modifying options like the grid or initial camera position.

# serve

Run vuepress in dev mode with npm run serve. This script watches for file changes and hot reloads changes made to the README file. Changes to the model are not automatically reloaded; a manual reload is required.

# jscad-utils

The example project uses jscad-utils. These utilities are a set of utilities that make object creation and alignment easier. To remove it, npm uninstall --save jscad-utils, and remove the util.init(CSG); line in scope-shelf.jscad.

# Other libraries

You can search NPM for other jscad libraries. Installing them with NPM and running gulp should create a dist/scope-shelf.jscad will all dependencies injected into the file.

For example, to load a RaspberryPi jscad library and show a Raspberry Pi Model B, install jscad-raspberrypi using npm install --save jscad-raspberrypi. Then return a combined BPlus group from the main() function.

main() {
  util.init(CSG);

  return RaspberryPi.BPlus().combine();
}

// ********************************************************
// Other jscad libraries are injected here.  Do not remove.
// Install jscad libraries using NPM
// ********************************************************
// include:js
// endinject

# OpenJSCAD.org

If you publish the dist/scope-shelf.jscad file, you can open it directly in openjscad.org by using the following URL:

http://openjscad.org/# + the url to your file.

# Gist

You can save your file to a GitHub gist and append the URL to the raw gist.

For example http://openjscad.org/#https://gist.githubusercontent.com/johnwebbcole/43f2ef58532a204c694e5ada16888ecd/raw/d0972463f70222e6d4c6c6196a1c759bb3e2362a/snap.jscad

# Gitlab Snippet

If you save to a gitlab public snippet, you can open it using the following URL:

https://openjscad.org/#https://gitlab.com/snippets/1795323/raw.jscad

Make sure you change the snippet id to the correct value and add .jscad at the end.