g__day
22-04-2023, 04:04 PM
I thought I would share an interesting experience I am having with setting up my new Astrolab PC. I am trialling all the target software on my main Windows 11 Pro workstation before I allow it onto my new Astrolab PC running Windows 10 Pro. In particular I am testing ASCOM 6.2 vs 6.4 vs 6.6SP1 in regards to how consistently it can manage connections to an ASCOM simulated scope and dome - and reliably share these connections - through either Device Hub, Dome Hub or Plain Old Telescope Hub.
There have been three main learnings so far...
The first - going from POTH to Device Hub above ASCOM 6.2 can give very flakey connections between TSX and an ASCOM device control suite (MaximDL, N.I.N.A., SGP and APT). This is made far worse if you have an anti virus suite of software - like Avast Premium suite - with its Cleaner Po - with its Performance Optimiser - trying to always put ASCOM 6.x to sleep when not in use! Solution - tell Avast to leave ASCOM alone - always ignore it!
The second TSX versus all the rest of the software uses a DCOM rather than a COM model - and ASCOM 6.6 SP1 didn't initialise all the variables correctly for this complex use case. The lead ASCOM developer (Peter) has yesterday created a new ASCOM 6.6 SP2 beta driver for me (us) and it works beautifully well - each and every time - with no need to first run TSX in admin mode and connect to your mount - before shutting it down they running things normally. For all the rest of my software I told it the mount was a TSX controlled mount. Under the new beta driver https://download.ascom-standards.org/beta/AscomPlatform662beta.3694.exe this works very consistently. I tested this multiple times - across restarts - openning all the above software in different sequence. Before that beta ASCOM release this would give device hub a fit!
Third TSX solves the dome versus mount position differently to everything else - and when multiple software components are connected all the rest argue with TSX - resulting in the Dome see-sawing every 5 seconds! I think one of two things has happened given all software has been provided the same 5 dome geometry parameters. I am hoping either ASCOM developers or Software Bisque resolve this soon. I suspect the ASCOM mount simulator - which has been told to emulate a German Equatorial mount either isn't passing this information to TSX - or more likely than are bothering to read it and pass it to their geometry driver when an ASCOM mount is selected (I have experienced exactly this before from them - and they themselves told me that was tehir issue an to bypass it by emulating a Meade LX200 mount as that opens a new device control tab where you can specify its a German Equatorial mount! The other possibility is TSX needs one of the 5 geometry parameters +/- signs inverted when one happens to be in the Southern Hemisphere. I have encountered this issue with an earlier version of PEMPro too. North American Astronomy software developers I sense don't rigorously test how their software behaves in the Souther Hemisphere.
Will update this thread as testing is passed over several days - but for now I can say that this ASCOM 6.6 Service Pack 2 beta looks very good to me after two days of testing! I am poised now to shift off POTH under ASCOM v6.2 and move to Device Hub to control the dome under ASCOM v6.6 SP2 beta 3694
There have been three main learnings so far...
The first - going from POTH to Device Hub above ASCOM 6.2 can give very flakey connections between TSX and an ASCOM device control suite (MaximDL, N.I.N.A., SGP and APT). This is made far worse if you have an anti virus suite of software - like Avast Premium suite - with its Cleaner Po - with its Performance Optimiser - trying to always put ASCOM 6.x to sleep when not in use! Solution - tell Avast to leave ASCOM alone - always ignore it!
The second TSX versus all the rest of the software uses a DCOM rather than a COM model - and ASCOM 6.6 SP1 didn't initialise all the variables correctly for this complex use case. The lead ASCOM developer (Peter) has yesterday created a new ASCOM 6.6 SP2 beta driver for me (us) and it works beautifully well - each and every time - with no need to first run TSX in admin mode and connect to your mount - before shutting it down they running things normally. For all the rest of my software I told it the mount was a TSX controlled mount. Under the new beta driver https://download.ascom-standards.org/beta/AscomPlatform662beta.3694.exe this works very consistently. I tested this multiple times - across restarts - openning all the above software in different sequence. Before that beta ASCOM release this would give device hub a fit!
Third TSX solves the dome versus mount position differently to everything else - and when multiple software components are connected all the rest argue with TSX - resulting in the Dome see-sawing every 5 seconds! I think one of two things has happened given all software has been provided the same 5 dome geometry parameters. I am hoping either ASCOM developers or Software Bisque resolve this soon. I suspect the ASCOM mount simulator - which has been told to emulate a German Equatorial mount either isn't passing this information to TSX - or more likely than are bothering to read it and pass it to their geometry driver when an ASCOM mount is selected (I have experienced exactly this before from them - and they themselves told me that was tehir issue an to bypass it by emulating a Meade LX200 mount as that opens a new device control tab where you can specify its a German Equatorial mount! The other possibility is TSX needs one of the 5 geometry parameters +/- signs inverted when one happens to be in the Southern Hemisphere. I have encountered this issue with an earlier version of PEMPro too. North American Astronomy software developers I sense don't rigorously test how their software behaves in the Souther Hemisphere.
Will update this thread as testing is passed over several days - but for now I can say that this ASCOM 6.6 Service Pack 2 beta looks very good to me after two days of testing! I am poised now to shift off POTH under ASCOM v6.2 and move to Device Hub to control the dome under ASCOM v6.6 SP2 beta 3694