Recent changes to feature-requests

Add Autohome to EQASCOM.

Antiath — Sun, 27 Aug 2023 09:29:58 -0000

It would be very useful to a lot of people to have an Autohome feature in EQASCOM in order to use the homing sensors of the latest SW mounts. I know it has been asked before on the yahoo group and dismissed. It's been several years now since SW added those sensors to their mounts and it could be really useful for the people doing full remote. Maybe it is time to add it to EQASCOM ?

#14 PierSide reporting in interface

han.k — Sun, 12 Feb 2023 09:42:59 -0000

Ascom specifies only two pointing state situations:

PierEast
PierWest

You can add the pointing direction of a telescope

PierEast, pointing West
PierWest, pointing East

see fig 3

EQMOD display indicates physical side of pier. That should have only

PierEast (yellow area 4)
PierWest (purple area fig 4)

If you add the telecope pointing direction you get four situations. Not two! I have carefully added them to fig 4. See this custom figure:

PierSide reporting in interface

han.k — Sat, 11 Feb 2023 20:12:33 -0000

If EQMOD is reporting the physical side of pier instead of the "pointing state" then it would be more correct to display four different situations instead of two:

PierSide=West, telescope pointing East
PierSide=West, telescope pointing West
PierSide=East, telescope pointing West
PierSide=East, telescope pointing East

See
https://download.ascom-standards.org/docs/SideOfPier(1.2).pdf

Han

#13 Move to Github

Chris Shillito — Sun, 06 Mar 2022 10:35:28 -0000

Thanks for the offer but given the nature/maturity of this project I see no need to move from sourceforge at this time.

Move to Github

Wim Jongman — Fri, 04 Mar 2022 17:05:01 -0000

I propose to move this project to Git / GitHub.

Please let me know if you want to do this and I will do the work.

Advantages: * More developers * More visibility * Better source control * Automatic build system * Modern * More Developers

ASCOMPAD Reconnect to mount on startup

robert hasson — Thu, 29 Apr 2021 12:24:00 -0000

feature request:

would be nice that ASCOMPAD would have an option to reconnect to the last connected mount upon startup. I use ASCOMPAD directly with my Synscan App ASCOM driver and everytime i restart the PC i then have to go into device/mount/connect "OK".

thanks

#11 Gamepad control

Boyang Liu — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 19:05:54 -0000

Hi Chris,

Thanks you for the explanations!

#11 Gamepad control

Chris Shillito — Tue, 16 Jun 2020 09:53:38 -0000

This is something we have considered, discussed and tested in the past but sadly was found not to be practical. The issue is the wide range of slew speeds the mount can have move at and the relatively small amount of deflection on a joystick. Yes the software can detect small adjustments if the joystick but that doesnt' mean that the user will be capable of operating the stick with the precision that the softeare can read it. In practice we found it was just too easy to accidentally move the stick a little to far and loose your target completely (especially if wearing gloves on a cold winters night). Typically the joystick interface is used for fine positioning or targets not for satelite tracking so what we've done is implemented a two speed option where a slight deflection will move at your "preset 1" speed whilst a full deflection will move at whatever rate you have currently selected.

Note that typically these mounts are not best suited for tracking satelites due to the "low resolution" of the very fast slew speeds - wha tI mean by that is the mount communication protocol acts to quantise the number of actual rates achievable - and any speed variation is not "continuous" so the mount will "jump" at each speed change - the mount firmware also requires that the motors are actually stopped prior to any "fast speed" change.

Chris.

Gamepad control

Boyang Liu — Mon, 15 Jun 2020 23:23:11 -0000

Not sure whether this is the right way to post questions and suggestions but here are my thoughts:

My joystick (T.16000M) has many different levels of pressure responds, and clearly EQMOD knows that, since during gamepad calibration, the number changes continously from 0 to 65535 when I gradually bend the stick from one direction to another.

But when I use the stick to slew the mount, seems that the slew action is only triggered when I press to somewhere like +30000 or -30000 (for convenience, assuming 0 at center), and it only does slew/no slew , and when it slew, it slew at a constant speed, instead of slewing at different speeds given different stick pressure.

In principal when I have different levels of pressures, I do not need other way to set the slew speed, the slew speed shall directly come from how much or how hard I bend the stick. In this way, the control could be much easier and more flexible.

Why I raise this: I want to track satellites with a joystick, and I want to fully utilize the capability of the hardware to make the tracking easier.

Is there anything I missed that caused me asking something that is already solved?

Cheers
Boyang

#10 EQMOD Opening without Scope Connection Fix

Chris Shillito — Wed, 31 Jul 2019 08:07:54 -0000

As I've tried to explain EQMOD is not shitting itself down - it is being commanded to close by the client application you are using. Use a different client, such as the tooolbox application supplied with EQMOD, and you can happy open up EQMOD with the mount disconnected. So there really is no need for anything to change.