Ever since I was about eight years old, I've been fascinated by the night sky. It all started with a small red Tasco telescope from Argos (UK readers will know the store). That little telescope captured my imagination, and my journey into astronomy began.
As it often happens, life eventually got in the way. Years later, I rediscovered the hobby and began using Celestron GT telescopes. With my 130 SLT I managed to capture images of Saturn and Jupiter, which only deepened my interest. Naturally, the next step was something bigger - so in 2006 I purchased a Meade LX200GPS. I used it to photograph a few objects before, once again, life got busy and the telescope ended up in storage. Fast forward to 2025. Now with kids of my own, I thought it would be a great time to introduce them to the night sky. I pulled the LX200 out of storage, set it up, and to my surprise it booted immediately - fantastic! But the next day it appeared to be dead: the red lights came on, but there was no screen activity. My first instinct was to contact Meade, only to discover the company was gone. Searching eBay for replacement parts didn't help either. Being a fairly tenacious person, I decided to attempt the repair myself. Nothing ventured, nothing gained!
What followed was a three-month deep dive into the electronics and architecture of the Meade LX200 system. With invaluable help from Andrew Johansen on the Cloudy Nights forums, I eventually managed to bring the telescope back to life. The repair wasn't easy - it involved chip replacement, a lot of debugging, and plenty of late nights - but along the way I learned an enormous amount about how Meade's systems work.
During that process I began thinking about all the other telescope owners who might be in the same situation - left stranded by the disappearance of Meade and the lack of replacement parts. As a professional product developer, I realised I had the skills to help. I began designing small hardware and software solutions that could extend the life of these classic telescopes and make them easier to use with modern technology. While ScopeBits is geared towards the Meade community as they need the most support, other manufactures have ScopeBits support too!