HEQ5 Pro Connection To A Laptop..

[Greg]

Has or does anyone done it, ie. Connect their Skyscan to a lappy and run the scope and GOTO through Starry Night Pro??

If so how well does it work.

[GordonCopestake]

I think it uses the celestron protocol via ascom?

[Greg]

I think it uses the celestron protocol via ascom?

That's correct Gordon...Using the Nexstar 5i driver..

However I want to find out how successful the connection was before I try mine. When I had my ETX I tried it and it ended up wiping the handset :shock: I pooped my pants.

I don't want to break my new toy

Just wondered if anyone uses that connection on here.

[Kai]

Ive had starry night running through mine a couple of times now with no problems.

Mines on the 5i protocols

Go for it,whats the worst that could happen

[geppetto]

Go for it,whats the worst that could happen

Well he could poop his pants a second time

Would be interested to hear how that works Greg.

Is that the way the other mod (Rajiva upgrade) does it's go toing?

[Greg]

Ok..

I've got tomorrow night and then Sunday night for astro due to work and a 50th birthday party, so lets hope for some clear weather.

Poopy paper at the ready then :shock:

Report to follow

[Kaptain Klevtsov]

The biggest gotcha is when you invoke the RS232 on the handset, once you get the message press esc to exit, leave it there. It will then respond to starry night but not the handset. One thing that I've noticed is that you can goto something on the handset after doing the alignment and it goes there, so the mount knows where it is, but if you then connect the starry night via the RS232 lead, the 'scope comes up on the screen as being somewhere else. It's off by about a FOV with the SC3, which is very annoying as finding stuff then gets to be a pain. For visual it will probably get you there every time as the FOV is generally bigger.

If you have the newest version I think you can sync it in to get the pointing accuracy better.

Another thing to be aware of, though its easy enough once you have it there, is the dual screen approach that starry night takes. You have one (like normal) screen and a new "telescope" screen.

HTH

Captain Chaos

[daz]

The Rajiva upgrade uses the LX200 protocol Phil.

SkyMap Pro can use a multitude of protocols to connect to scopes