Netbook to EQ5 - problem with connection

[bamus]

Hi All

Yesterday I have tried to connect my Samsung n150 Netbook with my EQ5 Synscan GO TO mount. Unfortunately, no success L

As I haven’t any serial ports I have bought USB to RS323 adapter on eBay. Then I have downloaded ASCOM Platform and EQASCOM drivers. After installing everything and connecting mount with Netbook I tried to run EQSetup script, but software was not recognizing any connection with mount.

I think there are possible scenarios:

- Extra drivers needs to be downloaded?

- Win 7 Starter is not working with ASCOM drivers?

- Cheap USB to RS 232 adapter is not working properly.

Any other ideas? Have you got any solutions to my problem?

Thank you in advance for any help!

Brg

Adam

[bamus]

I had a quick look on this:

EQMOD

and I think I have been usinig option 2 which would not work without EQDIRECT.

I think I have to use option 1. I was not considering it before because I have seen

Celestron name, and my mount is SW.

[citaylor]

Have you not got anything you could "prove" the USB Serial connection on so you narrow down the issue ?

[Merlin66]

99% of these type of problems is with a poor Serial > USB adaptor.

Prolific chip sets seem to work well as does the Keyspan adaptors (I've used a couple of them for the last five years on all sorts of software and hardware without issue.)

Try and check that the adaptor you have is up to the job.

[BlueAstra]

Find out from 'control panel/system/device manager' (not sure what the location is in W7) what COM port number the system has assigned to the USB/serial dongle. Use that number in the EQMOD setup so it can find the mount. Always use the same USB socket for the USB/serial dongle or it will re-assign the COM port number. As mentioned before, some USB/serial dongles are problematic. These have a good reputation:

Astronomiser - Automated Astronomy and AstroImaging Solutions

[mark7331]

I had an issue like this when I first tried EQASCOM. After some advice from Chriss Shillito at the EQASCOM project, I downloaded and installed the latest EQASCOM version(v1.22j) because if you click on the blue ASCOM logo a popup trace window appears and you can see, along with other information, the COM port data (if there is any). It turns out that I needed to get the latest drivers for the Prolific serial->usb adaptor once installed everything worked a treat.

I hope this helps.

Mark

EDIT: Oh and I used the device manager in Windows control panel to select the COM ports I wanted. E.g. COM3 for EQMOD and COM7 for my GPS mouse.

[citaylor]

I ordered a couple of cheap USB->Serial devices from ebay, and found that they consistantly dropped bytes under load - so I would agree - go for recommendations when buying peripherals like that.

[bamus]

thanks a lot for all your posts. will test it all over again this evening when I will come back from work.

[bamus]

ok, I know that adapter is working as I have managed to gain control over the mount with Stellarium + stellarium scope, but guide software and eqascom still does not want to know that connection is available. not sure where my misteake is. any idea?

[bamus]

solution found! just had to change settings in hand control to PC Direct mode.

thank you anyway for all your help. hope tomorrow will be clear night, so I will have chance to do first guiding ever