Starry night to drive the scope?

[clunsey73]

I have starry night and a celestron 6se, was thinking of trying to hook up both so that I can drive the scope with it. Anyone been through the process and if so how useful do you find it?

[rowan46]

its relatively easy you need the rs232 lead to connect the handset to your laptops serial port. I can see the point if you are intending to remotely work from an observatory but I wouldn't have thought the 6se is an observatory scope as Its main advantages are its portability and the handset has more objects in the database than the scope can usefully see.

[clunsey73]

The only advantage for me that I can figure (may be others but I don't know yet) is that while offline I like to plan my observing and set up the lists on starry night - and then I run in and out of the house programming the scope - I guess it would be more convenient to have the list there and then just click and look. Also part of me just wants to try it because I have the stuff! I do all my observing from the back porch so its no hassle to try it and see how useful it is. Just wasn't sure how user friendly the setup was.

[rowan46]

then enjoy yourself. Its been years since I used starry night on my old nexstar and my old laptop has a serial port which made it relatively simple to use if your computer doesn't have serial you may need to get some sort of serial to usb convertor. As you can see I am no electronics buff so if I could get it to work probably anyone can

[clunsey73]

That is good to know! Thanks!

[hoops86]

the USB to RS-232 adapters cost pennies on ebay. However a word of warning... these cheap ones are horrible. I bought 2 cheap adapters that didnt work on any OS that i tried (xp, vista, windows 8, OSX)

I then found this one...it does cost more... however it is perfect! no messing around! it just works! and works very well on any OS i have tried. Gets great reviews as it deserves.

Around £10 but worth it!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/computers-accessories/dp/B00425S1H8

[clunsey73]

Well it was a pretty straightforward set-up - only glitch was that an error message kept coming up whenever I tried to go live with the scope - but it turned out that you have to make sure to run starry night with administrator privileges. Otherwise windows 7 keeps it from doing something it needs to do! Ended up not taking it into the yard though, as it kept threatening to rain. Roll on dry season.

[DeepThought]

the USB to RS-232 adapters cost pennies on ebay. However a word of warning... these cheap ones are horrible. I bought 2 cheap adapters that didnt work on any OS that i tried (xp, vista, windows 8, OSX)

I then found this one...it does cost more... however it is perfect! no messing around! it just works! and works very well on any OS i have tried. Gets great reviews as it deserves.

Around £10 but worth it!

http://www.amazon.co.uk/computers-accessories/dp/B00425S1H8

I absolutely second this comment.

I bought a really cheap cable off ebay, after about an hour messing about with drivers and eventually finding one that supposedly worked, I tried to update the Synscan handset and the update kept failing at 3% (not before erasing the old firmware of course).

Fortunately I had a decent cable in the house that a friend had lent me and I managed to bring it back to life, but it was a tense half hour I can tell you.

[clunsey73]

Luckily I had heard a few complaints before I bought, so I ended up with a keyspan which seems to work well. http://www.amazon.com/Tripp-Lite-USA-19HS-Hi-Speed-supports/dp/B0000VYJRY

[DeepThought]

I'm still trying to find the balance between cost and effectiveness. I know the Keyspan comes recommended but £30-40 for a cable in this day and age is pretty astronomical... And not in a good way.

[hoops86]

after hours of messing around trying to get the cheap adapters to work i was advised to go for the Keyspan ones too.

But as deepthought says i felt £30-40 is just a bit of a rip off. So i read many many reviews on amazon of the Plugable one and couldnt see a bad word said about it.

£10 seemed a much more reasonable price to me.

[clunsey73]

I agree - it costs too much for what it is. I think it cost me 25 USD, but I don't have the convenience of a local store that carries stock (and amazon etc don't deliver here) so I wanted to buy one that I know had worked for other people.

[clunsey73]

Hoops - noticed you are in Glasgow - lived there for a few years in Merchant City - Candleriggs - loved it!

[gvamax]

I can also recommend the ATEN UC-232A serial to USB converter that worked here right off the bat (on Windows XP - but it also supports W7). It costs approx. US$20.- Don't forget that these "cables" are more than just wire, they have active electronics inside (normally lodged in the DB9 connector), hence the need for a driver installation (CD normally supplied with cable) on the host computer with the USB ports.

Now that it works ... I found that slewing to the same object with the handset or Starry Night Pro didn't go exactly to the same place. Illusion or reality ? Has someone else observed this ? Further, is it possible to an alignement with Starry Night Pro, or can one only use Starry Night Pro, once the scope has been aligned with the handset ?

[gvamax]

Oops ! A little RTFM of the Starry Night doc clarified that issue : Yes, you need to align the scope first, before connecting Starry Night ! The reported difference from slewing to an object with the scope handset and the computer screen seems to come from the location setting. For some reason disconnecting and reconnecting to the scope changes the location in Starry Night. I hadn't noticed this at first and need to find out how to freeze the home location.