Two active Ascom connections and data error for Astap

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carlomuccini
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Two active Ascom connections and data error for Astap

#1

Post by carlomuccini »

Last night I noticed a small mistake in doing plate solving with Astap
Sharpcap last version 3.2.xxx (not beta 4.x)

SC is connected to the Celestron CGX-L mount via Ascom, using the USB cable connected to the hand control.
I move the scope with the hand control, and the plate solving works great

Then I also connect via Ascom the SkyMap Pro 11 planetary program which moves the telescope on the subject to be photographed.
Now Skymap Pro and Sharpcap Pro are connected with Ascom all togheter

After the GOTO done by Skymap the plate solving with Astap no longer works because SC does not detect the new telescope positioning coordinates,
SC display in the SC control panel the old coordinates, before the GOTO
If I disconnect SC from the telescope and reconnect it, then SC reads the current coordinates correctly, sends them to Astap, which solves correctly.

I hope I have explained well

Carlo
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admin
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Re: Two active Ascom connections and data error for Astap

#2

Post by admin »

Hi Carlo,

yes, I see - the co-ordinates are not updating once the second application connects.

SharpCap will regularly update the mount position (once per second or so), so the cause is either that the updates no longer give the correct results, or that the updates caused an error and SharpCap disabled them automatically. The second cause would get noted in the SharpCap log - you would see messages :

Code: Select all

Mount refresh in background thread failed, switching to UI thread.
Mount refresh in UI thread failed, disabling.
Anyway, both of those cases would boil down to the same thing - the ASCOM driver not working correctly with two applications connected. Fortunately there is a way around this - ASCOM has a think called a 'Hub' which is designed to solve this problem. In all applications configure them to talk to 'Device Hub Telescope', and then configure *that* to talk to your real ASCOM driver using the Device Hub Telescope properties window. Doing that should correctly share the mount ASCOM driver between applications.

cheers,

Robin
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