Parking a Celestron CG-5 mount from SGP

Sequence Generator
1

CG-5 users,

Are any of you using the park feature to slew the telescope to Home position? At the end of a sequence event I want to be able to send the telescope home. I know how to define the home position, but how do I make it happen from within SGP? I can’t seem to find out much about parking from the Help file.

Dave, waiting for it to stop raining…

2

You can do this in a couple of different ways.
1 - when the entire sequence completes:
http://www.mainsequencesoftware.com/Content/SGPHelp/TelescopesMounts.html

2- As part of an event:
http://www.mainsequencesoftware.com/Content/SGPHelp/Events.html

I personally use option 1 as I don’t currently have other things going on after my lights.

Thanks,
Jared

3

Jared,

Thanks for your response, but as usual I am not making myself clear. My
mount has a Park (Home) command from the hand control at the mount. How do
I get that command invoked from within SGP. Does it require a script?

I have that uneasy feeling that says I am overlooking something obvious.

In SGP Control Panel -> Telescope, when I poke the Park button (lower
left), what does it do? I have an equipment problem that keeps me from
connecting to the mount at the moment, so Park is grayed out.

Dave

4

The “Park” button calls the ASCOM Park() command for your mount.

The two links above should answer your question (assuming I’m understanding it correctly)
For the first link you select the “Park when sequence completes” under the “Telescope Options” pane on the right hand side of the telescope control panel.

For the second link you open the properties of the event and have the event trigger the park either before or after the event runs.

All of those options will call the Park() command. We do not use the “Home” command.

Hope that helps,
Jared

5

Jared,

We may be zeroing in on it, and I think I understand what you are saying. I
have my mount repaired now (my powered USB hub died), and tomorrow if it
stops raining long enough I will get the mount connected and follow up on
your comments. So, stay tuned.

‘Home’ is just GT-5 talk for ‘Park’, as far as I can tell. The 'Home’
command on the mount hand controller just slews the mount to a
pre-determined position, in my case, Polaris. I polar aligned my mount and
have ‘glued’ the tripod feet to my concrete patio. I run a pair of USB
extenders into the house and a laptop running SGP and PHD2. I cover the
mount and scope with a waterproof scooter cover and just leave it out in
the weather (at least April through October).

Thanks for your help.

Dave

6

The ASCOM Park command does much the same as the HC Home command but doesn’t use the HC Home command because there isn’t RS232 control of HC Home.
This means that Park has it’s own position that may need setting using the ASCOM SetPark command. There was a discussion about this a while ago and there may be some helper scripts in the files area of the former forum.

Chris

7

I know I was managing to use the home position from inside ASCOM with my CGEM… I’m just not sure what I was doing at that point. It’s possible. You might want to post on the Nexstar Yahoo! Group and see if someone there can give you a clue.

8

I was confused with this too on my CGEPro, but after digging around on various Yahoo groups I found the solution. It is a script you run after you have sent the mount the “home” position via the hand controller (or nexremote). This script saves the position in ASCOM “Park” language. So when you issue the park command via SGP or other ASCOM means, it goes to that spot. If you change that spot, you have to update both of them. Not sure if there is a spot on this forum to upload files, but I have that script on my computer if you are interested.

9

Pmumbower,

I would be very interested in seeing the script. In the reply editor I see an ‘upload’ icon that says it is to ‘Add an image or a file.’ I would think you should be able to add the script file to a reply post and everyone interested could see it. I hope you will give this a try and maybe we will learn a bit more about using this forum.

Dave

10

Dave,

Sorry for the delay, it was a hectic day at work. Attached is the script I use for setting my CGEPro’s park position for use in SGP via ASCOM. It is a VBS script, so I had to zip it to attach it.

Pete

SetPark.zip (321 Bytes)

11

Thanks Pete. I’ll take a look at it when I get a chance.

Dave