Running two SX Filter Wheels from one PC

[ian_bird]

Hi

As the title says - has anyone tried running two SX Filter Wheels from one PC?

All my research so far suggests you would have to run one of them using a USB to Serial Port adapter and a 9v Battery! Nice one SX!

I will obviously be using separate software to control the wheels. In fact one of the wheels just needs to set to either Luminance or Ha at the start and afterwards can just stay as it is. The other wheel will be doing either RGB or OIII and SII.

I suspect I will need to use a second PC to control the first filter wheel.

Any ideas?

Cheers

Ian

[ian_bird]

Just to be clear - this will be on a dual imaging rig. 

Ian

[Dr_Ju_ju]

The PC would need to see each wheel as a separate device, and I suspect that the SX wheels are produced with the same identifier, therefore 2 would appear to be identical to the system.... 

The best approach would be to ask the manufacturer, & see what they say...

[ian_bird]

Hi Julian

I've dropped Terry an email.

Cheers

Ian

[Dr_Ju_ju]

They have a Yahoo support group (https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/starlightxpress/conversations/messages), that Terry always keeps a beady eye on... 

[Anne S]

Did you ever get an answer from Terry?

Anne

[Dr_Ju_ju]

From the Oracle:

 " Hi Anne,

Yes, you can, but one needs to be connected by the serial cable.

Regards,

Terry (Terry Platt)

you can, but one needs to be connected by the serial cable.

 

Regards,

Terry

 

[Anne S]

Thanks. That settles it. I’m in the process of acquiring a second hand Atik EFW2. My future plans included getting a 383L to use with my RC6. The Atik site states it allows 1 1/4 inch filters to be used with it.

I also don't want to rule out being able to set up a dual imaging system needing both SX and Atik filterwheels using Maxim dl.  I like Starlight Xpress cameras but I don’t need extra complications.

[Davey-T]

Hi Anne, I run 2 of everything by simply starting 2 instances of Maxim.

Dave