[Kstars-devel] telescope control

[Jason Harris]

On Friday 06 February 2004 11:57 am, Jasem Mutlaq wrote:
> Jason,
>
> Any news on the telescope? We need to address all problems before KDE 3.2.1
> is out.
>
No, but I think we've amassed enough evidence to show that the problem was 
unrelated to INDI.

(for those who don't know, I borrowed a telescope from my workplace to try out 
with INDI/KStars on my laptop, but I was unable to connect to the telescope.)

I am actually at a loss what the problem could be:

+ At the telescope shop, I tried connecting KStars to another person's 
telescope, but got the same connection error

+ I tried two different connector cables at the telescope shop, same error.

+ I took the telescope home and tried it on my desktop computer as well, same 
error.

+ Jasem suggested installing some Windows telescope control shareware, and I 
did that.  These programs were also unable to connect to the telescope.

Since I swapped out every single part of the system, I really don't understand 
what the problem could be.  My only guess at this point is that the weird 
connector cable I bought (which is a phone jack on one end and a serial port 
connector on the other end) is not the right cable for this telescope.  It's 
unlikely that I got a defective one, because I tried two.  So if anything, it 
must be that the cable's designed for another telescope.  Even that is 
unlikely since I also tried to connect to completely different telescope (a 
Celestron GPS, as opposed to the Celestron NexStar 8 I had borrowed).

So, no idea what the problem is, but since I couldn't even make other programs 
connect, the issue is unlikely to be an INDI problem.

I'm going to try again at some point, but I'll be out of town for the next ten 
days or so.

regards,
Jason
-- 
-------------------------------
KStars: KDE Desktop Planetarium
kstars at 30doradus.org