How To: Stellarium Telescope Control with a HEQ5/EQ6 Mount

[iceman]

Karl has kindly written an article describing how to use Stellarium Telescope Control with a HEQ5/EQ6 Mount.

You can read the article at the IceInSpace Projects and Articles page (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/projects.html) or directly by clicking the link below:

Stellarium Telescope Control with a HEQ5/EQ6 Mount (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/63-581-0-0-1-0.html)

Thanks to Karl for writing the article. If you'd like to contribute an article or other content for IceInSpace, please check out the Write for IceInSpace (http://www.iceinspace.com.au/write-for-iceinspace.html) page.

[iceman]

Article uploaded.

[Barrykgerdes]

Hi Mike and Carl

I have read though the article and it looks great. We get many requests for control of telescopes using the ASCOM control but as it is not open source we can only give a link to the material. I hope you don't mind but I have added a link to the article in the Stellarium wiki under telescope control. I can remove it if there is any objection.

Barry

[Kvl]

Hi Barry,

Isn't StellariumScope (the link between the EQMOD project/ASCOM) and Stellarium the only piece of non-open source software in the group? Assuming that this correct, then can't the EQMOD group and Stellarium be encouraged to work together to develop an interface?

Karl

[Barrykgerdes]

That is something I can't answer. Stellarium is released under the terms of the GPL licence and StellariumScope and ASCOM do not fall into this system. So the best we can do is to post a link to their systems.

There is some information in the stellarium wiki but other than this I can't help.

Barry

[adman]

Thanks for the article Karl. I have just finished setting up control of my mount using Stellarium/EQMOD, and your article was very handy. I have also got myself a wireless gamepad and that seems to work well with EQMOD, very easy to set up.

My mount is an EQ5 (Orion SkyView Pro), and the instructions are perfect for that as well.

I think that there is a typo in the instructions that had me scratching my head for a while. In STEP 2 there is a note about the different latitude and longitude formats in Stellarium and StellariumScope - but the numbers are a bit mixed up:



should be 34 degrees 51.4 minutes....?

Anyway - great article :)

Adam

[Kvl]

Hi Adam,

Thanks for that, I did make an error and the text should read:
"So, if your Latitude is 34 degrees 51 minutes 26.70 seconds then this becomes 34 degrees, (51 +26.70/60) minutes or 34 degrees 54.4 minutes.
Karl

[Kvl]

Update:
StellariumScope
A new version, 2010-03-13 (ALPHA 5) has been released.
http://www.welshdragoncomputing.ca/images/stories/stellariumscope_user_guide.pdf
"This is a complete re-write of StellariumScope with respect to how it configures Stellarium. It now uses the plugin system rather than the original config.ini system. If you try this version, please backup you config.ini and telescopes.json files first. This version may work with older versions of Stellarium but it has only be tested with version 0.10.4 and Windows XP/Vista/7.
It does not add any major features."

I am waiting for "Release Candidate 1" which is due out in a few days before trying it out, particularly as the current version appears to work OK.
Karl.

[iceman]

No objection, absolutely fine.

[Sman1971]

Great work Karl. Got it working last night, no problems. Cant wait to read your 2nd article.

Can you do an alignment through Stellarium or get it aligned through the Eq6 first?

[bartman]

Great article!! easy to read and follow.
Eager to see the follow up article! I searched high and low on how to make the scope goto ...... finally: click on an object then ctrl 1 to slew to it. ctrl 3 to sync ( not sure what that does) and ctrl 5 to stop slewing.

When I got to step 4.3 /4.4, three local conn's were already setup!? for the three scopes slew/sync/abort.
I have Byte Arts v. 2010.6.14.47...maybe that has something to do with it?

2 Q's....when will the second part of the article be available and what does the sync do?

Cheers
Bartman

[Kvl]

Hi Bart,

I have just finished updating/re-writing the article and forwarded a copy to Mike yesterday.

There have been a number of significent changes and the current "compatible" software versions are:

Stellarium version 0.10.5 from
http://www.stellarium.org/
StellariumScope version 20100614 (2010.6.14.47) from
http://www.welshdragoncomputing.ca/
EQMOD version v121d (2010-05-30) from
http://sourceforge.net/projects/eq-mod/files /
ASCOM Platform 5 and the 5.5.1 update from
http://ascom-standards.org/

The set-up now is much simpler and cleaner (as you found), hence the re-write which should be available shortly.

The second part is still in the thinking phase.

Karl.

[Kvl]

For detailed documentation on StellariumScope, click on Help, then manual on the latest version (2010.6.14.47).

For information on the Sync function, see Section 14, Controlling the Telescope, item 5.

Karl.

[bartman]

Cheers ! Thank you Karl,
As you said I have found the updates and also found the sync function.
I am currently trying myself to connect my desktop puter to talk to talk to my laptop puter over the local network. No luck yet as the desktop is having issues with 'failed to load activex component' when starting ascom.
I'm sure it's something simple but its doing my head in!
BTW my initials are Bvl......Dutch back ground I guess????

Bartman
P.S. great work, keep it up.!

[Kvl]

Hi Bart,

have you had a look at the StellariumScope manual section 13 "Using two computers".

I havn't tried this yet.

Karl.

[TS225]

Hi Karl!
Thanks for the article; without your easy to follow instructions I would have struggled to get the system all running. The interface really allows me to get the best out of my mount and cameras.
Cheers
John:thanx:

[mains9]

Hi Karl (hope you are listening)
Thank you for a very well written article. Is there a Part 2? unable to find.

Question: If I want to control the mount with Stellarium Scope, but I am currently autoguiding (PHD2/GuideCamera/ST4) then I am stuffed!Correct?

I thought the answer may have been in Part 2! :-)

Suresh

[HarryD]

Hi
I use EQMOD, Stellarium and Stellarium scope and guide with PHD2.
No problems, works like a treat.
Greg

[mains9]

Thanks Greg,
I am getting all the pieces together to have a go

Suresh