laptop control of Skywatcher EXPLORER-130P SynScan

[sharman24]

hi all,

hope to get some help here. i purchased the above scope for my son earlier in the year, we have had some great nights with some good views. bit of a struggle at first to align but got there.

i wish to use the laptop to do basic control of the scope and have camera fitted to the eye piece. which worked great with a cheap one.

i have found drivers and info on the net, i purchased a usb to serial adaptor, but i keep getting scope not found or not reconised ?

have checked through device manager, and the adaptor is there and seems ok.

i got feeling i may have something wrong, be that the wrong drivers, which i downloaded quiet a few, or problem with the adaptor.

i really want to get this working for my son as he has such thirst of knowledge for space and our fantastic universe.

hope that some body can guide me in the right direction. Also a little guidance on filters, which would be the best to get, either a set or somebody recomend to me the select few that will cover most viewing for our early stages of viewing.

[Mikea]

Hi sharman24! Can you please tell us exactly which drivers you have tried to use? I'm hoping you will say the Celestron 5i/8i, which are compatible with the 130P Synscan. Also check the COM port settings. red dwalf posted a good guide to getting this going somewhere on the forum.

The USB-serial adapters are not all the same. Which one did you get? Some of them seem to cause problems and don't work too well. Do you have something else with a serial port that you can check the adapter with?

You can use Cartes du Ciel and Stellarium to control the scope - both work well, but my preference is Stellarium - better visuals.

Keep the questions coming - we can help!

[red dwalf]

here`s a link to the Stellarium control post.

http://stargazerslounge.com/primers-tutorials/84630-stellarium-operated-goto-mounts.html

it took me most of the day to get mine running as there wasn`t alot of stright forward info on the net.

also Mikea is right, you need to be using the right com port and you need a two way usb to serial adapter, they are not all the same and don`t ask me how you find out as i don`t know but was lucky when i bought mine.

P.S. i had the 130p as my first scope and had some lovely views from it, highly recommended.

[Merlin66]

I recommend and use the Keyspan 19HS usb to serial adaptor.

Works 100% with everything.

[Mikea]

I have this one: USB to Serial 9 Way adapter (with 9 to 25 adaptor) - Ebuyer . I also bought a cheaper one from eBay which has the same chipset, but eBay is more of a gamble!

[sharman24]

hi all thanks for getting back to me with the info. reading through it looks like i have got the right stuff downloaded.

i downloaded

ASCOM PLATFORM 5 a

CELESTRON (5.0.14)

CELESTRON DRIVER UPDATE 503.not sure why i done this one

i did have quite a job finding all of this and sorting through which was needed.

as regards to the USB SERIAL adaptor, i dont have and info on its make, i seem to remember i purchased it off the net, it was not costly, but i dont think it is a keyspan as i have seen this mentioned before somewhere on the forum

i was able to load up Stallaruim ok, and i did choose the celestron 5i/8i as mikea says. in fact it suggests this in the manual, but i seem to think that i got confused over the driver /scope choice in the drop down menu on the stellaruim....i will try again.

one thing what should the hand control be set to, PC Control?.

sorry for being a little vague but it has been some time since i last attempted to sort this out and now i have had a little more time i wish to get it working.

what i will do is test the usb/serial converter on something else and follow the guide.

com port....i am as red dwalf not sure if this is right on laptop. i will find out.

also i guess it will all work with vista ok.

anyway thanks chaps for the advice....i will have another go and report back in a few days and let you know if i have cracked it.

thanks again:)

[sharman24]

hi chaps, well after several hours of playing with the pc set up to control the scope, i managed to get there in the end. had to uninstall all previous installations of the stellarium and ascom platform and drivers. downloaded all again with updates and noticed that when choosing type of scope in the ascom drive section, i found that it now said celestron scope driver..which was not present before as it only said celestron telescopes?. so i guess that was the problem.

anyway its working all ok apart from...if somebody can help me here, when i click on a star in stellarium and then control 1 to slew the scope, it all goes ok. but when i do the same for planet i get 4 small lines around the choosen planet and it does not respond to the control 1 to slew to that planet. it maybe just a config that i have not done

any help on this would be great