ascom help

[alex79]

hey new around here first scope and im having a hell of a time getting this ascom software to even admit that the telescope is attached.

i have a celestron nexstar 4 gt,

have downloaded platform and celestron driver

alinged the thing

pluged it all in

and still i get the response of error connecting to telescope and the other one is error connecting to scope. Odd behavior may result

Help Please

Alex

[Gama]

Can you get the scope to work with any other software ?. Is it a USb interface or a seirial port (9 pin).

Theo.

[alex79]

its serial and what otehr software this was what i was told to use by the person i got it off cant seem to get a response from him only thing tho is i saw it working with that software

[Tandum]

If it's a serial connection, make sure you have the correct com port selected. You can see which com port it is using in the device manager, if it's windows.

[rogerg]

ASCOM should be able to connect but I would try some other astronomy software too just in case it's ASCOM configuration issues. I'm not familiar with the nexstar to know how easy it is to configure with ASCOM. ASCOM typically requires some patients and learning.

Many use ASCOM, some don't. Most cost money. TheSky (http://www.bisque.com/products/TheSky6/), StarryNight (http://www.starrynightstore.com/17234.html), Cartes Du Ciel (http://www.stargazing.net/astropc/) (uses ASCOM). I'm not familiar with any other than TheSky. I thought Celestron scope's came with one?

[allan gould]

Have you downloaded and installed the Universal celestron driver from the ascom site and do you have the latest (Ver 5) of Ascom?
Once downloaded Ascom, install it and then install the driver. Then go into the asom setup and select the celestron driver and all should be OK once you tell ascom which serial (Com) port your connected to. Just go through them one at atime and then it should work. Have you loaded your drivers for the serial to USB device?
All takes some time.
Hope this helps.

[ozstockman]

Hi Alex,

Did you plug a pc-remote cable to your remote control RJ11 socket?

Are you using Celestron Unified (5.0.10) driver from ascom website
http://ascom-standards.org/Downloads/ScopeDrivers.htm

I used to have a similar model 4 SE( which i guess just a special edition and comes in orange) and never had any problems connecting to PC via ASCOM.
You can also try to connect to NexStar remote software(should come with a scope) just to check that you are using a correct COM port number in software settings and your PC-remote cable and a socket on your remote work. As far as I can remember Nexstar software does not use ASCOM and only asks for com port number.

cheers,

Mike

[ozstockman]

CDC is free while TheSky (http://www.bisque.com/products/TheSky6/) and StarryNight (http://www.starrynightstore.com/17234.html) are not. I believe they all work with ASCOM, at least the Sky and CDC do.

The Sky is supplied with Nexstar 4SE but the version Celestron includes doesn't have telescope control. They call it Celestron The Sky but it has original The Sky interface :-)

cheers,

Mike

[jase]

You can also simply use terminal software (Windows HyperTerm for instance) to connect to the serial port and attempt to issues commands. Here is the Celestron command set to get you started- http://www.celestron.com/c2/images/files/downloads/1154108406_nexstarcommprot.pdf

If you've got comms, then as the others have said, its an ASCOM config issue.

[rogerg]

They all can, but my aim was to find something for him which didn't need to. TheSky doesn't need to.


Interesting.. provoding software with the scope that doesn't have scope control, useful :)

[AlexN]

The CD supplied with celestron scopes is The Sky Level 1... AFAIK level 4 and up have scope control via ASCOM....

I have the sky level 6 connected to my EQ6pro slewing around in my living room as its raining...