Ioptron Commander & CEM60

[AstroLaptop]

Good Afternoon.
I am having trouble getting SC to connect to my mount. Ioptron have a setup called Commander and this connects to the mount and moves it quite happily so I can use my laptop instead of the handcontroller.

When I choose the Ioptron from the list of mounts and click on the properties button I get this message -

SharpCap could not show the mount configuration window. This can sometimes happen if other programs are also connected to the mount orf if the ASCOM driver is not properly installed.

The error was :Failed to create ASCOM Mount driver object for ASCOM.ioptron.2014.Telescope (ioptronCEM60/40, GEM45, iEQ45Pro/30Pro, CEM25, SmartEQ Pro+, AZ MountPro, Cube II Mount)

As far as I can tell the Ioptron Commander also installs the required ASCOM driver, that is what the name of the download states - Ioptron Commander and Ascom installer.

I have contacted Io[tron but am waiting for a reply.

This also happens when I try to connect to Cartes Du Ciel.

Does anyone else use this mount? Have I done something really stupid during set up?

Sorry for the length of this post. Any help much appreciated.

[admin]

Hi,

there are a couple of possibilities here

* The iOptron ASCOM driver only supports 32-bit and you are using a 64-bit version of SharpCap

* The configuration information that tells ASCOM how to find and load the iOptron driver is damaged or incorrect.

The second one has the easier solution - uninstall and reinstall of the iOptron driver is most likely to cure any problem (although it may be worth an uninstall and reinstall of the ASCOM platform too). While you are doing this, make sure you have the latest version of both.

For the first option, you could try the 32-bit version of SharpCap (but I suspect that your Cartes-du-ciel is 32-bit, so I'm thinking this is unlikely to help).

Another good thing to try in general for this is to try using the 'ASCOM Device Hub' - set the mount driver to 'Device Hub Telescope' in SharpCap, then press 'Properties' to bring up the device hub settings (may show behind SharpCap - watch out for it in the taskbar). In that window, press the 'Choose' button and select the iOptron driver there. Confirm all your changes and give that a go - in that setup the Device hub acts as an intermediary between SharpCap and iOptron and this can help smooth out some issues.

cheers,

Robin

[AstroLaptop]

Hi Robin

Sorry not to get back to you sooner. Thanks for the info I will give that a go and let you know how I get on.

[AstroLaptop]

OK - provided I don't try and move it at top speed it seems to be working now. Sharpcap will only need to move the mount after plate solving, it won't do that at top speed will it? (Your in built pplate solver is amazing - thank you)

The Device Hub choice also works with CDC - thank you, thank you, thank you.

[admin]

Hi,

I think you should be ok - the way that SharpCap moves the mount after plate solving is different to the way that it does via the arrow buttons, so a problem with one of the speeds with the arrow buttons should not affect plate solve.

Glad that you like the built in plate solver - I'm really pleased with how well it is working out!

cheers,

Robin