Hello Camiel,
Thanks for the willingness to check on that potential firmware bug!
Oh the other hand, maybe there is nothing worth imaging in the band
between 0 degrees and -1 degrees declination, and the controller is
just trying to tell us that
I do most of my testing with the Pulsar2 just connected to the computer,
no mount at all connected. It seems to respond correctly, even without
a load to drive. Of course, all of my time under the stars is using the
new versions as I create them!
If there are some tty/serial shortcomings with the controller, I would
expect Windows to have a couple of problems also. And, just
intuitively, I would expect to see some differences between our
firmware versions.
Thanks so much for your suggestions, I have tried to implement them
in the new version attached to this message. If you are still willing,
give it a try, and let me know if it comes closer to what you would
like to see.
If I recall correctly, I do get a *very* quiet knock from the mount when
particular changes are made -- changing the RA rotation direction,
or the reduction parameter. Again IIRC, I do hear this even when
changing those parameters through the driver. However, I don't
recall hearing anything when the current values are changed
(tracking, stopping, goto).
Since I have recently been experimenting with changing the RA
reduction parameter, I was hoping to use the driver to do this.
However, the command to do this is documented only to use
integral values from 100 to 6000. The hand controller accepts
tenths and hundreds of these values, so for example, I could
set the RA reduction parameter to 482.34, which resembles
a "floating point" number. The "set" command simply documents
values from 100 to 6000, and returns them that way, so I can
only work with integral values. This must be a shortcoming in
the protocol, but if so, I will have to continue using the hand
controller to do these experiments. (If you wish to know, the
published specification from GTD for this value seems too
"fast" for the mount, and causes a runaway western excursion.)
Also, there seem to be a few operations that have no
corresponding commands in the protocol, or if they do,
they are not documented. For example, there should be
a command to change the pole-crossing direction (north
or south), but I cannot find it.
Thanks again, this is far beyond what I hoped would happen,
and you have already improved the driver very much with
your suggestions. Let me know if you are able to build a
new version, and how it looks and works for you.
Best regards,
Gregory