Stellarium

issue with AVX mount control with STellarium

Asked by Casey Fox

I seem to be able to connect with my new Celestron AVX mount just fine. However, when the mount is at its index marks, and pointed on the NCP, Stellarium puts my scope 12 hours away to the east. When I click "slew to current object" (selected in the Stellarium UI), even though I have HMS selected, it populates the fields with something like 61 days...then slews to a crazy position. I suspect this is something that I am doing wrong, but cannot find the answer anywhere.

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Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab) said : 		#1

This seems highly irregular.

Can you control your telescope normally with the same setup, but a different PC software, such as Celestron's NexRemote?

The usual questions:
- You have connected the PC-connection cable to the hand controller, NOT directly to the mount base, correct?
- You have aligned correctly the telescope before use? If the mount needs time/date/location settings, they have been set correctly?
- Do you need to "unpark" the mount in order to slew?

In the worst case, Celestron have updated their firmware again and the command's interpretation is different. :(

You can try using StellariumScope - it's a program that serves as an intermediary between Stellarium and an ASCOM driver. If the problem is in Stellarium, this should fix it.
http://www.welshdragoncomputing.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=31&Itemid=39

Note that to use StellariumScope, you'll also have to download and install the ASCOM driver platform and Celestron's ASCOM driver, if it's not included in the default ASCOM installation.

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Norman McCall (njmccall) said : 		#2

I can confirm the observed bug when using Stellarium to drive the Advanced VX mount via the serial port interface.

When I first bought my Celestron AVX mount, it worked perfectly. (Note after you configure the USB to Serial converter, restart the program and make Stellarium reports the port configured and started.) I had it driving the mount beautifully w/o issues. However, that mount failed and needed replacement under warranty.

This past weekend when I tried the new mount, it drove the scope inverted by 12 hours. I have contacted Celestron to report the problem.

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