g__day
18-03-2007, 10:11 AM
This is a kind of stunning oversight IMHO. Many Goto scopes have a park or hibernate function, but unless you wish to fork out much $$$ for GPS you simply can't easily enter date and time into a scope that's permanently mounted at a fixed location.
Now even with a Vitrual GPS device (yes GPS simulators or emulators exist, any you can use a PC's BIOS system time or a windows world time function). But from the free to the $500 simulator add a PC serial port out coupler (say $80), cabling ($10) then of course Celestron didn't provide a GPS input port, you have to add an aux port (more couplers for $195!!!), so its $300 just to connect a real or virtual GPS date/time (and/or location) signal to you device.
Let me say that again - its $300 just to get the hardware cabling to send set-up data to your scope. You can easily add at least another $300 - $600 for a real GPS unit.
Now Celestron sell a proprietary unit with AUX port for about $600, but just think about it, every motherboard sold in the world today has a crystal clock generator and the simple BIOS functions to track date and time.
For Celestron to have provided a stored date/time function on the controller would have cost less than $2. For Celestron to expose functionality for some Windows PC to enter this data into a connected hand controller (rather than manually push buttons) would have cost nothing!
You can put the scope into hibernation - and then not turn the power off and so a day or five later press the UNDO button - and hope it all works - but it's a real gross workaround - better hope no one bumps your gear or turns it back on or your mount will certainly have a major collision with its pier. Or their maybe there's a hidden internal setting that stuffs up this risky method.
This is my rant asking why isn't there a simply way to automatically get date and time into a mount? Does any scope allow this, or is it only Celestron that has this glaring oversight?
PS
Has anyone found a fully automated way to get date / time electronically from a PC into Celestrons hand controller without a GPS? Nexstar can give (actually sell you an expensive and practically useless) PC based version of your handcontroller on your screen, but you still have to manually press alot of buttons rather than execute a few simple calls to system time and system date and/or execute a read of a stored location to set itself up. What a whoopsie!
/end_rant!
Now even with a Vitrual GPS device (yes GPS simulators or emulators exist, any you can use a PC's BIOS system time or a windows world time function). But from the free to the $500 simulator add a PC serial port out coupler (say $80), cabling ($10) then of course Celestron didn't provide a GPS input port, you have to add an aux port (more couplers for $195!!!), so its $300 just to connect a real or virtual GPS date/time (and/or location) signal to you device.
Let me say that again - its $300 just to get the hardware cabling to send set-up data to your scope. You can easily add at least another $300 - $600 for a real GPS unit.
Now Celestron sell a proprietary unit with AUX port for about $600, but just think about it, every motherboard sold in the world today has a crystal clock generator and the simple BIOS functions to track date and time.
For Celestron to have provided a stored date/time function on the controller would have cost less than $2. For Celestron to expose functionality for some Windows PC to enter this data into a connected hand controller (rather than manually push buttons) would have cost nothing!
You can put the scope into hibernation - and then not turn the power off and so a day or five later press the UNDO button - and hope it all works - but it's a real gross workaround - better hope no one bumps your gear or turns it back on or your mount will certainly have a major collision with its pier. Or their maybe there's a hidden internal setting that stuffs up this risky method.
This is my rant asking why isn't there a simply way to automatically get date and time into a mount? Does any scope allow this, or is it only Celestron that has this glaring oversight?
PS
Has anyone found a fully automated way to get date / time electronically from a PC into Celestrons hand controller without a GPS? Nexstar can give (actually sell you an expensive and practically useless) PC based version of your handcontroller on your screen, but you still have to manually press alot of buttons rather than execute a few simple calls to system time and system date and/or execute a read of a stored location to set itself up. What a whoopsie!
/end_rant!