EQMOD will not connect

[steelfixer]

Right back again.

I have copied the advice given to me by Chris.

You have a number of options.

1. connect your PC serial port to the synscan and have stellarium drive it using the telescope plugin using the nexstar protocol. This will get you a basic level of mount control.

2. Using the same connection as 1 you could put the sysncan into PC-Direct mode and instead use the EQMOD ASCOM driver. This will require you to install the ASCOM Platform and also an application called StellariumScope which provides the ASCOM interface to Stellarium (Stellarium is one of the few planetarium platforms yet to provide inbuild ASCOM support). All of these programs are free.

3. If for some reason you don't like the thought of EQMOD you could use the same setup as (2) but use the Celestron ASCOM driver instead.

4. If going down the ASCOM/EQMOD route you have the option to do without the handcontroller altogether and connect your PC directly to the mount using an EQDirect adapter (there are USB and RS232 versions available). To interface ASCOM with stellarium you would still need to use StellariumScope.

If you haven't researched EQMOD then I would suggest you take a look at our project web site . EQMOD provide much more advanced functionality over what the synscan offers and is widely used.

Hope this helps.

Graham

[BigBlueOne]

Hi Steve 1962,

I,ve been thru the manuals for my mount I cannot see any reference to pc direct, any ideas thanks.

I thought this was going to be so easy there you go.

Thankyou BigBlueOne.

[BigBlueOne]

Hi Steelfixer,

Thankyou very much for going to that trouble and locating those details, so would not setting my handset to ps direct cause eqmod to not connect.

I asked this question in the last post I believe Im running V3.27

so Im upto date with firmware but where is pc direct.

Thankyou once again BigBlueOne.

[steelfixer]

Fire up the handset and go through the menue untill you get to settings.its in there.

The reason you are probabley getting timed out in eqmod is because it cannot talk to anything.

[BigBlueOne]

Hi Steelfixer,

You beauty, were cooking on burners if you lived round the corner

I would be running round a bottle of jack daniels right this moment.

A million thankyou's BigBlueOne.

[steelfixer]

You are more than welcome.

After the grief I had setting mine up and all the help I recieved it is good to be able to give something back.

Best of luck with the setup I hope it brings you some great views.

Graham

[Steve 1962]

Pleased that you seem to have got it sorted!

[Neil McRae]

This may help as I had lots of problems when I used Stellarium scope and Stellarium.

Stellarium scope used "localhost" as the connection but always fails for me.

What I did was under Control panel find "Network and Sharing" View Status, Details and note your TCP address (19X.16X.1.6X format).

Using Stellarium under plugins I configured the telescope control for slew, sync and cancel to "external device" and instead of localhost entered the computer TCP address found above for all three. Dont forget to save this under configuration window "Main" or next time you load stellarium it will default to "localhost".

It took me over a week to get this sorted out but now works each time. Your computer may at some time in the future change the TCP address and you will have connect problems so just check the address under your control panel.

Good luck

Neil

[Ant]

The usb adapter from mount to PC will usually sit on something like COM4, this is not the COM port number you need to use to control the mount. When the mount is turned on it will then grab a higher COM port.

The com port changes for me everytime. Everytime I set up the very first thing I plug in is the USB to the EQDIR module. Then I check the device manage and see what the com port is.

Something that has started happening to me is the the Prolific device is mapped to COM 17 or higher... You need to change this to COM 16 or lower.

If it is 17 or higher EQMOD will not connect to it.

Cheers

Ant

[BigBlueOne]

Thankyou Neil, and Ant,

Both those points will most definately be useful in the future

for me when I hope to eventually depart with the handset.

Thankyou BigBlueOne.

[Steve 1962]

I use a TTL-232 5v lead from FDTI soldered onto an RJ45 lead as a EQ-Direct connection from my laptop directly to the mount (making the handset redundant) and it works a treat. It also "remembers" its COM port.

Details are on the EQMOD website and I've just made one up for a mate of mine - £26 - bargain!

Steve

[Spikey]

Pleased to got it sorted, it will seem easier next time ...honest !

Ant is spot on about COM16....this has just happened to me over the weekend at the Peak star party, my QHY5 started grabbing COM19..........alwyas happens when you need it least !

I ended up having to clear out device manager of all COM port associations and reconnecting everything from scratch in the daylight. Win 7 is a bit of a pain here as it hides COM port associations without a command line call.

For future reference the following from technet worked for me;

To work around this behavior and display devices when you click Show hidden devices:

1. Click Start, point to All Programs, point to Accessories, and then click Command Prompt. I right clicked this and ran as Administrator
   
2. At a command prompt, type the following command , and then press ENTER:set devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1
   
3. Type the following command a command prompt, and then press ENTER:start devmgmt.msc
   
4. Troubleshoot the devices and drivers in Device Manager.
   NOTE: Click Show hidden devices on the View menu in Device Manager before you can see devices that are not connected to the computer.
   
5. When you finish troubleshooting, close Device Manager.
   
6. Type exit at the command prompt.
   Note that when you close the command prompt window, Window clears the devmgr_show_nonpresent_devices=1 variable that you set in step 2 and prevents ghosted devices from being displayed when you click Show hidden devices.
   

I deleted all associations above COM4, rebooted and connected everything again from scratch. Took 15 mins from start to finish and well worth doing.