¿ªÔÆÌåÓý

ctrl + shift + ? for shortcuts
© 2025 Groups.io

Re: Has Anyone Successfully Connected to/Used a ServoCAT ASCOM Driver?


 

This ServoCAT ASCOM driver is fully featured, and makes do with the limitations inherent in the SC as much as possible. The features include:
  • Runs as a server, so connections from multiple applications, as well as 32-bit and 64-bit, are supported without using a hub (such as Device Hub or POTH)
  • Slew to RA/Dec coordinates, including the Async versions of the methods
  • Slew to Alt/Az. This works by converting to RA/Dec and then stopping tracking afterwards
  • Sync to Coordinates. This enables use of a plate solver to establish a local offset. This does not use the LocalSync functionality on the SC
  • MoveAxis. This enables the equivalent of a virtual hand controller. It also reads the SC firmware configuration to determine the speeds, and exposes them over the ASCOM interface in the standard degrees per second units.
  • PulseGuiding. This uses MoveAxis with the "Slow Guiding" rate, with internal timers to stop after a period of time. I haven't really tested this in the field, as I don't have a guider on my SC-mounted Dobsonian. Future versions of this could use the ST-4 port on the SC instead, as it may have more fine-grained control over start and stop responsiveness
  • Parking. This uses the Park function built into the SC
In order for the ASCOM driver to work though, you need to have aligned the SC with its DSC ahead of time. I wanted to automate this process with platesolving, but unfortunately the functions aren't there to pull this off. For example, you can't issue a slew through the ArgoNavis DSC, nor can you programmatically set the alignment points.

Join [email protected] to automatically receive all group messages.