Quote:
Originally Posted by JB80
It doesn't look as if EQMOD will be supported anytime soon, not unless SW would like to donate an EQ8 to the developer.
|
Well to be fair If I have issued such an ultimatum it was definitely tongue in cheek!
EQMOD aims to be a free and open project and we will never charge for EQMOD nor request donations. The consequence of this is that developers bear the cost of development and naturally support for new equipment will only occur if a current developer buys that equipment or new developers join the project.
My own position is that I'm quite happy with my belt drive EQ6 Pro and am not looking to upgrade my mount. My own motives for working on EQMOD are essentially selfish one, to provide me with better mount control. Whilst I'm more than happy to share the stuff I do it is hard to justify taking on projects that offer no direct benefit to my own setup. I hope folks understand that.
What would be interesting to know is if the EQ8 sysncan includes an PC-Direct option - if it does then it may just be that they've changed the physical mount interface making the current EQDirect incompatible but not necessarily EQASCOM itself.
If the EQ8 is not EQASCOM compatible then I would urge all those who are considering this mount to question Skywatcher, and their distributors as to why, what has changed and what, if anything they plan to do about it.
If Skywatcher are made aware that their customer base demands it then they may be more willing to volunteer technical information to the EQMOD development team that would ease any development effort. Failing that to reverse engineer an EQ8 a developer would require access to a motor controller board, motors+encoders and synscan - they wouldn't need a gift of an entire mount.
Chris.