ST4 Pinout

[Stub Mandrel]

Anyone searching the net for ST4 pinouts will rapidly discover that no-one bothers to state whether the pinout given is looking into or out of the connector and even whether you are dealing with a plug or a socket (in many cases). The cable colours also appear totally random.

Hooray for Steve who (in 'Making Every Photo Count') actually says that his diagram is of a PLUG and you are looking at it from the FRONT with the TAB on top.

I was pretty confident this was correct, but Steve's is the only source I could find that was definitive about the orientation.

I can't give him a prize though, as he states +RA is right and -RA is left, but this is only correct in the Southern hemisphere. I'm assuming left and right relate to scope movement not star movement (this is clearly the case with respect to DEC).

That said, if you do a meridian flip or head south, left and right get reversed anyway, so presumably the guiding software works out what's happening by the way the stars move?

 

Anyway as far as I can tell looking into an ST4 PLUG a from the FRONT with the TAB on top in the Northern Hemisphere:

Left to right: No connection / GND / left +RA / up +DEC / down -DEC / right -RA

Can anyone confirm this...

[Merlin66]

Hmmm

The diagrams given on the ShoeString website I feel are unambiguous and work 100%

http://www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/guide_port_cables.pdf

[Stub Mandrel]

Yep, that's unambiguous: "This view is with the connector lock tab facing away from you. Note carefully the color and order of the six wires."

Only issue there is that different manufacturers use different colours - my ZWO cable has the different colours in a different order, fortunately the plugs are transparent.

I think users need to be warned NOT to rely on the cable colours.