Ascom failed

[Nick Atkinson]

I have a Pulsar Dome and am using your 60 day validation.
Going to preferences then dome i try to sert up my dome with6 the response pulsar dome but the folowing error message appears:-
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Can you advise what is going wrong
Many thanks
Nick

[Bob Denny]

Hello Nick -- I apologize for taking so long to respond. I set this aside to do some research on Pulsar. I found this thread from last August from you, which I don't think I answered or maybe you got the wrong idea from Stargazers? Anyway it has Pulsar in it. Also an old one from 2017 that has several people involved. In this case firmware and driver updates solved the problems.

So first make sure you have the current Pulsar software and firmware loaded.

Looking at the error message it says that although the Pulsar dome is listed as a device in the Dome Chooser, an attempt to open its settings page (Properties... button in the chooser?) is failing because the software/driver is not being loaded. A simple reason this could happen is if the driver DLL/EXE was deleted from the disk. A more subtle reason is that some DLL or EXE on which the dome control software depends was deleted or uninstalled.

Did this "just start happening"? Or does the dome work with other software and not ACP? In that case look for programs that are set to run "as Administrator" (not under the "Admininstrator login" but via the checkbox shown below for the EXE or program(s).

Finally I would recommend contacting Pulsar to see why their driver can fail to be activated through the standard Dome Chooser.

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[Nick Atkinson]

Hi Bob

Using Pulsars own software the Rotator and shutter does work and when using SKY X, in the later case SKY X dome Driver information= Rotation Drive unit X2 pug in by Rodophe Pineau. There is a link RTI-ZONE. The Driver Description= Rigel rotation drive unit for Pulsar Dome.
I also noticed that the ASCOM page has links to other domes but not Pulsar.
Clear skies
Nick

[Bob Denny]

Hello Nick --

I went to Pulsar's web site and got their manual (attached). Reading it I see that Pulsar themselves supply the ASCOM driver, do it is not listed on the ASCOM site as it is factory provided. They can ask the ASCOM people to list it but have not done so. It is this driver that is not installed properly or otherwise broken. Although ACP is not listed as one of the apps (like CCDC SGP and MaxIm), all of them, as well as ACP, use the universal ASCOM standards to communicate with dome controllers. ACP also provides the dome slaving. At the moment, your Pulsar ASCOM driver is not properly installed, or the Pulsar software/driver is set to run "as Administrator" (these are guesses). In any case, the universal ASCOM Chooser is unable to activate the Pulsar software to set it up or talk to it.

I am powerless to solve this problem. It is an incomplete installation of the Pulsar ASCOM driver. Please contact them for help. If they can't help you or just say they don't know what ACP is or ???, I'm happy to call them personally on your behalf.

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[Nick Atkinson]

Hello Bob,

We tried the administer role but to no avail. I will contact Mathew Player software developer for Pulsar Observatories Matthew Player <matthew@elecsoft.co.uk> and explain the problem we have withy their ASCOM driver connecting to ACP and tell him of your offer of help is vital in solving this issue.

[Bob Denny]

We tried the administer role but to no avail.

OK. I'm sorry I didn't make it clear that "as Administrator" should be OFF for all software relating to ACP and drivers.

I will contact Mathew Player software developer for Pulsar Observatories Matthew Player <matthew@elecsoft.co.uk> and explain the problem we have withy their ASCOM driver connecting to ACP and tell him of your offer of help is vital in solving this issue.

Excellent. I'm going to bet that he will be able to point you in the right direction without my help. But if he needs to contact me it's rdenny@dc3.com or +1 480 396 9700.

[William Bristow]

This problem appeared to be caused by a damaged ASCOM platform driver/profile store.

Uninstalling the Pulsar ASCOM driver, verifying that it was removed in Windows, the ASCOM profile explorer and the ASCOM driver folder and re-installing the driver still prompted the error screen whenever the driver settings dialogue was invoked.

A standard ASCOM platform uninstall - re-install also failed to fix the problem and a full platform clean-removal using the special tool on the ASCOM developers website was needed.

After a fresh ASCOM platform and Pulsar ASCOM dome driver installation the problem was resolved and the normal settings dialogue could be invoked (com port number and advanced settings).

With the ASCOM platform clean uninstall - re-install Nick now has to re-install all his ASCOM device drivers and reconfigure their associated settings in each of his astronomy applications.

[Bob Denny]

William and Nick -- Wow what a mess!! It's a good thing that this is a rare situation. I've seen a few instances on the ASCOM help list. No one seems to know how this info gets trashed. It's disappointing because the developers of the Platform itself (the profile info is managed by a library that is part of the Platform) really try to make that bulletproof. The good news is that, once the Preferences from the Chooser are set, those settings apply to all applications that use that device.

And William, as always thank you so much for helping Nick out!