Is a standard developed for interfacing computers and telescopes. From the ASCOM web site:The ASCOM Initiative is a loosely-knit group of developers and astronomical instrument makers that work together to bring vendor-independent and language-independent plug-and play compatibility between astronomy software and astronomical instruments on Windows computers. ASCOM stands for the Astronomy Common Object Model.Developers of astronomical software can use the ASCOM standard to allow their software to talk to any kind of telescope that includes an ASCOM-compliant driver, eliminating the need to develop a separate interface for each popular type of telescope out there.
The remainder of this page describes the ASCOM driver I wrote for my digital setting circles project. IntroductionThis ASCOM driver allows the use of a variety of commercial and homebrew passive encoder-based digital setting circles systems with any Windows software that supports the ASCOM standard. This driver works with either alt-az mounts (like a dobsonian) or equatorial mounts.
Equatorial mounts do not need to be accurately polar-aligned (although an accurate polar alignment will likely lead to a more satisfying observing experience).This driver will not work with equatorial platforms.The driver requires that (0r newer) is installed on your computer. It also requires or higher.Supported Hardware(Not all of these systems have been tested, but all should work with this driver.). Celestron Advanced AstroMaster. Dave Ek’s Digital Setting Circles. David Chandler Co.
Deep Space Navigator. Discovery Digital Setting Circles.
Alignment on the night sky as normal. When aligned, power the Stella Wi-Fi adapter on and open the Stella Access app. If your telescope hand controller reads “Press 0 to Align or Mode for Menu”, press “Mode” to go to the default menu. In the app settings tab, navigate to the Setup page under Telescope.
JMI NGC-MAX. Lumicon Sky Vector. Mountain Instruments Star Pilot. Nova Astro Micro-Guider III.
Nova Astro Micro-Guider 5. Orion Sky Wizard 2 and 3. Orion Intelliscope. Ouranos. Software Bisque BBox. Tele Vue Sky TourSetup and Configuration1) If you have not already done so, run the installer for this driver to install it on your computer.2) Consult the documentation for your preferred astronomy software package (e.g.
TheSky, Cartes du Ciel, Hallo Northern Sky) for instructions on accessing the ASCOM Chooser dialog box. The ASCOM chooser looks like this: ASCOM Chooser3) Select “Tangent-Compatible Digital Setting Circles” from the drop-down list, and then click the Properties button. Hi Dave:First, a big thank you for providing this software. I successfully installed two 4000 tic encoders on my C8. I uploaded source code from MSFASTRO.com to an Arduino Uno making it perform as a decoder communicating with ASCOM driver and your digital setting circle software. The settlers 7 offline crack mac os 7.
It’s really a great set up. The encoders get the 5v directly from the Uno and the encoder’s A and B channels plug directly into the Arduino. No power supplies, no USB/Serial converters. It all works!! I do have one question.
When I’m in CdC, during initialization, you pick two constellations for the two guide star selections. If I’m just running your DSC software without CdC, the you pick the two alignment stars from a list, not from constellations. I really like the constellation method of selecting guide stars. Is there a way to use this method while only running your software? I really only want the slew function along with RA/DEC readouts which your software does admirably. Sorry for the long post.
Again thank you for providing this wonderful software – thanks to MFSASTRO.com also!Carl. Hi Carl,Sorry, the stand-alone DSC software doesn’t support the use of the constellation maps for picking the alignment stars. The stand-alone software is actually quite old and hasn’t been updated in a long while.
I figured that no one was using it anymore now that it was possible to use all the planetarium programs with ASCOM and my driver. It’s possible I could write a small program that would use the ASCOM driver to take the place of the old stand-alone software, but it probably won’t happen overnight:-)Dave. Dave, I hope you don’t mind one more question. My encoders are US Digital S2-1000-250-NE-N-D. I believe they are supposed to be 4000 tic encoders.
Is that what I enter into the tics/revolution? I see in the example above you have 4389 and 4608. Did you measure your encoders to arrive at non-rounded figures?
While in your stand alone software, I did the “test interface”. I hit the get position button, then moved the scope in one complete circle. Both values in the “get position” boxes change by exactly 2000. I’m not sure exactly what I should enter into the software for the encoder resolution.Carl. Thanks for the reply, Dave. Someone suggested that when I use the platform, I set up the driver for equarorial, on the theory that it would think that the Poncet is the declination axis.
However the encoders don’t know that the poncet is moving so I don’t see how that would work, sounds a little strange. Like I said, when In use your driver with SkyTools3 I won’t use the poncet table. If I need to track, I also can use SkySafari Pro because they can configure for equatorial platforms, they don’t use Ascom because they run on the Android operating system.Jim l. I have a question about telescope movement and the resolution of your encoders. You show the encoder for Altitude has a resolution of 4608 ticks per rotation of your telescope. Thus each tick is 360/4608 degrees = 0.078125 degrees or 281.25 arcseconds.Is this resolution sufficient for “goto” commands, where I believe locations are given in milli arcseconds (.001 of an arcsecond)?Am I misunderstanding something, I am building my own telescope with motorised goto mount and am struggling with resolution at the moment.
Steve,Of course, the resolution for your setup will depend on what encoders you use and how they are mated to the telescope, but yes, 4608 is sufficiently fine for locating objects. Your telescope, at low power anyway, has a field of view of about a degree or so (give or take), and resolution of less than a tenth of a degree for pointing is good enough. Of course, you can improve that by using higher-resolution encoders. The maximum resolution usable by my encoder system is 65535 tics/revolution, but that’s overkill–mount and pointing errors will degrade your accuracy.Goto commands typically just specify the target coordinates (at least, that’s the way it works in ASCOM).
There isn’t an amateur system on the face of the earth that can achieve milli arcsecond pointing accuracy. That greatly exceeds even Dawe’s limit for amateur telescopes.Dave.
I have a question regarding an error message that keeps occurring during the alignment process with the ASCOM driver using digital setting circles. My setup is an Orion dobsonian with Orion’s intelliscope sensors and controller, and I am trying to use the Digital setting circles drivers with Stellarium Scope and Stellarium. At the end of the alignment process, the program throws the error “error during matrix inversion process: normalizing using a zero value” and aborts the process. What are the possible causes of this error, and troubleshooting steps can be taken?Thanks,Devin. I am using the above Tangent-Compatible Digital Setting Circle driver running on TheSkyX Serious with a Celestron Advanced Astro Master controller but occasionally one of the Digital Setting Circles Visual Feedback displays jumps from say 200 to 2000 while slewing and increases instead of dropping to zero. Last night the DEC was at 0000 but the RA was at 1460 while pointed at Eta Carinae but slewed to the Orion Nebula correctly (both 0000). I had to remove the RA encoder and reassemble it once but am not sure where to set the point at where encoder counting starts.
I ran the Test function and that said the direction was okay. So how do I set up the encoders correctly. Mine output 4320 ticks/rev but where should the mount be pointing to start the counting from zero?
Also is there a problem crossing the meridian while slewing?. My DSC driver doesn’t care what direction the mount is pointing initially–it will set the zero point as it needs to. All you should need to do is execute the alignment procedure it walks you through. Slewing across the meridian is also not a problem. It’s not unusual for the numbers in the feedback display for slewing to change discontinuously like what you saw–there are a number of ways you can push the telescope tube as you slew, and the numbers only represent the number of encoder ticks you need to move in each axis. Don’t let that bother you, as long as you’re ending up on the right target. Pages.Categories.
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(16). (19).
(5). (43). (6). (15). (4).
(7). (29).
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50,772 views. 47,957 views. 46,710 views. 46,527 views. 31,608 views.
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Is a standard developed for interfacing computers and telescopes. From the ASCOM web site:The ASCOM Initiative is a loosely-knit group of developers and astronomical instrument makers that work together to bring vendor-independent and language-independent plug-and play compatibility between astronomy software and astronomical instruments on Windows computers. ASCOM stands for the Astronomy Common Object Model.Developers of astronomical software can use the ASCOM standard to allow their software to talk to any kind of telescope that includes an ASCOM-compliant driver, eliminating the need to develop a separate interface for each popular type of telescope out there.
The remainder of this page describes the ASCOM driver I wrote for my digital setting circles project. IntroductionThis ASCOM driver allows the use of a variety of commercial and homebrew passive encoder-based digital setting circles systems with any Windows software that supports the ASCOM standard. This driver works with either alt-az mounts (like a dobsonian) or equatorial mounts.
Equatorial mounts do not need to be accurately polar-aligned (although an accurate polar alignment will likely lead to a more satisfying observing experience).This driver will not work with equatorial platforms.The driver requires that (0r newer) is installed on your computer. It also requires or higher.Supported Hardware(Not all of these systems have been tested, but all should work with this driver.). Celestron Advanced AstroMaster. Dave Ek’s Digital Setting Circles. David Chandler Co.
Deep Space Navigator. Discovery Digital Setting Circles.
Alignment on the night sky as normal. When aligned, power the Stella Wi-Fi adapter on and open the Stella Access app. If your telescope hand controller reads “Press 0 to Align or Mode for Menu”, press “Mode” to go to the default menu. In the app settings tab, navigate to the Setup page under Telescope.
JMI NGC-MAX. Lumicon Sky Vector. Mountain Instruments Star Pilot. Nova Astro Micro-Guider III.
Nova Astro Micro-Guider 5. Orion Sky Wizard 2 and 3. Orion Intelliscope. Ouranos. Software Bisque BBox. Tele Vue Sky TourSetup and Configuration1) If you have not already done so, run the installer for this driver to install it on your computer.2) Consult the documentation for your preferred astronomy software package (e.g.
TheSky, Cartes du Ciel, Hallo Northern Sky) for instructions on accessing the ASCOM Chooser dialog box. The ASCOM chooser looks like this: ASCOM Chooser3) Select “Tangent-Compatible Digital Setting Circles” from the drop-down list, and then click the Properties button. Hi Dave:First, a big thank you for providing this software. I successfully installed two 4000 tic encoders on my C8. I uploaded source code from MSFASTRO.com to an Arduino Uno making it perform as a decoder communicating with ASCOM driver and your digital setting circle software. The settlers 7 offline crack mac os 7.
It’s really a great set up. The encoders get the 5v directly from the Uno and the encoder’s A and B channels plug directly into the Arduino. No power supplies, no USB/Serial converters. It all works!! I do have one question.
When I’m in CdC, during initialization, you pick two constellations for the two guide star selections. If I’m just running your DSC software without CdC, the you pick the two alignment stars from a list, not from constellations. I really like the constellation method of selecting guide stars. Is there a way to use this method while only running your software? I really only want the slew function along with RA/DEC readouts which your software does admirably. Sorry for the long post.
Again thank you for providing this wonderful software – thanks to MFSASTRO.com also!Carl. Hi Carl,Sorry, the stand-alone DSC software doesn’t support the use of the constellation maps for picking the alignment stars. The stand-alone software is actually quite old and hasn’t been updated in a long while.
I figured that no one was using it anymore now that it was possible to use all the planetarium programs with ASCOM and my driver. It’s possible I could write a small program that would use the ASCOM driver to take the place of the old stand-alone software, but it probably won’t happen overnight:-)Dave. Dave, I hope you don’t mind one more question. My encoders are US Digital S2-1000-250-NE-N-D. I believe they are supposed to be 4000 tic encoders.
Is that what I enter into the tics/revolution? I see in the example above you have 4389 and 4608. Did you measure your encoders to arrive at non-rounded figures?
While in your stand alone software, I did the “test interface”. I hit the get position button, then moved the scope in one complete circle. Both values in the “get position” boxes change by exactly 2000. I’m not sure exactly what I should enter into the software for the encoder resolution.Carl. Thanks for the reply, Dave. Someone suggested that when I use the platform, I set up the driver for equarorial, on the theory that it would think that the Poncet is the declination axis.
However the encoders don’t know that the poncet is moving so I don’t see how that would work, sounds a little strange. Like I said, when In use your driver with SkyTools3 I won’t use the poncet table. If I need to track, I also can use SkySafari Pro because they can configure for equatorial platforms, they don’t use Ascom because they run on the Android operating system.Jim l. I have a question about telescope movement and the resolution of your encoders. You show the encoder for Altitude has a resolution of 4608 ticks per rotation of your telescope. Thus each tick is 360/4608 degrees = 0.078125 degrees or 281.25 arcseconds.Is this resolution sufficient for “goto” commands, where I believe locations are given in milli arcseconds (.001 of an arcsecond)?Am I misunderstanding something, I am building my own telescope with motorised goto mount and am struggling with resolution at the moment.
Steve,Of course, the resolution for your setup will depend on what encoders you use and how they are mated to the telescope, but yes, 4608 is sufficiently fine for locating objects. Your telescope, at low power anyway, has a field of view of about a degree or so (give or take), and resolution of less than a tenth of a degree for pointing is good enough. Of course, you can improve that by using higher-resolution encoders. The maximum resolution usable by my encoder system is 65535 tics/revolution, but that’s overkill–mount and pointing errors will degrade your accuracy.Goto commands typically just specify the target coordinates (at least, that’s the way it works in ASCOM).
There isn’t an amateur system on the face of the earth that can achieve milli arcsecond pointing accuracy. That greatly exceeds even Dawe’s limit for amateur telescopes.Dave.
I have a question regarding an error message that keeps occurring during the alignment process with the ASCOM driver using digital setting circles. My setup is an Orion dobsonian with Orion’s intelliscope sensors and controller, and I am trying to use the Digital setting circles drivers with Stellarium Scope and Stellarium. At the end of the alignment process, the program throws the error “error during matrix inversion process: normalizing using a zero value” and aborts the process. What are the possible causes of this error, and troubleshooting steps can be taken?Thanks,Devin. I am using the above Tangent-Compatible Digital Setting Circle driver running on TheSkyX Serious with a Celestron Advanced Astro Master controller but occasionally one of the Digital Setting Circles Visual Feedback displays jumps from say 200 to 2000 while slewing and increases instead of dropping to zero. Last night the DEC was at 0000 but the RA was at 1460 while pointed at Eta Carinae but slewed to the Orion Nebula correctly (both 0000). I had to remove the RA encoder and reassemble it once but am not sure where to set the point at where encoder counting starts.
I ran the Test function and that said the direction was okay. So how do I set up the encoders correctly. Mine output 4320 ticks/rev but where should the mount be pointing to start the counting from zero?
Also is there a problem crossing the meridian while slewing?. My DSC driver doesn’t care what direction the mount is pointing initially–it will set the zero point as it needs to. All you should need to do is execute the alignment procedure it walks you through. Slewing across the meridian is also not a problem. It’s not unusual for the numbers in the feedback display for slewing to change discontinuously like what you saw–there are a number of ways you can push the telescope tube as you slew, and the numbers only represent the number of encoder ticks you need to move in each axis. Don’t let that bother you, as long as you’re ending up on the right target. Pages.Categories.
(1). (12).
(16). (19).
(5). (43). (6). (15). (4).
(7). (29).
(17)Most Popular Posts. 56,113 views. 46,031 views. 28,359 views.
22,055 views. 20,932 views. 19,483 views.
18,242 views. 17,656 views. 17,268 views. 17,037 viewsMost Popular Pages. 308,299 views. 73,890 views. 56,006 views.
50,772 views. 47,957 views. 46,710 views. 46,527 views. 31,608 views.
31,092 views. 28,564 views.