lukepower

Well, first of all ASA would need to offer some sort of interface to start an MLPT run from other programs, may it be a COM interface for scripting or a little command line program. Then one needs to invoke that function from the automation program used. In CCD Autopilot there is this function, which seems alright. In ACP one can use a custom UserAction to do so. In SGP I have no idea if it can be done or not. What you need is a way of calling an external program before imaging but after the slew to the target is completed, ideally with the total imaging time as an argument.

Guys, I talked to Wolfgang Promper today who is also interested in using MLPT from within automation (ACP or CCD Autopilot, basically). As he knows Philipp Keller he will approach him directly. Maybe he can get him to create the needed code...

Indeed

Thomas, sequence doesn't know It's that easy. I dunno if it calculates it using the focuser driver or if it is a remainder of times when Sequence only supported the ASA focusers, though...

There are indeed a few direct drive mounts out there, besides ASA. There is a french product, and a german-russian one (Astelco). ANd on the bigger scopes, especially the fork-mounted (like PlaneWaves CDK) they are nearly a standard

I tried it once, but wasn't too impressed with it. But it was a while ago...

Me too. This Linux thing could turn out to be very interesting

Guys, always sync before doing a pointing file, and then never do it while building a pointing file. What I could think is that maybe sync'ing close to the meridian could confuse Autoslew about which pierside it is currently pointing, but this is just a guess. Maybe the polar alignment is quite off, that would explain the subsequent measurements being off by alot...

Robert, thanks for your efforts. After all, this sounds like old wine to me, but it's good to hear that they still want to cover the amateur market (on the other side, what shall they say while standing at AME? ). Personally I would be very curious about that linux-based software platform. I could live with it being command-line only, as one could use an INDI driver and command the linux box over the network - no matter what computer one uses. SO even without the "tablet" solution, the linux option could be interesting. I am going to ask Dietmar about this. Best regards Lukas

Great Christer! I took the opportunity and started a thread on the new forum on the wiki, linking to here. So here is the link there: http://asauser.cosmonorr.se/index.php?title=Special:WikiForum/Knowledge_Base_for_ASA_users I suggest to move the wiki-related discussions there.

The Discussion tab's are indeed a very nice feature. Completely agree to Nigel. As per Robert going to AME, I guess the roadmap question would be very "hot". As well as the documentation one...

Ian, that wording sounds good. Nigel, I guess it isn't too bad to work with that plugin. Christer would have to install and set it up, though.

Hi John, no apologies needed, I fully understand what you are saying. I am sure that with the "wrong" company on the other side, this could end up in some risky endeavour, and I appreciate that somebody is appointing this. I simply do not believe that ASA would be so stupid to block this user Wiki. It is the cheapest way of solving some pressing problems on the documentation side. Or look it this way: How many new ASA mount owners were on the verge of selling the whole thing and giving up before they found this forum and got help from other users? Writing to ASA support *can* work, but the delay there is somethimes not understandable. With one of the other systems I am working with the guys who made the OTA helped out during the night remotely via Teamviewer to collimate the thing - that's what I call service. So, if ASA gets a nice documentation for free, written by the users, the least they should do is tolerate this. Personally I think that if Nigel didn't mail DIetmar (which was a good idea, btw) they wouldn't even notice there is a User-driven wiki coming up

@Christer, could you install the following extension: https://www.mediawiki.org/wiki/Extension:CiteThisPage It would allow us to insert references in the Wiki, so that we can keep a nice list of external or internal references. @ Nigel: I added a few links to your page, but otherwise I think it's fine. I would add a "References" title at the bottom for external references if applicable.

If you want to add more info you're welcome. I just did a quick edit to keep the info somewhere before I forget

John, if I look what people are writing on Tripadvisor about a hotel (I'm working in a hotel so I know the situation very well) I think you argumentation is not applicable here. In Europe several court cases gave Holidaycheck/Tripadvisor the ability to publish information and reviews about a hotel or restaurant without their explicit permission. This seems to fall within the right of free opinion. I would be very surprised if ASA would block us from creating and mantaining the WIKI. If they are clever - and I bet they are not stupid by any means - they would put one of their guys up to write more stuff into the wiki, thus creating a single source of information. At the end of the day we didn't do anything else than collecting what we know - both by experimenting and by following the forum (which is public!) - and write it into a central location accessible to everybody. Would I be the company (ASA) I'd be very glad that somebody who I don't even have to pay for is doing the job I was supposed to do eons ago...

Nigel, have you checked the distance primary-corrector and secondary-corrector? While it is no thighly critical, the optician from where I got my mirrors (Zen from Venice) told me that it should be within +/- 5mm of the correct position, otherwise it wouldn't be able to correct all errors correctly. In my case, I missed the correct distance by about 2cm and it made a difference of about 1.8" FWHM stellar diameter (plus quite bad correction off-axis)

Back focus was a pain in the ass for me, a bit due to the tight requirements of the ASA correctors, and even more due to the mechanical construction of my OTA combined with the optics (which were, surprise, a little below the projected f/3 and thus the backfocus was lower than expected).

Nigel, well, I have my 20" which also uses the 4" reducer/corrector (I have the corrector here as a spare part but never used it). The tube wasn't made by ASA; though

Nomis, would you mind to add it into the wiki? Here: http://asauser.cosmonorr.se/index.php?title=Autoslew#Scripting_Interface

Hehe yes it is. Everybody knows that... I just hate the lame excuses like 'it's a lot of work' or 'Nobody needs it'

Well, most of the commands are from the ASCOM interface. There is also a CommandBlind function which is not documented. Seems that Sequence is using it to send the MLPT measurements to Autoslew, but maybe it has some other functions, too.

I found a rather old project of mine (about 2 years now) where I reverse engineered the MLPT functions in Sequence. It seems to work. I know that this is not the nice British way of solving this kind of issues, but nobody at ASA is doing it and this is a proof that it wouldn't be difficult at all: Of course I never tested it to the end, but it actually seems to work A quick comparison to a 'real' MLPT run with Sequence seems to yield the same results.

Those two manuals are quite an improvement!

I have a bad gut feeling if ASA would host it (and have full access to it) honestly...