SimpleGpUsb - A home brew auto guider...

[generaldej]

Your instructions look clear - Im hoping to make a minor change to your code - you have 2x,4x and 8x siderial rate, mine has 1,2,4... Ive havent use C for a while now (never C#) but Ive downloaded the visio studio V10 (beta) C# software and successfully built your code. Waiting on the post man for my CP2103 and darlington transistors (Maplins dont do them anymore and RS are out of stock!).

Will let you know how it goes

regards

[samtheeagle]

Yeah the rates are fairly simple to change... On my todo list is to make those load up from a configuration file, rather than having them hardcoded into the driver. One of these days I'll get around to it

[themos]

These guys might be able to supply a Darlington driver

Special function ICs from Bitsbox

[zhgutas]

So does it mean ULN2803A can be successfully used here instead of your uln2003a then?

Marius

[martin_h]

Rapid electronics do the ULN2003 - Integrated Circuits from Rapid

[samtheeagle]

Ultimately all you need is a transistor to switch each of the 4 directions of movement. I used the darlington array as it's a tidy little package, but an opto isolator or 4 individual transistors should do exactly the same job. (I think, I'm somewhat electronically challenged, but that's my understanding of it )

[jnp]

Maplins to equivalent darlington arrays. They might have 8 rather than 7 transistors, but as stated you only need 4.

Samtheeagle - not sure if I got round to thanking you for this post. I ended up using a different solution and equipment but it was your post that goto me into coding my ASCOM driver in VB6. My EQ3-2 is guiding sweet as a nut. (It's just a shame that my EQ5 doesnt behave as well).

cheers

John

[zhgutas]

Ahh, well now it's crystal clear

Ta

Marius

[samtheeagle]

Samtheeagle - not sure if I got round to thanking you for this post. I ended up using a different solution and equipment but it was your post that goto me into coding my ASCOM driver in VB6. My EQ3-2 is guiding sweet as a nut. (It's just a shame that my EQ5 doesnt behave as well).

cheers

John

My absolute pleasure! Thanks for the thanks.

[zhgutas]

Alright, so I was just seconds away from ordering CP2103 when came across this thingy. Would you reckon it could work? Would save me some soldering, which I think I had enough for the next month or so after makin' my dew heaters..

Cheers

Marius

[samtheeagle]

Well the important feature of the CP2103 is the GPIO pins, the fact that it's a serial port is not really all that important. My project only uses the GPIO pins, one for each direction of movement. I'm not entirely sure that the item you linked to would be suitable, but I'm not a serial port expert...

HTH.

[alnitak1000]

Guy,

I was able to toggle the GPIO pins using the canned program, now I want a simple .cs program just to toggle the gpio pins when I push a button. I'm no C # programmer but it looks like your runtime program would just about do it if there was a button that just toggled the gpio pins when it was pressed. Any interest in helping me to modify the program to get that to work?

[samtheeagle]

What sort of thing are you after? Just a basic form with N/S/E/W buttons on it?

[alnitak1000]

Even simpler, just a form with a button that when you push it the gpio pins are toggled. I want to turn an LED on and off to illuminate my telescope.

Cheers,

Pete

[samtheeagle]

I'll see what I can knock up over the weekend for you Which pins do you want toggled? Just one? All of them? All toggled to the same value? Or separately toggled high and low?

To drive and LED I assume that a single pin will do you...

[alnitak1000]

Just toggle them all that would be simplest.

You are a dear,

Cheers,

Pete

[samtheeagle]

Give this a try: http://www.guywebb.co.uk/temp/Toggler.zip

That's got the source code and binaries. I've not tested it at all, as I don't have the hardware to hand right now, so give it a try and see what happens! You use it at your own risk, no warrany offered or implied

[Lord F]

Just a quick heads up, you can use the quad opto-coupler from maplin instead of the darlington array, just don't switch all the gpio pins to high at once, it draws too much power from the usb board, and overheats it :/

One more thing, i altered the axis rates in the source files and recompiled which works fine, but I've never written anything with a GUI before, could someone give me the gist of how to alter the text in the properties drop box? Everything i have guessed at so far refuses to compile

[samtheeagle]

What program are you using to work with the code? Visual Studio, or is it all command line utils from the SDK?

[Lord F]

Visual studio 2010. I tried altering a few things in the setup dialog form cs file, but i'm not really sure what to do with it. I'm not entirely sure what to do with the rebuilt files either, i end up with a two folders, bin and obj, with a few files in them. I've just been trying to replace the originals with the rebuilt, but i haven't made any cosmetic changes, so i can't tell if it worked or not

thanks for the help

[samtheeagle]

Ok, well it sounds like you're looking in the right place, the SetupDialogForm.cs file. This is the code section that puts data into the GUI controls... The first part just fills lstComPorts from COM1 to COM255. Then the lstHandsetGuidingSpeed has the available values added.

public SetupDialogForm()
        {
            InitializeComponent();

            lstComPorts.Items.Clear();
            for(int num = 1; num <=256; num++)
                lstComPorts.Items.Add("COM" + num);

            lstHandsetGuidingSpeed.Items.Add("[B]2X Sidereal Rate[/B]");
            lstHandsetGuidingSpeed.Items.Add("[B]4X Sidereal Rate[/B]");
            lstHandsetGuidingSpeed.Items.Add("[B]8X Sidereal Rate[/B]");

            if (DriverConfig.ControlPortSetting != string.Empty)
                lstComPorts.SelectedItem = DriverConfig.ControlPortSetting;

            if (DriverConfig.HandsetGuidingSpeed != GuideRates.UNDEFINED)
                lstHandsetGuidingSpeed.SelectedIndex = (int)DriverConfig.HandsetGuidingSpeed;

            cbSupportDualAxisGuiding.Checked = DriverConfig.DualAxis;
        }

I'm guessing that it's the guiding speed values you want to change? I put the bits you should change in bold above. The order of the items is important, it ties in with the axis rates you define in the main telescope driver file.

Once you've done a build the binaries created will be in the "bin" folder you mentioned before. Depending on whether you did a debug or a release build there will be corresponding folders for each.

If you are using the same machine for coding as you are with your telescope then it should all just work as is. The visual studio build will automatically register the driver with the system. If you need to put the files onto another machine you'll need to copy all the DLL files from the "bin" folder and overwrite the ones on the other machine. It may also be necessary to register the DLL again on the other machine. Open a DOS box and change directory to the folder with the driver DLL in and run the following command: REGSVR32 ASCOM.SimpleGpUsb.Telescope.dll

I hope that helps? It's been a while since I worked on this code, and Its all a bit involved if you're not a developer

[themos]

lstComPorts.Items.Add("COM" + num);

I think there's a library call to give you a list of available COM ports so you don't have to populate that list yourslef with names that will mostly not correspond to any device.

[Lord F]

snip

Thanks a lot, that seems to have done the trick.

[samtheeagle]

Glad you got it sorted

[msinclairinork]

******THANK YOU!!*****

After a few hours tinkering...IT WORKS!!

And it was so easy and CHEAP to build!

One very happy customer here...total build cost £20 as i had a few of the other bits and total time maybe 2hrs tops

Thank you so much sam for sharing your genius with us

Michael