2manytrees

Our first attempts at photos were back in 2003/4. The days of using Philips Toucam webcams to take videos of the planets and stack the frames in Registax. DSOs were a bit different and we invested in a black and white ccd camera that, sadly, didn't survive for long and its loss more or less ended our interests at that time. The photos were small, too! Here are two; M27 and M57. Orion Europa 200 8" newtonian with a notchy motor drive; a SAC8 black and white camera (remember those?). No darks, flats etc, had never heard of them at the time. I still wonder how on earth we managed to find the things in the sky, let alone image them; considering all the fancy gear available to us today.

Makes our first 20-minutes-total photo look anaemic by comparison. Only recently learned that it's possible to stack frames taken on separate nights, so looks like we've got a few hours to catch up on! I note your use of Affinity Photo 1, think I've got that somewhere on the laptop, hadn't thought about using it for astro-photo processing.

Reacquainting ourselves with astrophotography after many years away from it....and even then we were beginners, with a webcam on a 8" newtonian Orion Europa 200 (which we still have, although the mount is now clappered). Getting on a bit in years, both of us, but still attracted to those photos and the steep learning curves. William Optics Zenithstar 73; 430mm; plus flattener; on Skywatcher HEQ5 mount. Cameras: ZWO ASI183 colour, plus ASI 120 mini. A somewhat aged HP laptop with 4GB RAM juggling ASI Studio and SharpCap, and more recently the ASCOM platform. Gathering some dust, Meade LX90 8"; and all but retired, Orion Europa 200 8". Picture attached; taken a couple of weeks ago with the W.O; 60 frames at 20 seconds each; ASI deepsky stacker; not much processing bar a bit of fiddling around in Gimp.

Have now connected successfully to the mount and all applications; the mount responds to the slew buttons and also Carte du Ciel. I think we're there. Just need to learn to drive it now! With thanks to all.

Malcolm, I believe you have sorted the problem. I have yet to test the connections directly with the mount (will do that later today), but here is what I have found, for the benefit of anyone else who might get this issue. I went yesterday to the FTDI website (ftdichip.com) and had downloaded a file titled CDM-v2.12.36.4.U-WHQL-Certified.zip; this being for a Windows 10 64bit architecture This had been reached via a slightly different route/link than the one you gave in your post above. The file I downloaded was 276.95 kB; the one I downloaded this morning via the link you give above was a lot more, at 2.21MB. I've installed it this morning and Device manager now shows the COM and LPT ports section when I plug in the EQMod cable. And also indicates, for me, COM3, which I'll be able to test later on when I get the mount back out from under the stairs. I guess this is what one might call "driver error" in more ways than one. Fingers crossed for a successful connection to Ascom later today. And many thanks for the url link, this seemingly minor detail was the answer! I'll confirm that all is well with the kit later on.

@tomatobro, ok thank you, I see the possible problem there re cloned chips. If you come across the patch, I'll have a go with it. @bosun, my mount doesnt have any USB ports, only a ST4 for guiding and a port for the handset-controller. I think that if I can't resolve this, I'll have to go back to the retailer; I haven't had the cable very long in terms of time.

Well.....that was hopeful, but not much happened. Managed to pick up driver from the website you linked to (selected driver for Windows 10 universal, X64 architecture); and installed successfully. Good.....not. On examining the device manager list, I noted that the name of the device had changed from FT232R USB UART to USB Serial.....but that was all. It still had its yellow warning triangle and declared that there was no driver installed. A re-run of opening CdC/EQMod with correctly selected mount still failed to allow me to connect electronically to the mount; and any search with the binoculars simply defaulted to COM16. I'm at the limits of my Windows-mining knowledge here, so will perhaps need to go back to the cable supplier (quite reputable) and see what they say. Will catch up a bit later if anyone has any further thoughts. Malcolm, sorry I didn't see your post before posting this....will follow that up as well later and see how it goes, in case I've missed a set-up stage.

I hadn't ever considered a driver for something within the cable itself...was not aware of its existence (the cable came from another retailer). The laptop isn't connected to the net at the moment, so I will have to get it to update or try and download the driver. Many thanks, I will get onto that after lunch and see what happens!

Probably been asked loads of times and I have looked, and read several articles re setting-up, but am still stuck. I've installed the ASCOM platform 6.6SP2 on my laptop (Win 10); along with EQMod/EQASCOM from the Sourceforge site; plus Carte du Ciel. I have a purchased EQMod cable running from a USB port in the laptop to the mount (HEQ5 Pro), linking into the socket where the SynScan handset normally goes. At this point I'm assuming all is correct in terms of cable connection. However I am confused about drivers. I apparently need a driver for the main ASCOM platform. On reading the lists of scope drivers at its website, I see one for the Skywatcher mounts called Green Swamp; but then further down is EQMod/EQASCOM. So, is it one or the other, or both that is/are needed? At the moment I can get Carte du Ciel configured to call up the EQASCOM control panel with the up/down/left/right buttons, but when pressing "connect", nothing happens....just a brief flash of another control panel and then that disappears. The COM ports connection thing surely isn't relevant with a USB connection....am I missing some hardware? or am I still missing a driver? If I go to Windows Device manager (with the eqmod cable still attached to scope-mount), I see "other devices"--FT232R USB UART. It states there is no driver for the device, therefore I'm assuming (rightly or wrongly) that this is an ASCOM driver that's required. I'm sure it's almost there, but not quite. Can someone shed some light on the driver issues?

Thanks everyone for your replies; it seems on the whole that the computer should be ok for the jobs to come, so I just need to get that connecting-cable....

I've been using a fairly old HP laptop for my astrophoto work; a Probook 640 G2, with 4GB RAM, 500GB hard drive. So far it has just been running ASI Studio and SharpCap, for photo work and polar aligning; but I am now looking at adding ASCOM and EQMOD platforms to it, to run an HEQ5 Pro mount. I find it difficult to assess how well the laptop will handle the new software when all is in action. It does have some other programs on it, but these are not in use when AP is being done. The laptop has two USB ports; one would be occupied by the main camera and the other by the ASCOM connector. Would this laptop be able to handle all the tasks involved with ASCOM and general image capture? Or am I possibly looking at acquiring another laptop? Just a couple of other things; when installing ASCOM does the laptop need to be connected to the powered mount beforehand? and would a powered usb hub be of benefit?