How to Integrate "MyRoof" into ACP

[Ton van Vonderen]

My sliding roof has about 1" clearance between roof and scope in park position.
To minimize the risk of the moving roof hitting the telescope (it happened at a friend of mine) I have set up a system using a Velleman K8055 board with digital inputs from micro switches for detecting "roof open", "roof closed" and fysically "telescope at park".

For remote control I have two little programs, viz "OpenRoof_dot_exe" and "CloseRoof_dot_exe". (not ASCOM compatible.)

Both programs verify if the scope is parked (and if not: put the scope AtPark) before moving the roof.
In case anything goes wrong or in case of a TimeOut, an email is send and the program stops.

My question: how to proceed to get these programs integrated into ACP ?

[Bob Denny]

My best advice is to do the roof opening and closing yourself. If this Observatory is truly remote, then This may not be practical. Someone (a person) should be doing the closing for weather. ACP Scheduler requires ASCOM Control for the roof.

[Ton van Vonderen]

Considering my objectives for acquiring ACP, opening and closing the roof manually is not an option.

I do have LesveDome installed and running, but do not consider it save enough for remote operation as, for determining the roof position, it uses a timer i.s.o. real feedback from e.g. a microswitch .

Is closing the roof on Weather Alarm the only difficulty or are there more?
Do you see other options to avoid using LesveDome and/or manual roof operation?

[Bob Denny]

I truly don't know how to answer your questions and I don't want to make recommendations because your setup combined with your objectives are outside my comfort zone. I'm sorry. If you can create a system that responds to ASCOM shutter/roof calls, you can have ACP Expert park the scope before closing. However if there is a problem parking then you're stuck with an observatory open to the elements. Of course there's always the chance that the roof could malfunction as well, but at least the park operation and the interlocks aren't additional points of failure. Scheduler can open and close the roof, and it has a "Close Special Roof" script capability to handle getting the scope parked for sure before closing etc.

If you can get Lesve to the point where you can trust it, then we can talk about the other issues.

[Ton van Vonderen]

Thank you for your advise.
I'm going to look into how to convert my code into an ASCOM compatible application.