LX200 Telescope

[astrocalina]

Hello,

I'm back again , now I have a new Telescope that use a LX200 protocol (it is not a Meade Telescope) but I have some issue with Sharpcap, what I have done is the following:
I've installed "ASCOM Advanced LX200 protocol"
I've configured everything on the protocol
I've configured Sharpcap

But:
When I try to connect Sharpcap with the telescope sounds working (I can see the telescope position in Sharpcap) but when I try to move my telescope it doesn't nor with Sharpcap nor with "Ascom Advanced lx200" interface.

I'm sure that I made some mistake or I forgot to configure something but I don't know what.
Could you help me?
Bye

[admin]

Hi,

please can you make sure you have an up-to-date version of SharpCap 4.1 and then send me the SharpCap log after you have connected to the mount and tried the movement buttons.

A lot of Meade ASCOM drivers do not implement the 'MoveAxis' command that SharpCap needs to make the movement buttons work - SharpCap has a workaround for this via sending raw commands to the mount via the ASCOM driver to make it work. However, it's not as simple as that - there are at least some Meade ASCOM drivers out there that *claim* they can do MoveAxis, but actually can't, so SharpCap also has a workaround that is supposed to deal with this. The log should reveal what is going on and whether the workaround is activating or not.

Unfortunately I think that Meade went out of business, so we can't even hope that they will get their act together and make an ASCOM driver that actually works properly in this area

cheers,

Robin

[astrocalina]

Hello,
I will send you the log this evening but in meantime:
this is NOT a Meade telescope, it is a standard telescope that use a LX200 protocol; I don't know how to test it using the "ADVANCED LX200" interface without using Sharpcap for the first debugging step or do you know some other tool or driver or something like that so I can interface my LX200 telescope with sharpcap?
Cheers

[astrocalina]

Hello,
two different logs with two different tests.

[admin]

Hi,

OK, thanks for sending the logs.

I think from the logs it looks like there is a bug in the ASCOM driver itself - the ASCOM driver seems to claim to implement the MoveAxis command (good), and reports a range of movement rates available between 0.004 and 5 degrees per second (also good). However, when SharpCap sends the command to move the axis at a particular rate (looks like you tried 8x and 32x in the two logs - which work out to be about 0.033 and 0.13 degrees per second), the mount rejects the movement rate with an error

Code: Select all

Error  	19:44:16.468464	#31	Error from MoveAxis : Exception of type 'InvalidValueException' : MoveAxis set - '0.133698387961282' is an invalid value. The valid range is: . 

Basically it seems to be an inconsistency between what the ASCOM driver *says* it can do (which SharpCap believes) and what it actually is able to do causing the problem.

Do you have a download link for the ASCOM driver you are using? Some of them are open source, and looking at the code would allow the issue to be further pinned down.

cheers,

Robin

[astrocalina]

Hello,
thank you for your answer. I hope I have installed the right driver. Do you have some link where I can download ASCOM LX200 drivers (I've tried on ASCOM webpage)?
I downloaded the ASCOM Advanced from the official webpage and the other one form the ASCOM webpage.
Any other good webpage?
Thank you
Cheers

[admin]

Hi,

I can't give exact advice as I have no personal experience of using Meade GOTO telescopes, but I do know that there are a *lot* of different ASCOM driver versions available (both official ones and ones made by other Meade users). Ideally you would be able to find someone else who has already solved this and use the same driver as they have - seaching for "LX200 ASCOM SharpCap MoveAxis" or similar might lead you to some info on other forums. Other than that, it's probably trial and error - trying out the various different ASCOM drivers available and seeing how each works out.

cheers,

Robin

[Chuckwagon]

I no longer have my LX200GPS setup, so I don't have the driver I ended up using. But there are a few drivers you can try.

Here's a link to try.

https://bitbucket.org/cjdskunkworks/mea ... /wiki/Home

I know your scope isn't a Meade, but the drivers support many versions of Meade, so probably support clones as well. I went through the same process as you a while back, and I tried several drivers before getting one to work well enough.

Good luck,
Chuck