  We present scientific results obtained with a recently commissioned
\'{e}chelle spectrograph on the 0.5-m Solaris-1 telescope in the South African
Astronomical Observatory. BACHES is a low-cost slit \'{e}chelle spectrograph
that has a resolution of 21,000 at 5,500 \AA. The described setup is fully
remotely operated and partly automated. Custom hardware components have been
designed to allow both spectroscopic and photometric observations. The setup is
controlled via dedicated software. The throughput of the system allows us to
obtain spectra with an average SNR of 22 at 6375 {\AA} for a 30-min exposure of
a $V=10$ mag target. The stability of the instrument is influenced mainly by
the ambient temperature changes. We have obtained radial velocity RMS values
for a bright (V = 5.9 mag) spectroscopic binary as good as 0.59 km s$^{-1}$ and
1.34 km s$^{-1}$ for a $V = 10.2$ mag eclipsing binary. Radial velocity
measurements have been combined with available photometric light curves. We
present models of six eclipsing binary systems, and for previously known
targets, we compare our results with those available in the literature. Masses
of binary components have been determined with 3% errors for some targets. We
confront our results with benchmark values based on measurements from the HARPS
and UCLES spectrographs on 4-m class telescopes and find very good agreement.
The described setup is very efficient and well suited for a spectroscopic
survey. We can now spectroscopically characterize about 300 eclipsing binary
stars per year up to 10.2 mag assuming typical weather conditions at SAAO
without a single observing trip.
