New user queries

I am starting the Monochrome CCD Cameras tutorial (I have a b&w Atik 414EX camera) and step 1 describes install prerequisites. I have ASCOM 6.3 loaded so I assume I was okay with that. I have PHD2 loaded (this was explained in the Orion Autoguider camera setup) so I think I am okay with that. The other software says Microsoft .NET 4 Framework but my control panel tells me I have Microsoft .NET Compact Framework 2.0 SP2. Are these the same? Seq Gen Pro seems to run okay on my win10 laptop.

Also, I have a Meade LX200GPS 8” which is about 4 years old, and the ASCOM drivers I have downloaded are “Universal ASCOM Telescope Driver for Meade 1.0” and “Meade LX200GPS/R”. Can you suggest which one I should select?

The reason I ask this is because I told Seq Gen Pro to connect all my equipment (which is the “Atik 414ex camera” and "Meade LX200GPS/R” telescope) and it came up with the PHD2 screen. I then told PHD2 to connect all equipment also (which has the "Orion Starshoot Autoguider camera” and "Meade LX200GPS/R telescope”). It connected the camera ok, but it came up with an error trying to connect to the mount (I think it said it could not configure an instance of the mount). Is that because both Seq Gen Pro and PHD2 cannot both load the telescope drivers? If so, which program should I let have control of the mount?

Kind regards

Gerry Roberts

Gerry,
I don’t have any experience with the Meade driver but minimally you want to make sure SGP and PHD2 are both NOT running as Administrator. If that’s the case and you can connect individually to the Meade driver with each application, then it’s likely that the driver isn’t written to allow multiple applications to connect. In which case you can use POTH (installed with ASCOM) to act as the hub.

With POTH you’d connect your mount inside of POTH and then connect both PHD and SGP to the “POTH Hub” telescope. This allows your scope to connect to a single application (POTH) and POTH “fixes” your telescope driver so it can talk to both applications. That’s an over simplification…but hopefully that give you a mental model of how it works.

Thanks,
Jared