Orion StarSeeker III 90mm GoTo Mak-Cass Telescope control issue

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cschlise
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Orion StarSeeker III 90mm GoTo Mak-Cass Telescope control issue

Post by cschlise » Fri Mar 18, 2016 6:10 pm

Dan,

Recently acquired a Orion StarSeeker III 90mm GoTo Mak-Cass Telescope. Scope works great but now I'm trying to control it using the included starry night software. I can't get the scope and my laptop to connect up using a FTDI USB 2.0 to RS232 cable.

The scope comes with the attached hardware for connecting the scope to a computer, but I cannot get the EQMOD controller software to see the scope via either a direct serial cable interface to the StarSeeker III mount or via the SynScan controller with direct pc mode enabled. Do I need one of your cables to make this work? If so, why? I'm surprised orion would ship all this hardware and still need a specialized cable to make it work from a third party.

Also, looking at your store, I don't see a cable that could work directly with this mount since the only RJ-45 plug is in the hand controller. The other two plugs are RJ-11/12 sized.

Appreciate any insight you could provide...
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dpanderson
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Re: Orion StarSeeker III 90mm GoTo Mak-Cass Telescope control issue

Post by dpanderson » Sun Mar 20, 2016 12:21 pm

I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but I don't believe the EQMOD software supports Alt-Azimuth mounts such as yours, only equatorial mounts. You can verify this on the EQMOD Yahoo group: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/eqmod/info

EQMOD is a completely separate open-source project developed by fellow amateur astronomers. It is independent of Orion. Orion includes their cable to be used with other third-party software.

EQMOD works best at the port where the handcontroller plugs in to the mount. The electrical levels here are at TTL levels, not at standard RS232 serial levels. Thus a cable such as our USB2EQ5 or USB2EQ6 is needed to convert USB to TTL serial levels.
Doug Anderson
Shoestring Astronomy
http://www.ShoestringAstronomy.com

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