Copyright: NTC Server 0.0.1


NTC Server Overview

Network Telescope Control Server version 0.0.1

NTC comes in two parts, but the server can be used as a standalone telescope control module.

At the moment the server supports a LX200 or Autostar telescope controller and only slews. We are working on goto features using algorithms to plot the positions of the planets, features on the Sun and Moon.

NTC can control dedicated focusers and can alter tracking rates.

The way the program works is a control panel that has all the features grouped in pages on the panel. When you switch pages, the controls on each page are hidden/shown automatically.

At the moment there are two pages, setup and control:

The setup page consists of dialogs that configure the telescope serial port, your geographical location and Network settings.

The control page consists of dialogs for slewing, focus and tracking. There is also a information dialog for display of coordinates.

Each control in the pages can be shown/hidden by clicking on the button on the panel. When you select another page, the controls in the current page are hidden, unless the control is set as a sticky control by right clicking on the button.


Network Setup

By default the network control is disabled. In this mode, you can directly control a telescope. By checking the ‘enable network’ check box you enabled network control over a lan, or internet. The first thing you need to do to enable network control is to choose a IP address in the ‘choose ip address’ combo box.

The addresses you choose are detected by NTC as the IP addresses bound by the machine. In all cases there will be the ‘127.0.0.1’ address. There is no real need to use this address, it is called the loopback address and enables the NTC Client and Server programs to work on the same computer.

Any other IP addresses that appear in the list are external connections to your computer. They will be connected to another network either through a gateway to the internet, or to a local area network.

You also need to choose a port to communicate through. I choose the default 8383 port, and if no other network device uses this port, then you should be ok to leave it as it is. Once you choose the IP address, and port the server will be started.

The display area is the logging window, which displays the communications between the client and server. The buttons along the bottom control how the logging window works. To enable/disable basic communication logging, click/unclick the logging button. To enable/disable the display of the communications between the Server and telescope, click/unclick the IO button.

The disk button enables/disables writing the log to a file on the disk, and the clear button clears the logging window.


Communications

The communications dialog configures the serial port for you telescope. The port combo box sets the communications port that the telescope is plugged into, normally this will be COM1. The baud rate, data bits, stop bit and parity can basically be left alone.

The timeout and interval timeout settings control the response times for the communications port. The lower the value that these controls are set increases the response times of the telescope. But if you set them too low, the port might time out before the telescope responds.


Scope Configration

The ‘config’ control selects the telescope that is connected. You can also enable or disable high/low precision. High precision basically uses arcseconds in the coordinates, where low precision just uses degrees and minutes.

You can also create a ini file that contains all the telescope control escape codes. Theoretically, you might be able to edit this file to suit a telescope that isn’t currently supported.

In this file, each command is a section, the section name should be left as it is. The write key is the text that is sent to the telescope. Some commands have parameters, there are two keys, ‘appends’ and ‘returns’. If appends=1, which is the value for ‘true’, then there are keys that define the data that is appended to the write text command.

If returns=1 then the command returns information. Usually this is coordinates returned by the telescope and the $text$ format in the value, is a template and describes how the data is formatted. I have introduced prreset formats, hms for hours/minutes/seconds, and dms for degrees/minutes/secconds.

The $[1-4]$ template is like regular expression and simmply defines the range of single text digits that are appended to the command text.

In fact all you need be concerned about is the values that are send to the scope, the key names should be left as they are.

The ‘enable scope’ option in the configuration control can be used to test the connection by disabling communications with the telescope.

The century bug checkbox fixes a peculiar bug with the Autostar controller. Instead of moving the azimuth number from 99 to 100, it moves to :0, meaning that it simply chooses the next character in the ASCII character set that follows ‘9’.

Then it moves from :9 to ;0 and so on. There might even be a possibility that this bug might be fixed in the future in which case uncheck this box.

The Seconds bug disables the output of seconds in the azimuth/altitude coordinates sent to the Autostar.


Telescope geographical location

The locale control is specifically for the telescopes location in geographical latitude and longitude. You also need to specify the time zone.


Information Control

the information control will display the coordinates of the telescopes position – assuming that the telescope is aligned. The coordinates returned are equatorial and horizon coordinates.

The rerfresh rate determines the interval between readings, the default being 500 milliseconds.


Slew Control

The connect and disconnect buttons enable of disable local control of a scope, you can only do this when the client isn’t connected to the scope. The ‘enable scope’ option in the configuration control can be used to test the connection by disabling communications with the telescope.

The slew speeds are set in the ‘server.ini’ file, if you are editing your own escape codes you need to change the ‘slew_speeds’ key to the number of speeds supported. Otherwise the four direction arrows slew the scope. You can switch the n/w and e/w labels by clicking on them. The telescope should stop slewing when you release the mouse button on the direction button.

Like all communications systems, there is a chance that the communications between client and server might be disrupted when slewing, so clicking on the middle stop button will send a stop signal to the scope.


Telescope Focus control

The focus control allow the remote control of a electric focuser. At the moment, the Meade focuser is supported. There are other focusers, but some don’t’ allow software control. The escape controls for the focuser is in the meade.ini file if you want to change them. See the configuration help for information about the format of the escape codes.

Speeds supported by the focuser are specified in the ‘server.ini’ file with the ‘focuser_speeds’ key.


Telescope Tracking control

Tracking is for changing the tracking rate of the scope. Lunar tracking sets the scope to follow the moons direction as well as the movement of the earth. To reset the tracking back to 60 hertz, click on the reset button. You can also increase or decrease the tracking rate by 0.1 hertz.


NTC Search

The search function will try to help you locate a object that was visible in the eyepiece, but cant be found after inserting the camera.

The out button will move the camera vision out of the current frame. The In button will move the camera vision to the next nested frame.

The horizontal and vertical percentage parameters are to allow for overlap when the camera is moved. The default is 80%, that is 20% of the last frame is overlapped with the new frame.

The seconds per pixel is the value that specifies the width of a pixel in seconds. This value is used to calculate how far to move the camera.

Window width and window height are the width and height of the visible frame that the camera sees.

The clockwise button will move the camera around the current frame, and the anti clockwise button will move the camera in the opposite direction.

The stop button will stop the scope from slewing, and the reset button will clear the search configuration and make the current frame the center frame.