Controlling EQ6R using USB

[IDM]

Hi,

I have just bought a brand new EQ6R mount which has 2 USB sockets 1 in the hand controller and the second in the mount.

 

I am trying to connect  the mount to my laptop so it can be controlled by Stellarium. I have downloaded the Ascom driver for the mount and tried following the various guides which talk about EQMod. However, whatever I do does not work. I suspect that EQmod is something to do with serial data rather than USB but I am very new to this. I would be very grateful for any advice or help.

Thanks

Ian

 

 

[alacant]

5 hours ago, IDM said:

serial data rather than USB

Hi

Yes, that's it. Easier and more reliable to simply lose the hand controller and use this ftdi cable instead between computer to mount. There's a usb to serial chip in the plug.

Cheers and HTH.

Edited December 31, 2021 by alacant
ortografía

[scotty38]

You don't need a fancy cable, EQMOD and ASCOM drivers are all you need along with a bog standard USB cable.

I just set up a new mini pc to control mine (AZ-EQ6 but essentially the same) so will dig out the links i used to set it all up again

Start here for ASCOM:

https://ascom-standards.rg/    Link at the RHS for 6.5SP1

Then you need EQMOD:

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/eqaindex.html

and follow the links to download or just go here direct:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/eq-mod/files/EQASCOM/

I think that should be all you need then in Cartes du Ciel or whatever choose the ASCOM HEQ5/6 driver.

Edited December 31, 2021 by scotty38

[david_taurus83]

1 hour ago, scotty38 said:

You don't need a fancy cable, EQMOD and ASCOM drivers are all you need along with a bog standard USB cable.

I just set up a new mini pc to control mine (AZ-EQ6 but essentially the same) so will dig out the links i used to set it all up again

Start here for ASCOM:

https://ascom-standards.rg/    Link at the RHS for 6.5SP1

Then you need EQMOD:

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/eqaindex.html

and follow the links to download or just go here direct:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/eq-mod/files/EQASCOM/

I think that should be all you need then in Cartes du Ciel or whatever choose the ASCOM HEQ5/6 driver.

I tried to use a normal USB on mine the other week but it didn't show up in the COM ports. Any ideas? My EQMod cable is a bit too long so was wondering how to use with a shorter USB cable.

[scotty38]

22 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I tried to use a normal USB on mine the other week but it didn't show up in the COM ports. Any ideas? My EQMod cable is a bit too long so was wondering how to use with a shorter USB cable.

You'll need to use a baud rate of 115200, I can't do a screen shot from this machine but in the eqmod settings choose that baud rate then below that you'll see a binocular icon. Click that and it''ll set the com port to what it finds. This way you don't need to go into Devices in windows and check it there and then use that setting in EQMOD.

If that doesn't help I'll do some shots from my setup.....

Edited December 31, 2021 by scotty38

[IDM]

1 hour ago, scotty38 said:

You don't need a fancy cable, EQMOD and ASCOM drivers are all you need along with a bog standard USB cable.

I just set up a new mini pc to control mine (AZ-EQ6 but essentially the same) so will dig out the links i used to set it all up again

Start here for ASCOM:

https://ascom-standards.rg/    Link at the RHS for 6.5SP1

Then you need EQMOD:

http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/eqaindex.html

and follow the links to download or just go here direct:

https://sourceforge.net/projects/eq-mod/files/EQASCOM/

I think that should be all you need then in Cartes du Ciel or whatever choose the ASCOM HEQ5/6 driver.

Hi I just tried your instructions and after a bit of faffing on for a bit it now works using a simple USB cable from my laptop to the mount itself. So many thanks for your help. 

I just need to work out how to sort out the alignment of the scope to Stellarium. So much to learn.

Many thanks,

Ian

[scotty38]

Just now, IDM said:

Hi I just tried your instructions and after a bit of faffing on for a bit it now works using a simple USB cable from my laptop to the mount itself. So many thanks for your help. 

I just need to work out how to sort out the alignment of the scope to Stellarium. So much to learn.

Many thanks,

Ian

Great news. I must admit I could never get on (or get it working properly) with Stellarium but Cartes du Ciel works just fine, for me anyway.

[IDM]

17 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I tried to use a normal USB on mine the other week but it didn't show up in the COM ports. Any ideas? My EQMod cable is a bit too long so was wondering how to use with a shorter USB cable.

I followed Scotty38 instructions and initially it didn't seem to want to connect but then did. Unfortunately I am not sure what I did, sorry! 

[ONIKKINEN]

You need to download and install the prolific USB to serial drivers from Skywatcher even with the USB cable.

By the way EQMOD is not necessary then. At least NINA works with the native skywatcher driver just fine.

[scotty38]

10 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

You need to download and install the prolific USB to serial drivers from Skywatcher even with the USB cable.

By the way EQMOD is not necessary then. At least NINA works with the native skywatcher driver just fine.

I actually used that on my old laptop along with all the other stuff. On this new pc I didn't install it and, as far as I can tell, NINA and everything else works exactly the same as it used to do but who knows what gremlin awaits....

 

Don't know if it's relevant but the SW prolific driver is from 2018, I guess it's possible the other stuff has moved on?????

Edited December 31, 2021 by scotty38

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, scotty38 said:

I actually used that on my old laptop along with all the other stuff. On this new pc I didn't install it and, as far as I can tell, NINA and everything else works exactly the same as it used to do but who knows what gremlin awaits....

 

Don't know if it's relevant but the SW prolific driver is from 2018, I guess it's possible the other stuff has moved on?????

Well i sure hope the whole serial faff is left behind soon. Would believe it if the driver was from 2008 as i dont remember the last time serial cables were really a thing outside mounts...

[malc-c]

Given how may times we see posts like this I think this forum really needs a sticky post on how to set up goto mounts with a computer, especially the setting of the baud rates with newer mounts that have the USB to serial adapters built in, and why in some cases you need to download and install prolific drivers.  

Regarding the use of TTL serial as a standard over native USB... is there much to be gained by doing that.  It's not as if controlling a telescope needs the speed or bandwidth of USB.  It could also lead to more user error and confusion as customers could end up downloading the wrong firmware (which has happened with some of the newer ARM based motorboards featured in newer mounts).   True serial has long been dropped.  You seldom find a com port header on a PC mainboard these days, let alone an external D9 connector, but TTL serial, and its FTDI / Prolific adapters will be around for a lot longer, especially given its use in hobby electronics such as Arduino etc.

The other aspect for Skywatcher is longevity of their mounts.  People are still using mounts purchased 10 - 15 years ago, so they continue to support them.  But I agree the migration to native USB control on mounts will eventually be needed, but can't see Skywatcher in a hurry to do so 

[david_taurus83]

19 hours ago, ONIKKINEN said:

You need to download and install the prolific USB to serial drivers from Skywatcher even with the USB cable.

By the way EQMOD is not necessary then. At least NINA works with the native skywatcher driver just fine.

That's interesting. So you don't use Eqmod at all? It doesn't get called up when you connect the mount? 

[malc-c]

57 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

That's interesting. So you don't use Eqmod at all? It doesn't get called up when you connect the mount? 

I've only dabbled with NINA, I didn't continue using it as it doesn't support older Canon cameras that use the serial shutter release and when I asked the development team if that would be a possibility got a snotty response suggesting I should replace my D400 with something more up to date.  The fact that Backyard EOs and APT both continue to support my "old" camera  and are more approachable to users input meant that I ditched NINA.  However I seem to recall it would launch EQMOD in order to control my HEQ5.  I would have thought that to have a built in "driver" for all the telescopes NINA supports would require a lot of coding as there are several different protocols, so it would be easier to just use ASCOM and launch whatever ASCOM compliant driver  is installed, be that EQMOD, GSServer or any dedicated software that other manufactures provide.

A friend of mine used GSServer for control of his EQ8 as it provides full power option for stepper motors, and he uses NINA for almost everything else, so I'm guessing you do need a 3rd party "driver" installed...???

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

That's interesting. So you don't use Eqmod at all? It doesn't get called up when you connect the mount? 

No EQMOD at all, correct. There is a small skywatcher widget on desktop after connecting though. It has N/S, E/W and slew speed buttons and nothing more.

But its not necessary since NINA and PHD2 (and the handcontroller) have full control of the mount.

[david_taurus83]

2 minutes ago, ONIKKINEN said:

No EQMOD at all, correct. There is a small skywatcher widget on desktop after connecting though. It has N/S, E/W and slew speed buttons and nothing more.

But its not necessary since NINA and PHD2 (and the handcontroller) have full control of the mount.

Thanks for this. I will look into it. Just to be clear, is this the Skywatcher Synscan Pro app in Windows you use or just a widget that pops up like Eqmod?

Eqmod usually doesn't sync platesolved coords for me despite NINA getting a target bang on centre. It's not bothered me too much but I always wonder if this is why I have struggled with meridian flips. Both my first and current AZEQ6 always rejected syncing.

[StevieDvd]

The USB issue is not that complicated - but can be very frustrating if you hit one of the gotchas.

To convert the commands between your computer and mount there is a chip which translates USB to Serial.  In newer mounts you may have a chip in the handset and the newest have one in the mount  (the new usb port). On older mounts you need to use a cable with the chip in, often referred to as an eqmod/eqdir cable.

All these chips need a driver on the computer, some chips work at the old default of 9600 baud and most of newer ones 115200  (but not all).  Old drivers may not work on the later versions of the same manufacturer chips.

Recent gotchas

• ZWO Asiair computers would only recognise some Skywatcher mounts with the new USB port as they used 2 versions of the same chip.  The driver on the ZWO could not be updated by the user people resorted back to eqmod cables.  The issue was the Raspberry Pi driver which could be updated, but ZWO needed to do this to their closed Pi system.
• One of the main chip makers discovered there were many cloned copies of their chip - using their official drivers. So they changed the drivers to refuse cloned chips, lot's of cheap eqmod cables then stopped working.
• If  the USB port on your mount works then the only problem is the USB cable getting pulled out (it does not click in). You can remedy this with cheap diy clips/velcro - an eqmod is an expensive work-around.

I'm posting this in case others read the thread when looking for solutions. I fully understand that this is well known to some of the posters above already, it's not for their benefit.

Happy New Year

Steve

 

 

[malc-c]

Well that's interesting....   Just spent a while doing a test.  It look longer than I thought as the graphics card in the observatory PC was playing up (it's not been used for some time) but anyway I downloaded NINA, installed and launched the application.  I hadn't configured anything and prior to this had restored the machine back to a pre NINA config after the previous time it was installed, so no previous settings from the last time I messed about with NINA existed on the PC.

I selected the Telescope section, it had HEQ5 displayed in the options... clicked Connect and it launched EQMOD.  !!!!!!!

It did screw up my custom park position as it no doubt thought the scope was parked in the default HOME position, so now I have to restore PC back to the last image from the backups... but that's not a problem.

In addition to the info Steve posted above, the issue with Prolific drivers required for most (if not all) Skywatcher mounts with USB connectivity is that when Microsoft was developing windows 10 Prolific did not want to comply with the licencing agreement to have their drivers included as standard with windows 10 installation.  So Microsoft didn't include them as a native driver in its build.  Hence why 3rd party devices the use the chipset for USB to TTL serial (PL2302 normally) such as Skywatcher provide the last know version (normally windows 7) of the driver on their sites.

Right, I'm off to restore the last working image back on the Observatory PC - whats that saying... "aint broke don't fix it !" - which I hadn't of bothered !!

[scotty38]

33 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

Eqmod usually doesn't sync platesolved coords for me despite NINA getting a target bang on centre. It's not bothered me too much but I always wonder if this is why I have struggled with meridian flips. Both my first and current AZEQ6 always rejected syncing.

I'm not 100% sure i understand what you mean here but if EQMOD has the correct coordinates set up and NINA is platesolving ok then things should be good. There are plenty of settings in EQMOD for the Meridian limits etc as well as in NINA. If I use Cartes du Ciel to "test" by slewing to appropriate targets it will cause my mount to flip or not as the case may be. When NINA is running it works there too.

Having said that, using GSServer instead of EQMOD CdC would not flip correctly despite all my fiddling with it. I discovered this the hard way using it with NINA one night night and wondering why guiding had failed. A pier crash was the reason so I went back to EQMOD and it's been fine since.

[david_taurus83]

20 minutes ago, scotty38 said:

I'm not 100% sure i understand what you mean here but if EQMOD has the correct coordinates set up and NINA is platesolving ok then things should be good. There are plenty of settings in EQMOD for the Meridian limits etc as well as in NINA. If I use Cartes du Ciel to "test" by slewing to appropriate targets it will cause my mount to flip or not as the case may be. When NINA is running it works there too.

Having said that, using GSServer instead of EQMOD CdC would not flip correctly despite all my fiddling with it. I discovered this the hard way using it with NINA one night night and wondering why guiding had failed. A pier crash was the reason so I went back to EQMOD and it's been fine since.

If I slew from home position all the way round to celestial equator, eg for PHD calibration, I ask Nina to platesolve and sync to the mount. That's where I get an error saying Eqmod rejected the sync as it thinks it's too far away from where the mount is pointing. So even though NINA or APT for that matter can centre on a target, I have found the platesolved coords differ with what coords are in Eqmod. Thats an entirely different topic anyway. I will give the non Eqmod method a go and see how it works out.

[ONIKKINEN]

1 hour ago, david_taurus83 said:

Thanks for this. I will look into it. Just to be clear, is this the Skywatcher Synscan Pro app in Windows you use or just a widget that pops up like Eqmod?

Eqmod usually doesn't sync platesolved coords for me despite NINA getting a target bang on centre. It's not bothered me too much but I always wonder if this is why I have struggled with meridian flips. Both my first and current AZEQ6 always rejected syncing.

Its not the app, its just a tiny 100px widget that has the directional keys. Never used that either actually.

Im not sure my platesolve syncs work since there is no error message telling me that they were rejected. ASTAP always finds the target after 1 re-slew but to hit my tolerance of 30arcsec will take several retries. After a GO-TO to another part of the sky it will again be about 2 degrees off on the first one, so i think mine rejects the sync too but EQMOD is not there telling me about that.

42 minutes ago, malc-c said:

In addition to the info Steve posted above, the issue with Prolific drivers required for most (if not all) Skywatcher mounts with USB connectivity is that when Microsoft was developing windows 10 Prolific did not want to comply with the licencing agreement to have their drivers included as standard with windows 10 installation.  So Microsoft didn't include them as a native driver in its build.  Hence why 3rd party devices the use the chipset for USB to TTL serial (PL2302 normally) such as Skywatcher provide the last know version (normally windows 7) of the driver on their sites.

This might explain why my desktop PC recognized my handset as COM4 as soon as i plugged it in the first time but my mini-pc did not and had to install the drivers manually.

44 minutes ago, malc-c said:

Well that's interesting....   Just spent a while doing a test.  It look longer than I thought as the graphics card in the observatory PC was playing up (it's not been used for some time) but anyway I downloaded NINA, installed and launched the application.  I hadn't configured anything and prior to this had restored the machine back to a pre NINA config after the previous time it was installed, so no previous settings from the last time I messed about with NINA existed on the PC.

I selected the Telescope section, it had HEQ5 displayed in the options... clicked Connect and it launched EQMOD.  !!!!!!!

EQMOD still works with USB only control, but doesn't have to be used. I think it was a "skywatcher mount" or similar option in NINA that does not launch EQMOD.

[StevieDvd]

Sounds like the co-ordinate system between the platesolve and NINA/APT could be set differently J2000 or JNOW (or one is metric the other imperial 😗)

Not my area but just applying simple logic.

[ONIKKINEN]

24 minutes ago, StevieDvd said:

Sounds like the co-ordinate system between the platesolve and NINA/APT could be set differently J2000 or JNOW (or one is metric the other imperial 😗)

Not my area but just applying simple logic.

Actually think you might be correct. NINA sometimes gives a notification that goes something along the lines of: Mount coordinate system B1950 was converted to J2000, or something like that. Cant remember exactly how the error went but i have definitely seen this one.

B1950 is also an old sky coordinate system, could be that Skywatcher mounts follow this system for some reason?

[david_taurus83]

I've never seen B1950. Sometimes NINA asks on startup to sync location from mount to NINA or vice versa. Pretty sure I have both running on JNOW.

[StevieDvd]

2 minutes ago, david_taurus83 said:

I've never seen B1950. Sometimes NINA asks on startup to sync location from mount to NINA or vice versa. Pretty sure I have both running on JNOW.

I was synching mount to software before ever using Platesolving - that's different from the Platesolve synch to mount contolling software. What platesolver are you using?