Meade lx850 Ascom drivers

[tim r]

I can control my Meade lx850 gem mount with the Zwo air plus but want more control like parking scope and roof on off automation which the Zwo won’t do.

so going to try connect to Ascom then NINA, but try as I might cannot get the mount to connect to Ascom it not a hard wear issue as can connect to meades updater and Zwo. 
Trawled the internet for every driver but no luck has anybody been able to connect a Meade to Ascom thanks.

[Oddsocks]

Hi Tim.

If your LX850 has the AutoStar II / AutoStar #497 controller you might find that the cjdSkunkWorks AutoStar #497 ASCOM driver will work, if not, the author, Colin Dawson, will work with you to iron out any bugs:

https://bitbucket.org/cjdskunkworks/meadeautostar497/wiki/Home

The AutoStar #497 ASCOM driver is in the downloads folder on the linked page.

In the absence of any interest from Meade to develop ASCOM drivers he is developing his own “Universal” Meade driver that can work with all Meade telescopes. He can be contacted through his Discord page under the support section of the website linked above.

Other than the above, you might find that employing the ASCOM Device Hub as a go-between to connect your observatory control program to your current Meade ASCOM driver will work as Device Hub can translate and forward 64-bit observatory control applications commands and messages to 32-bit telescope drivers, and vice-versa.

ASCOM Device Hub is built-in to the current ASCOM platform 6.6SP1, update to this platform version if you have not already done so, (link to the ASCOM page below), then start ASCOM Device Hub from the main ASCOM application folder and configure your Meade ASCOM driver as the telescope in Device Hub’s tools menu and “connect” to the telescope in the main window of Device Hub.

Provided that the connection is successful then In your observatory control program set the Telescope type to ASCOM - Device Hub Telescope and “connect”.

You can ignore the Dome configuration section of the ASCOM Device Hub, it has no function unless you want to add full dome automation into Device Hub’s control capability.

If you need it, there is a concise help document built-in to Device Hub, accessible from the main Device Hub menu.

https://ascom-standards.org

Can’t think of anything else to suggest, hopefully someone else will have some personal experience with the LX850 ASCOM drivers and can offer a more specific solution.

William.

Edited April 2, 2023 by Oddsocks
Spelling error

[tim r]

Wow what a coincidence I downloaded this program late last night and literally just tried it in NINA and it slewed to the targets as much as I could tell in the day time. It came  up with a few errors but still worked as far as I can tell.
And parked it that worked as I should, now to try properly on a clear night I  want the park scope feature to work so my roll on roll off works with the mount so not to snap my scope in half by accidentally closing.

[Oddsocks]

Hi Tim.

Long experience with astro software and computers in general has shown me how totally unreliable they can be, at some time or other they will fail and the roof will close with the OTA in the way.

For unattended observatory automation with a collision risk it is absolutely essential to have a back-up system on the mount to prevent the roof closing if the OTA is not parked.

Simple tilt switches on the OTA and a relay circuit to break power to the roof actuator when the mount is not parked are all that is needed, the cabling to the switches doesn’t need to be that intrusive or untidy.

Good to hear that Colin Dawson’s Meade ASCOM driver is working for you, don’t hesitate to contact him via the Discord site if you run into any bugs and he will work with you to fix those ASAP.

William.

[tim r]

The mount connects but I’m getting this error an I doing something wrong.

 

[Oddsocks]

Looks like a missing system file error.

Report that to Colin Dawson though his Discord web page and he will help you with that.

I can see from your screen shot that you have "Trace on" enabled in the driver set-up dialogue so you should have an error log for the driver stored on your computer that you can forward on to him, that will be more helpful to him than the screen shot.

You will find the log(s) in your user Documents folder > ASCOM folder > Logs

There is a short video here showing how to enable/disable the Meade driver log and where to find it:

 

 

Edited April 2, 2023 by Oddsocks

[tim r]

Thanks again it’s a little more involved the my Zwo plus but I’ll get to grips with it eventually