Anyone using SGP and TheSkyX on an AP mount?

General
1

I’m looking for someone who is using The SkyX along with SGP and an
AP mount. I’ve seen what seems to be conflicting info between SB,
ASCOM and AP’s driver web pages. I hope to find someone who has it
working and bypass all the grief as my computer knowledge only
causes me to chase in ever larger circles.

Mainly I intend to use TSX for slewing and syncing the mount before
I start a target in SGP. I have downloaded and installed the “ASCOM
2X adapter” from SB. So I thought I should choose “ASCOM telescope
driver for TheSky” in the SGP chooser and my AP mount in TSX. When
I do that TSX connects, but SGP gives an error something like
"failed to connect to The ASCOM driver for TheSky." Even if I don’t
connect to TSX I still get the error on SGP.

Also I ran accross this post on SB “This driver[2X] when used with
SGP aborts meridian flips when SGP has centering enabled. Chris R
and The SGP team are looking into it. …driver is fine… if
recentering is disabled.” Anyone familiar with this? I believe
this was pertaining to a Paramount mount.

Any other tips/suggestions about using TSX w/SGP would surely be
appreciated.

Here’s my setup:

AP1100GTO
SGP
PHD2
TheSkyX SAed
Win7x64

I’ll likely post this on the AP Yahoo group too.

Thanks
Mark

2

Hi Mark,

AFAIK, the “ASCOM 2X adapter” is only for MyT mounts.

Here is what I do:

  • install the AP ASCOM driver
  • in TSX:
    • in Telescope Setup, select “ASCOM Mount” as Mount.
    • then open the “Mount Setup” drop down and select “Settings…”
    • in the ASCOM Telescope Chooser select “AstroPhysics GTO V2 Mount”
    • connect
  • in SGPro
    • also select “AstroPhysics GTO V2 Mount” in the Telescope drop down
    • connect

Now you can control the mount from both programs. That’s how I also do my
setup: do a “Closed Slew” in TSX, sync and then I run my SGPro sequence.

 Mark
3

The ASCOM 2X adapter will “work” for any mount connected through TheSky, the SB mounts, mounts connected to TheSky using the mount’s ASCOM driver or using the SB driver.

What “work” means will vary depending on the mount, including what it implements and what TheSky chooses to make available. For example DirectGuide is only available with SB mounts.

There is no way to tell what is available without trying it.

There are various options in the 2X driver setup to set what is available and the driver tries to adapt by disabling an option if it returns an error.

The 2X driver uses the SB scripting and I find this to be poorly implemented and/or documented and support is difficult. If any third party application is involved this is assumed to be the problem. Even finding out how things are expected to operate is a lot of work.

As the developer of the 2X driver I find this deeply unsatisfactory, it’s impossible to do a good job.

If you have a SB mount you are stuck, there’s no other way for third party applications to communicate with it, otherwise the method that Mark suggests is probably best, connect to the real mount driver in parallel to TSX.

Chris

4

By using Mark’s method everything connects. Posts on the AP group have convinced me to bone up on my knowledge and use of SGP. “Powerful” and “Intuitive” are terms frequently used to describe software programs. Usually that just turns out to be sales pitch talk. But, SGP truly is powerful. Some of it may not be, for me, so intuitive, but at least it’s not impossible to figure. Then again if I wrote code it would likely be perfectly logical to me;-)

For now I think I need to learn about solve and sync and I also have to get a blind solve without internet to work.

Thanks
Mark