Copyright: Made with Shalom Help Maker www.danish-shareware.dk/soft/shelpm/


Overview

NTC Network Telescope Control Server version 0.2.0 Build 67, Client version 0.2.0 Build 22

NTC comes in two parts, server and client. The server can also be used as a local standalone program to control a telescope.

Both programs have a dialog box that I call the main panel, it's colour is gray. You select pages of control panels by clicking on a tab in the main panel. In each tab page there are buttons that hide or show the control panels for the page. At the moment there are three pages, setup, control and objects. The object control panels don't actually do anything at the moment. More pages are planned including one for streaming live video.

When you select a control panel page, the currently selected page of control panels will dissapear unless you right click on a control button and make it 'sticky'. The new set of control panels for the page you select will then appear. NTC will remember if any of your control panels are on another monitor and will relocate any controls that are misplaced due to the resolution of the display being smaller that before, so the controls will not be out of the scope of the display.

When you wish to close the program, just close the main panel and NTC will remember your preferences for the next time you open NTC.

At the moment the server supports a LX200 or Autostar telescope controller. Celestron support is on the way.

There is a minor problem with LX200 handsets, when you move the scope using the new functions, don't move again until the LX200 handset beeps indicating that it is ready.

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.


Setting up

Setting up the scope and NTC

To set up NTC to control your telescope you need to have your scope aligned and plugged into the serial port of your pc/laptop. The port will be COM1 or COM2 and you select this in the Comms panel. To enable the scope you do this in the Config panel.

If you wish to control your scope locally, you can skip the network setup part and connect to the scope.

Setting up the Network server.

Connecting a client NTC to the server.

Connecting to the telescope.

Controlling the Telescope.


Setting up the network server

Setting up the network server

To find the network panel you click on the 'Setup' page in the main panel and make sure that the network panel is visible.

First you need to determine the IP address that the server is going to be listening through. When you click on the 'enable network' check box, NTC Server searches for IP addresses that have been allocated, including 127.0.0.1 which is called the loopback address. The combo box [drop down box] above is the 'choose IP address' list of IP addresses. You choose the IP address associated to the network you want to listen to. If you uncheck the enable network check box and re-enable it, you will also need to reselect the IP address.

Apart from the loopback address, there will normally only be another IP address, this is the one associated with the Dial up, broadband or cable connection. But if you want to be sure, you can find out what the right IP address you want is by running 'winipcfg' from the run dialog in the start menu. Winipcfg will show what IP addresses are associated with your network connections. When you know what the IP address you want you simply select it from the drop down list, this will then start the server and will wait for a connection.


Connecting a client NTC to the server

Connecting a client NTC to the server

The client network dialog simply consists of an IP address and port field. Leave the port alone unless you know what you are doing. The IP address should be the same IP address that the serrver is set to. Remember that some IP addresses only work on a local area network [LAN] and won't be visible on the Internet. IP addresses that start 192.168.0 or 169.254 or 10 are local addresses and will only work on the same network as both the client and server.

If you have a firewall behind the Internet and you want a client to connect to a server behind the firewall from the Internet then then you need to enable IP forwarding on your firewall, and give the client NTC the IP address that the firewall uses to access the Net.

Once the IP address has been entered into the IP address field you then click on the 'Connect' button and the LED should turn green. If it is blue then the client is still trying to connect.


Connecting to the telescope

Connecting to the telescope

Connecting locally

To connect the server to your scope you need to plug the scope into the serial port and the scope needs to be switched on and aligned. The communications port settings in the 'Comms' dialog should be OK, you only need to make sure the right COM port is selected. If the scope doesn't respond you might need to increase the 'Timeout' and 'Interval timeout' settings.

To control the telescope you need to click on the 'Control' page in the main panel and make sure that the 'control' panel is visible.

To connect, you click on the 'connect' button in the control panel. If all is fine, then the connection LED will turn green.

Connecting remotely

To connect remotely you need to be connected to the server. If connected to the server you then click on the 'Control' page in the main panel and then make sure that the connect panel is visible. Then click on the 'Connect' button.

Once connected to your scope the controls in the 'Control', 'Search', 'Focus' and 'Tracking' panels will be enabled.


Controlling the telescope

Controlling the telescope

The controls for moving the telescope are the same for the client as well as when controlling the telescope locally. In the control panel there are two ways of moving the scope. Either by moving based on the dimensions of the camera that is looking through the scope. The server contains edit controls that need the right information based on the dimensions of the camera. Like the width and height in pixels etc.

On the control panel there are two buttons, one with a % sign and the other with a " sign. The first button selects the window mode and the other selects the offset mode. In offset mode you choose how far to move the scope each time you press a direction button. In window mode you can select the amount of overlap for each frame. In offset mode you specify how far to move the scope by entering the values in the RA/Dec edit controls.

You can also Focus, alter the Tracking and use the Search control.


The Network panel

The Network panel

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 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. You might need to do this if the logging window fills up.

For the client network panel, you simply enter the IP address and port of the server and click on connect. It may take a few seconds to connect and the LED will turn blue. Once connected the LED will turn green.


The communications Panel

The communications panel

The communications panel 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 port. But if you set them too low, the port might time out before the telescope responds.


The configuration Panel

The configuration panel

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.

There are three telescope controllers supported, Autostar, LX200 and SkyScan.

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, which are...

hms : hours/minutes/seconds for right ascension [HH:MM:SS]
hmt : hours/minutes/tens of seconds [HH:MM.T]
dms : degrees/minutes/secconds for declination [sDD*MM'SS]
dm : degrees/minutes [sDD*MM]
ams : degrees/minutes/seconds for altitude [sDD*MM'SS]
am : degrees/minutes [sDD*MM]
ddms : degrees/minutes/seconds for azimuth [DDD*MM'SS]
ddmt : degrees/minutes/tens of seconds [DD*MM.T]

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 and seconds bug check boxes are because of software faults with the Autostar. Enable these options if the AZ/ALT readings are dodgy.


The locale panel

The Locale panel

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


The Information panel

The information panel

The information panel 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 30000 milliseconds.


The Control panel

The Control panel

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.

There are two ways of moving the scope, by the dimensions of the video camera attached to the telescope, or by a fixed offset specified in degrees minutes and seconds. The button with a % sign is for window mode and the button with " selects offset mode.

In window mode you choose the overlap with the slider control. The camera settings are done in the NTC Server Search panel.

Offset mode is done by entering the offset in degrees, minutes and seconds. You can actually enter the value as a decimal fraction, when you press enter the value will be converted to sexagesimal automatically.

There is a minor problem with LX200 handsets, when you move the scope using the new functions, don't move again until the LX200 handset beeps indicating that it is ready.


The Focus panel

The Focus panel

The focus panel allows 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.


The Tracking panel

The Tracking panel

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.


The Search panel

The Search panel

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 percentage slide control on the control panel is 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.


The objects page

The Objects page

On the objects page are the panels that will be used to GOTO to planets, deep sky objects and places on the Moon or Sun. At the moment these panels are still under development.