|
No Allan, I've not tested these.
I'm not physically around to listen the mount advising what its doing as I operate the gear 160km's away. My focus is more on reliability and robotic functions. So far so good on the latter two.
I'm pleased you can now force meridian flips as needed remotely, though I usually let the goto limit determine this automatically based on the target.
Also, this new driver has a cool feature to nudge the mount out of the slew safety limit if it is reached for what ever reason. This is a major bonus as once you hit the safety limit, you can't issue any PC ascom commands to correct it (so you don't damage equipment no doubt). Normally you need to use the hand paddle/controller to move the scope out of the safety limit zone, then PC ascom commands can be issued again. Accessing the hand paddle while remote isn't going to happen so you're stuck in a nasty situation.
You can of course get around the safety limit zone, even if you don't want to use this new feature but you need to disconnect from ASCOM and connect via a serial console port to issue a series of commands that will re-park the mount.
I ended up scripting it in ACP to simplify getting out of this nasty situation (below), but now I don't think I'll need to use this with new driver.
Sub Main()
Console.PrintLine "Sending Me command"
Telescope.CommandBlind("Me")
Console.PrintLine "Finished CommandBlind(Me), waiting for 5 seconds"
Util.WaitForMilliseconds 5000
Console.PrintLine "Sending Qe command"
Telescope.CommandBlind("Qe")
Console.PrintLine "Finished CommandBlind(Qe), sending hP command"
Telescope.CommandBlind("hP")
Console.PrintLine "Finished CommandBlind(hP), End of script"
End Sub
The Me, Qe and hP statements are raw Gemini commands (not ascom). Move east (to get out of the safety limit zone), wait 5 secs, stop, then park the mount. In essence, that's all this new driver is doing, talking to the mount in its native command set.
|