VB Code for Syncing Dome to Scope

[Steve 1962]

Hello all

I'm in the process of motorising my Pulsar dome and I've got as far as building an "electronic compass" which sends the dome azimuth back to a VB program (the first I've written since I had a 48kB Sinclair Spectrum in the early 80's) running on the Observatory PC. This program then reads EQASCOM and drives a StepperBee controlled stepper motor (which is mounted on the dome and engages in a timing belt bonded to the done walls) - that all works fine.

At the moment the program just matches the dome azimuth to the scope azimuth, but in reality life isn't that simple and it doesn't work - the maths have got me thoroughly puggled.

Does anyone have any VB code that they'd be willing to share with me that will take the scope position and convert it to dome azimuth please?

If not, I'm aware that a chap called John Oliver of the University of Florida did this with some VB code back a while ago in a program called DomeSync but this appears to have been deleted off their server - maybe someone might have a copy that I could have?

If that's a no-go - could someone point me at something that explains the maths in simple steps please?

As a final clutch at straws - I understand that the maths is already done in the ASCOM and POTH dome drivers, but I have no idea how to write an ASCOM driver - are there any tutorials out there - or has anyone already written a driver for this purpose that they'd be willing to share?

Thanks (hopefully!) in advance

Steve

[skybadger]

Download the POTH source code from John Winfield - the author. The first iterations were in VB.

The latest versions are in c# IIRC.

Mike

[robin-m]

I have written an ASCOM driver for my dome, it isn't hard. Download the ASCOM developer package and MS Visual C# 2010 both are free although you will need to register C#. The ASCOM template pretty much builds the code for you, you just need to fill in the blanks. Someone called ejholmes has posted his source code for a dome driver on the web here: https://github.com/ejholmes/Arduino-Dome--ASCOM-Driver-/tree/master/Arduino%20Dome It's a useful link to see how he handles serial communication to his arduino based dome.

If you have any questions about the programming feel free to ask.

Robin

[Steve 1962]

Hi Mike and Robin - Thanks for your replies.

Mike - I can't find anything other than the current C# source - I don't suppose you have a link to an older VB version handy by any chance?

Thanks Robin - I've got the templates already downloaded into VB Studio already - so I'm trying to digest it all now.

[skybadger]

Is this what you are looking for ?

http://stash.teamserver.tigranetworks.co.uk/projects/ASCOM/repos/ascom-platform/browse/POTH/Source

its v6.0 of POTH in VB.

Since I think you want to do dome azimuth from telescope pointing in VB, is there no way you can just hook into POTH configured as  a manager of EQASCOM and manager of your dome via its simple dome driver, to tell your dome where to point for the telescope at [RA, DEC]

Cheers

Mike