I am using SM for some time now and enjoy it greatly ! so many thanks to all, who contributed so much !
From time to time I use my Scope just for visual observation, which is great fun, too; especially when you are with friends and/or family and show them how the nightsky looks through a telesope.
It is in these situations that I would appreciate to have more options for manual focus control. The current driver for the Celestron SCT focuser is geared toward astrophotography and using autofocus. When you want to use it for visual observation it becomes quite inconvenient and cumbersome, as you can only switch between focus in / focus out in fast mode. When you are close to focus you have to hit abort quite fast to get the focus right or revert to tiny focus steps.
Here is a link to a manual focus controller, which seems to be quite convenient:
www.cloudynights.com/topic/645522-celest...t-and-edgehd/page-37
With this controller you can use the thumbstick to move the focuser in either direction. The amount of deflection controls how fast the focuser moves. Quite intuitive and convenient. Judging from the amount of posts in this thread and other information contained therein, there seems to be quite some interest for this controller.
Now, I guess it can´t be too hard to implement this in the current Celestron SCT Focuser driver. I tried myself, but unfortunately my coding skills are too basic and limited to get it right.
Here is what I found out, though:
Based on information from here:
www.paquettefamily.ca/nexstar/NexStar_AUX_Commands_10.pdf
It appears that enhancing the code of the driver seems to be quite straight forward. As of now, only the MC_GOTO_FAST command is employed to control the focuser move (line 372 in celestron.cpp).
According to the command listing from above there is also a MC_GOTO_SLOW command available, so a "switch" would need to be implemented in the code to toggle between MC_GOTO_FAST and MC_GOTO_SLOW.
Alternatively, there are the commands "MC_MOVE_POS" and "MC_MOVE_NEG", which are to be complemented by an integer number of 0 (stop) or between 5 (slowest) and 9 (fastest) for setting the speed*. One would need to implement two buttons and a speed slider (or even better a joystick axis) to have the focuser move in a slow or fast way and stop, when no button is pressed or the joystick is in neutral position. The latter way (especially with the joystick) seems to be the most elegant to me.
Once this is implemented and working, one could probably give options in the Joystick tab for assigning buttons to the presets. This would be absolutely perfect, then. So one could switch between focus of different setups or looking through the scope with or without glasses.
Can anyone please help out here ? I am willing to test code anytime.
Many thanks and kind regards
Dirk
*information derived from the first link; 1-4 seem to be unused

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