Well I've had the nice new EQ6 mount sitting in the lounge for a couple of days now and as forecast clouds clouds and more clouds.
But thats ok I've slewed to every corner of the lounge testing keeping the cats interested
and it has given me time to to check out drive options other than the SynScan controller.
My aim is to be able to drive the mount with Stellarium so I have a visual goto and at the same time incorporate PHD guiding to run concurrently from the same computer.
Where am I up to?
So far installed the latest version of Stellarium and ASCOM drivers.
I only have USB so have a USB to Serial cable and have linked that directly to the SynScan hand control and successfully driven the mount from Stellarium. This is great visual goto.
Secondly I have also linked PHD via a "Shoestring" USB2EQ6 cable purchased with the mount and using ASCOM drivers again.
Both these methods have worked fine but both require access to the serial port on the mount. So I can't guide like that.
I also have a Shoestring GPUSB interface that I'd hoped to use for the PHD side of things as it will connect directly to the guide port leaving the serial port free for Stellarium control but as yet have not been able to get it to talk to the mount. The GPUSB reports as connected with PHD but when sending slew commands manually I get no movement. The LED on the GPUSB lights red when at idle and when I try a slew command it changes to green, is the normal for that unit?
I've read a few howto's on here and other sites but some are a few years old now so I'm wondering if there is a more current method of doing this or are those setups still a valid an good way of doing it??
Any help on this would be gratefully received.
Nico.