Using the ASCOM driver for Celestron and parking

[Dean Salman]

I posted this here is case there was anything in ACP that could be added to help, suspect not. It is a interesting message when using the ascom driver and how a park position is defined, like in the AP mounts.

Gary,
In case you see this message. I started the plan tonight.

I see what the problem is. ACP when the sky X is not connected parks in a default home position (defined my ACOM driver) which is on the meridian at 0 degrees. In other words it does not know what a park position is that the user sets in the Sky X. Ok this makes sense. So if you want to use a custom park position in Sky X, the telescope must be connected to Sky X. If ACP can be parked in a defined atl/az position, then maybe sky x would not needed


The reason you are seeing a mount not align message is because ACP parked the mount in the default ASCOM celestron position for park. When you moved the scope to another position to close the roof, you did not unpark the mount first, so it got lost. If you had connected to the Sky X and unpark that would have worked and mount would not have been lost. So tonight I left the Sky X connected to see if ACP parks as the Sky X knows it


IF I had connected ACP to use the Sky control position, I am sure that would have worked. Tonight, ACP is connected using the ASCOM driver for celestron so it may park in that psotion and not what sky x uses, but this is a good test


Find lost scope won't work because the celestron driver will move move the scope when not aligned, ACP log shows this as well. I do wonder if you could just sync on any star and then use find lost scope, maybe another good test if mount gets mis aligned again.


Anyway your plan is running

[Dean Salman]

Ok since ACP was using the ascom driver for celestron, mount parked in the position that the driver has set up (meridian and at 0 degrees DEC). The reason I know this is when I connect the Sky again it has it pointed at 12h RA and 0 so it is lost. Tonight I will use sky control telescope for ACP and see if it parks correctly (where park is set in Sky X). If it does not then parking with ACP is not possible outside the default setting by Celestron, sky X needs to do the parking. I have time to run test tonight so we will see what happens

Not much makes sense so maybe the ascom driver is not as good as I thought it was. I wanted to add this is really not a ACP issue so if this topic needs moved fine with me.

[Bob Denny]

OK, well this is a Celestron issue not ACP so I am moving this to the "other stuff" section.

[Jeff Lewis]

From "The SkyX" users manual - this strong implies (at least to me) that the park position is persisted by The SkyX and is independent of the driver.

1. At the end of the night, you’ll want to make sure to park the telescope so it will be in the correctorientation to close the observatory roof. Note that some telescope control systems do not havethe ability to park the telescope. For these telescopes, TheSkyX uses a “built-in” park feature thatslews the mount to the park position (a fixed altitude/azimuth coordinate) that you define andturns off the mount’s sidereal tracking. When communication with the mount is establishedagain, TheSkyX can unpark the mount and initialize the mount’s control system.
   

[Bob Denny]

But the Celestron driver has this stuff as well. The confusion is between the Bisque (3rd party) control code for Celestron, and the Celestron control code in their driver, and the fact that TheSky can be connected directly through the Bisque code or through the Bisque to ASCOM code and thence to the Celestron code. Crazy!!

Please see this post where I quote the info I got back from Celestron: