SkyView Pro GoTo EQ mount and Stellarium

[hefyjefy]

I wanted to pass this on because it took me a long time to figure out:

The good news is that its working, however it would appear that there is an error in the SkyView Pro manual.

The manual seems to state that in order to have the mount controlled by a PC running Astronomy software (in my case Stellarium) the hand controller needs to be set to "PC Direct Mode" - this is not the case.

Maybe I am interpreting the manual incorrectly but I found that for this to work all I needed to do was align the mount (1, 2 or 3 star) and then "GoTo" an object.  In Stellarium simply configure the Telescope plug-in correctly (My PC has a regular old COM port, not USB) and hit "Start", the plug-in reports "connected".  Then just point and click at an object and hit CTRL + the number you assigned...  

As I said, this could be a peculiarity of my setup or my interpretation of the manual - I just thought I would pass it on.

Also just for the record, the fact that the Stellarium Plug-in reports "connected" doesn't actually mean much!

Geoff

[Cornelius Varley]

You're right about the PC-Direct mode, the manual is correct though, it is just not used. Although it is supposed to be for that reason (pc control of the mount through the handset), it is not widely supported by planetarium programs, if any. The only mount control program that I know of that supports the feature is EQMOD.