Upgrading my goto telescope

Hello folks,
I am currently in the process of upgrading my goto telescope mount which I built last summer. I really enjoy building things and am rarely content with what I have made. As I was using the goto telescope, I kept thinking of ways to improve it and modify it. A few things that I learnt are:

• First and foremost the telescope should be very easy to set up and should be operable even without the motors. My first design was restricted to being controlled by a computer/smart phone(battery operated) at all times. There was no convenient way of manually using the telescope. If I wanted to tilt the telescope, I had to rotate the worm gear manually rather than directly move the optical tube by hand. This was a big bummer and it adversely affected my casual usage of the telescope. The newer mount will be very easy to use even without motor power as the motor will be disengaged when not in use. This will keep the optical tube free to rotate by hand. It will simply click into place when required and provide the drive.

Older telescope(grey) with the (black)goto telescope.
Notice the size difference..

View of the worm gear on the goto telescope

     

• Using my previous telescope, I could set it up and start viewing the moon or a planet (say jupiter) within 3-4 minutes. Whereas with the goto telescope, it would take me 15 min just to get started. 
• The goto telescope was too short and could not be used from the ground. It needed to be kept on a table-top to view anything. 
• The step angle was too large,ie when slewing the telescope slowly, the motion would become jerky rather than a nice smooth movement. I plan on fixing this by making a worm gear with a much larger gear ratio. The current gear ratio is 25:1 giving a step angle of 0.072 degrees. The new gear will give a ratio of 180:1 and a step angle of 0.01(upto 0.000625 degrees using microstepping).

So, to upgrade the telescope mount:

Step 1: Destroy earlier mount!

I will keep updating as I progress with the upgradation. 

Follow my blog to stay tuned!