AP Mount Fails to Complete Parking

[Bob Denny]

It looks like the driver can't communicate with the mount. I don't think the problem is upstream of that. Kill ACP and Pipe, then try to connect and maneuver the mount with the AP control panel.

[Bruce McMath]

"Kill"? I exited ACP and closed Pipe, not sure that is a violent as you had in mind. I don't show an AP control panel. I used the jog feature and get same error message, no mount at IP address or com port, initialization failed. Using Maxim also fails to connect.

[Bob Denny]

Yes, exit ACP and Pipe (and MaxIm, etc) and try to connect with the AP Driver by itself.

Snap3.png

[Bruce McMath]

You conjured that up for me somehow. I have never seen that unless anther program connected to the scope. Anyway, I have attempted to use it to park and unpack the scope and nudge it as well. each attempt reports a transmit error.

[Bruce McMath]

Bob, I sure would like to get my system going. I looked for Pipe in my programs to remove it thinking that I could get the scope to connect, but I see no program that includes the name pipe. Can you tell me where to find this and how to remove it? When I go into scope set up I see com4 is in the com box. It does not connect. It use to be six, but if I switch to 6 is says it is occupied, I assume by pipe. My intention is to upgrade to AP's APCC operating system. Perhaps that will address this failure to shutdown properly. At any rate, your help would be appreciated.

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[Bob Denny]

Ok I'm sorry I thought the AP driver would be listed in the AP software to be started. Forget Pipe for the time being. Configure ACP to talk to the Astro Physics. Now try to connect from ACP. That AP driver window should pop up and then fail to connect and you'll see the popup error. The problem that needs to be solved first is getting it to connect. I think the COM port is not right but AP will need to give you definitive answer on that error since it is coming from the AP controller/driver. Pipe doesn't connect to COM ports, it just passes commands through from a program to a driver and records them. If you set ACP to talk to the AP, Pipe will not be active. Somehow the COM port is not right in the AP settings.

[Bruce McMath]

Well I got it to run, but the problem is that to use it I will have to manually start my scope up and then pipe each night. My system is automated and gets and needs little involvement on my part. If this issue at hand happened frequently, it would not be a problem to us Pipe, but it could be half a year or more before another shutdown failure happens. I am going to upgrade the AP driver to the APCC system and hope that addresses the problem.

Thanks
Bruce

[Bob Denny]

Oh gosh yes. If it only happens a few times a year that’s gonna be tough. I’m sorry steered you in that direction. I thought it was happening all the time.

[William Bristow]

Hi Bruce.

Instead of Pipe, which requires manual launch and setup every time that ACP starts up and connects to the telescope, you could use ASCOM Device Hub instead, which has the advantage that it launches automatically, you just configure ACP to use Device Hub Telescope in the telescope chooser menu and in ASCOM Device Hub you configure your telescope driver in the chooser menu.

Under automation, when ACP connects to the telescope then ASCOM Device Hub will automatically launch and connect to your telescope and if you enable the option "Driver Trace Enabled" in the Device Hub Telescope Setup (see attached screen grab) then all mount traffic will be logged in your daily ASCOM log (see the ASCOM folder in your user Documents directory to find the daily ASCOM logs).



Drive Trace Device Hub.jpg



When you compare the logs generated by Pipe and the ASCOM Device Hub they are basically identical (see screen grab below from separate runs using the ASCOM telescope simulator), with the advantage that the Device Hub Log is time-stamped.



Log Comp.jpg

Device Hub log is on the white page, Pipe log is on the dark page (separate runs)



The only obvious disadvantage using Device Hub in this way as a permanent monitor for the mount traffic is the very large ASCOM log file that will generated every day, you would need to either manually delete the log after each nights successful operations or set up a Windows script to do that for you before the evening start-up and run it as a Windows scheduled task, which would remove the need for you to remember to do this manually.

William.

[Bob Denny]

Shame on me for not pointing Bruce to DeviceHub. Pipe was deprecated years ago :-(