Shoestring Astronomy Support

Bought the BT2EQ5 Bluetooth Module hoping to eliminate a very long USB cable controlling the mount. Anyone out there have any experience using the Bluetooth with SGP which happens to be a wonderful automated software product. Thanks.

Dennis

I am not aware of anyone, but I often do not hear the details of a customer's setup. You might try a post on the EQMOD Yahoo group:
https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/EQMOD/info

Hi Doug,

I installed the BTEQ5 Bluetooth Module as directed but it will not verify using the diagnostic tool I have tried all ports 1-7 . Any suggestions ???

Thanks..

Dennis

p.s. I am using Windows 8.1 (sorry)

Have you worked through the steps shown on page 3 and 4 of this document:
http://store.shoestringastronomy.com/Us ... _BT2EQ.pdf

Yes, I was careful to work through the directions as written. I have made sure the ports match and still no luck. The best it will do is kind of get hung up when I click connect using the eqdircheck tool. When I tried connecting to the eqmod driver, it would pop open the driver window and get hung at that point.

Windows 8.1 is not very friendly when it comes to Bluetooth devices. I tried downloading a newer driver but it said it had the latest driver already. Any suggestions ??

Thanks,

Dennis

If you use Device Manager to examine the COM ports, you may note that these Bluetooth devices actually claim 2 COM ports. You will need to try both of them. I have this problem when I do final product test here as well. It is never obvious which port is the correct one to select, but if I select the wrong one in EQDIRCheck, it will hang the program.

Make sure you test both COM ports with EQDIRCheck. If neither one of those work, I guess the next step would be to send you a second device to try, or have you return the one you have so I can test it.

Hi Doug,

I have tried everything over and over and still can't get a connection. Do you think it might be my Firewall/Antivirus software ?? I haven't given
up yet.

Dennis

Great News !!

I finally got it to work . Problem is...........not sure what I did to get it to connect properly....... Weird part: it will NOT connect to the EQDIRECT Check diagnostic tool . It does , however , connect to EQMOD and works properly when connected through SGP (which was my ultimate goal).

This is what I did......1. shut off my Firewall in Norton Antivirus. 2. Clicked run as Administrator on the diagnostic tool. 3. Deleted the port that did NOT say HC-06 DEV B outgoing. Now which one , if any, of these was the solution ??? I don't know.

I also researched windows 8.1 and it seems the services that it supports might be an issue. If I click on devices and printers, HC-06 , right click, and choose "Services" it will say "no available services" ...yet it is connecting and running fine at the time.

Hope this helps if you get any more calls from customers. This all pertains to Windows 8.1 only.

So far so good....

Dennis

Glad to hear you have it running now, wish we understood the root cause. I use Windows 8 and EQDirCheck as my production test tool for every unit we ship.

Thanks for the follow-up post.

Didn't know you used windows 8. Follow up question then, what does your com port say ....is it HC-06 Dev B Outgoing ....????

Still wondering why I can't connect to the EQDIRCheck tool.

Dennis

I sometimes have to try both COM ports, mine does not tell me which is incoming and which is outgoing. If yours does, it should be the outgoing COM port.