Early projects
Long before the CloudWatcher became the foundation of Lunatico's product line, the team was building a diverse range of instruments and systems for observatories and advanced amateurs. These early projects were the proving ground for the electronics, firmware, and software expertise that would later define everything we make.
RCOS observatory systems
One of the early collaborations was with RCOS (RC Optical Systems), working on electronics for their premium telescope systems. RCOS telescopes were among the finest production Ritchey-Chrétien systems available, and the instrumentation work on focuser controllers and auxiliary electronics for these systems gave Lunatico deep experience in professional-grade observatory hardware.
The Hercules project
Hercules was an early Lunatico electronics project — a capable embedded control system designed for demanding observatory automation tasks. The experience building Hercules fed directly into the architecture of later products: the focus on reliability, the preference for deterministic embedded firmware over complex software stacks, and the understanding that observatory equipment is used in the dark, remotely, with no margin for crashes or hangs.
Diego Colonnello
Diego Colonnello was an important early figure in the Lunatico network — an astronomer with both deep technical knowledge and a passion for making observatory automation accessible. The collaboration and feedback from Diego and other early users shaped the direction of Lunatico's products from the very beginning, instilling a user-first approach that has stayed with the company through every product generation.
A platform, not just a product
These early projects illustrate something that has always been true about Lunatico: the company is not organised around a single product but around a set of capabilities — in electronics design, firmware engineering, and observatory automation software — that can be brought to bear on many different problems. The CloudWatcher, the DragonFly, the SOLO, the focuser controllers: they all share the same engineering DNA, and they all trace back to the experiments and collaborations of those early years.