Autoslew ASCOM Woes with Pulsar Observatory

[DeepSkyMan]

Hi there, I am trying to get Autoslew to drive my Pulsar Dome over ASCOM.  To my knowledge the Pulsar ASCOM driver works without issue with a multitude of different vendor solutions, unfortunately the same does not appear to be true for ASA Autoslew.  I have managed to get Autoslew to recognise the Pulsar ASCOM driver in as much as the menu options for Open and Close of the shutter are now enabled, unfortunately when I execute the Open command I receive the following error output:

 

                    -------------09:13:24------------ 

Dome Problem:Object reference not set to an instance of an object

Has anyone ever successfully used the Pulsar ASCOM driver with Autoslew?   I have tried uninstalling and re-installing the driver… same result.  The Pulsar driver is 32 bit running on a 64bit Windows 10 computer.  ASCOM Diagnostics returns the following:

Create              Creating device
Connected           Connecting to device                  

Name                Pulsar Observatories Dome
Description         Pulsar Observatories Dome
DriverInfo          Pulsar Observatories Dome Drive Version: 6.3
DriverVersion       6.3
InterfaceVersion    2
Azimuth, Altitude   Property not available - Property read Altitude is not implemented in this driver.

AtHome              False
AtPark              False                   
Connected           Disconnecting from device
Dispose             Disposing of device
Dispose             Completed disposal
ReleaseComObject    Releasing COM instance
GC Collect          Starting garbage collection
GC Collect          Completed garbage collection
 

Kind Regards

Paul

Edited June 14, 2023 by DeepSkyMan

[Oddsocks]

Hi Paul.

I saw your parallel thread over on the ASCOM forum but that forum is really for problems with the ASCOM platform itself, not device drivers.

They will help if they can but with no access to the device hardware, and in many cases the device drivers, there is little support that the ASCOM Platform authors can offer other than refer you back to the device manufacturers / software providers.

I have no knowledge of ASA Systeme Gmbh AutoSlew software but I do run a Pulsar Dome myself.

The ASCOM diagnostics Device Connection Tester report for the dome doesn't help much in this case because the driver author doesn't write the full DriverVersion ID in the driver header and so the ASCOM diagnostics report for Device Type only shows the first two digits for the driver, in this case = version 6.3.

The full ASCOM diagnostics report will show you the actual version ID for the Pulsar DLL, although not in an end-user friendly way.

A typical extract from the full ASCOM diagnostics report for the latest Pulsar Dome driver:

10:47:55.921 FileDetails               C:\Program Files (x86)\Common Files\ASCOM\Dome\ASCOM.Pulsar_Observatories_Dome.Dome.dll
10:47:56.014 FileDetails                  Assembly Version:   ASCOM.Pulsar_Observatories_Dome.Dome, Version=6.3.9.0, Culture=neutral, PublicKeyToken=5a596dde3293c610
10:47:56.014 FileDetails                  Assembly Framework: v4.0.30319
10:47:56.014 FileDetails                  File Version:       6.3.9.0
10:47:56.014 FileDetails                  Product Version:    6.3.9.0
10:47:56.014 FileDetails                  Description:        ASCOM.Pulsar_Observatories_Dome.Dome

You'll find this information repeated multiple times in the full ASCOM diagnostics report wherever a connection between drivers exists but to find it you would need to search the full report using "Pulsar" as the search term and then wade through hundreds of "hits".

-------------------

The last Pulsar driver I had at the end of 2022 from Mathew Player at ElecSoft Solutions, who's company produce the dome drive controllers and software for Pulsar Observatories, was version ID 6.3.9.0, and this was de-bugged with Mathew to accommodate the new 64 bit version of TheSkyX.

The Pulsar v6.3.9.0 driver passed all ASCOM Conform U tests in both 32 and 64 bit modes and should work with any 32bit or 64bit ASCOM compliant application. I have placed a copy on GoogleDrive if you want to give this a try but be aware that this driver package does update the shutter module firmware automatically (via the Bluetooth link) on first connection and once installed you can't roll back without help from Mathew to back-rev the shutter firmware.

I have been using the v6.3.9.0. Pulsar driver with ACP, MaxIm DL and TheSky64/32 with no issues since November 2022:

https://drive.google.com/file/d/1Gd2HnT4-YsP9KqGYYtG36XJaNJN5DUgF/view?usp=share_link

Other than the above Pulsar driver, another approach you can try is to use the ASCOM Device Hub as a pass-through to allow your 32/64 bit application to cross communicate with a 32/64 bit driver. ASCOM Device Hub will translate ASCOM commands across 32/64 bit interfaces and the Device Hub does that without any additional configuration other than telling your ASA AutoSlew software that ASCOM Device Hub Dome is the dome driver to connect to and in ASCOM Device Hub itself you configure the dome to be your Pulsar Observatories dome driver.

The rest of the Device Hub dome geometry settings can be ignored as you will just be using Device Hub as a pass-through conversion but you can if you want to configure Device Hub as a dome controller in it's own right and configure your control application to connect to Device Hub telescope and Device Hub dome then to connect to Pulsar Dome and the telescope in Device Hub, add in the dome/mount geometry settings to the Device Hub configuration and allow Device Hub to manage dome sync and shutter control.

You'll find ASCOM Device Hub is installed automatically with the current ASCOM Platform v6.6 SP1:

https://ascom-standards.org

Can't really suggest anything else except to contact ASA and Pulsar directly as they are responsible for their own drivers and resolving issues for their customers.

HTH

William.

Edited June 16, 2023 by Oddsocks
Spelling and grammar.