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Old 03-08-2016, 12:53 PM
JoelyE95 (Joel)
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Post Having problems getting EQDirect to work? Try this!

Hi All,

After a long time of researching forums and trying this and doing that to make EQDirect work for me. I figured I'd post this up which was a pretty simple way to go about it, but the events leading up to it definately mean that there is either a bug or omission in the code for EQMod which lead me down an expensive and tedious task of getting EQMod to talk directly with my AZ-EQ6.

First and foremost, I went through 2 other USB to Serial (PL2302 and FTDI) adapters (just the boards you see cheap to make the cable yourself) before finally biting the bullet and coughing up to buy the USB2EQ5 cable on Bintel.

When it came to the third and final try with this new cable, it still did not work. EQDIRCheck kept saying "Could Not Connect to EQ Mount". I researched more and more and could not find anyone who had posted a solution (other than saying they fixed it without saying how) that was freely available without having to sign up for a Yahoo account to go through the EQMod Yahoo Group and potentially find out.

I thought all was lost and that I would perhaps need to go about doing a clean install with the aussumption that there was a weird issue with drivers or the fact that I am on a 64-Bit machine (Windows 10 Pro) and that EQMod did not like that.

On a hunch, I thought I might do a clean install of ASCOM then a clean install of EQMod after the drivers were again cleanly installed for the USB2EQ5 cable.... BINGO!!!!

So, in my case. It turns out that if you already had EQMod installed before installing a serial host, EQMod just will not recognise it. You might not have to reinstall ASCOM, but I decided to at the same time anyway just in case.

Other things I discovered were that the FTDI chipset for the USB2EQ5 cable seems to keep the same COM Port number when it is plugged into the same port on the computer, with or without a hub plugged into that same port. The other PL2303 (Prolific) chipsets seem to want to change when you change between directly plugged in the computer to being plugged into a hub. Also, I have not yet bothered about going back to the other cables I made up. I'll just keep them in a box until something goes wrong with this one.

Hopefully this post will help someone else out there who has had the same problems as me, or even something similar. It gave me a lot of frustration at something so simple that should have more or less just worked. It seems to be one of the cases that is not documented anywhere. Perhaps the dark web?

Joel
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Old 03-08-2016, 03:27 PM
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Crux (Hayden)
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Joel,

Good to see you have it working. Thanks for sharing your solution.

Hayden
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Old 03-08-2016, 03:49 PM
AndrewJ
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Gday Joel

A bit more info reqd
You mentioned trying to connect using USB2Ser adapters with no luck
Was this direct into the Hbx ( with the Hbx in PCDirect mode ) or were you always trying to run without the hbx??
You need to be careful here, as the PC -> Hbx connection uses true rs232 voltages ( ie +/-10v ), and a specific wiring order for the plug going into the hbx.
The Hbx to mount / EQDirect connection however uses rs232-TTL voltages ( ie 0 or +5V ) and another wiring order for the plug that goes into the mount.

Re the FTDI retaining its com number. The FTDI chipset drivers also incorporate a serial number, and hence the system can keep track of it, and reuse the same port if it is available at the time.

Andrew
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Old 03-08-2016, 05:28 PM
JoelyE95 (Joel)
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Andrew,

All of the attempts were directly to the mount, not through the hand controller (assuming that is what Hbx is for).

For the cables I made, I made use of straight through network cables and re-wired one end for the 4 wires I needed in the correct order to the USB Modules. Each of the other modules I have are both 3.3V and 5V via a selector. If memory serves, on the module TX was Green on the network cable, RX was Blue/White and Ground was Blue & Orange/White. All other colours were isolated to avoid contact. I have not yet retried these cables yet seeing the USB2EQ5 is working for me now. I'll re-visit the others when I have some time free.

Joel
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Old 03-08-2016, 06:33 PM
AndrewJ
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Gday Joel

Quote:
All of the attempts were directly to the mount, not through the hand controller (assuming that is what Hbx is for).
OK. Just many people might have read the post as using std USB2Serial adapters, which are very different to USB2TTL adapters.
Quote:
Each of the other modules I have are both 3.3V and 5V via a selector.
I originally breadboarded my own adapter using a max232, but the recent explosion in arduino/etc/etc plugboards means you can pick up a USB2TTL board quite cheaply. If you had std USB2TTL boards, i cant understand why they didnt work, unless there is a wiring error somewhere. All good fun :-)
One interesting bit is my EQ6Pro ( mount ) uses 5V TTL
The V3 and V4 Handboxes use 5V TTL to the mount
My AZEQ5 ( mount ) uses 3.3V TTL, even tho the Hbx is 5V TTL
They all play happily so far,
but putting true rs232 into them may result in pain,
so people need to be careful in what they do.

Quote:
If memory serves, on the module TX was Green on the network cable, RX was Blue/White and Ground was Blue & Orange/White.
That sounds right
I made a tapping cable using a std cat5 and got
Brown = 12V
Brown Stripe = 12V
Green = Hbx to scope ( or module to mount )
Blue Stripe = Scope to Hbx ( or mount to module )
Blue = gnd
Green stripe = drop??
Orange = ???
Orange Stripe = ground

Andrew
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