Change log Known problems Installation Features Usage Screenshots
A cross-platform graphical telescope control application for Rajiva's EQ6/HEQ5 MCU Upgrade kit.
V4 of the Rajiva MCU Update/Littlefoot firmware is imminent. To work with this hardware change a new version of EQ6CONTROL called TUXCONTROL will be needed. All of the features of the previous version of the software will be implimented along with:
- Horizon limits on alignments and gotos
- Full configuration of motor step, gearing and worm gear for each axis
- Faster slew speeds with configurable ramping
- Re-vamped PEC
Watch these pages for more information.
Download eq6control (for Linux with firmware V3.x)
Go to the TuxControl page (for Linux with firmware V4.x)
Recent Changes
-
Jan 11, 2007
- Finally, a sane code cleanup
- Fixed a bug in the 'clear running PEC table' function
- Added 'photo mosaic' to intervalometer display window
- Added a small 'arcsec per pixel' calculator
- Proper mirror lockup routines for Canon DSLR
- Intervalometer display window
- Single exposure timer window
- Meridian check to stop tracking and terminate exposures if you leave the mount unattended.
- Moved focusing to a seperate tab
- Added focus indexing and six focus presets for focus motor 1
- Added intervalometer code for multiple exposures with DSLR
- Added alignment settings using catalogue search
- Added ability to retrieve serial number (seperate utility called from app)
- Added ability to set Goto and Intelly keys (seperate utility called from app)
- UI changes
- Changes to how the 'stop' button works in the guide page
- Changes to how the 'digital setting circles' work
- Fixed bug in starting/stopping 'find' function
- No user changes to the GUI
-
No show-stopping problems in the current code
You'll probably find some bugs. Report any to ozzzy1@gmail.com
Features
- Full control of all mount parameters.
- Northern and southern hemisphere support.
- Periodic error-correction table manipulation.
- Intervalometer control of Canon DSLR shutter.
- Automatic photo-mosaic control
- Selectable meridian check stops tracking and terminates exposures.
- Controls up to 2 focus motors with user definable presets.
- Messier, IC, NGC catalogues.
- 1500+ bright star database.
- Object selection by name for goto or alignment.
- Planetary GoTo buttons with test for visability.
- Works with many planetarium software packages.
- Digital 'setting circles'.
- Supports both Windows and Linux.
-
Read the file 'readme.txt' in the tarball. Make sure you have perl-gtk2 and the provided PERL modules installed. Perl-Gtk2
is part of your Linux distribution.
Usage
-
The program is pretty much self-explanatory. All of the functions indicated
in the program work with only a few bugs left to track down. The bugs are in
the user interface (I think) and may have been caused by too tight a fit of
my worm and gears.
When you first start the program the 'configuration window' will pop up asking you to enter the serial port you're using (/dev/ttyS0 is the default) and which hemisphere you live in (north is the default). After that, click on 'Connect' and start playing.
On the configuration page, the settings take effect immediately, but to carry the settings over to your next session as defaults you have to click on 'Save to EEPROM'. Also, on the gearing page, if you make any changes you'll have to save AND turn the power off then onn (not just the switch on the hand controller, the power) to make the changes take effect.
A note on speeds. Don't mess with 40x (or perhaps even 27x) unless your balance is very good, you're not overloading the mount AND you've removed all of the Synta lubricant. You can give them a shot, but if the motors stall switch back to 20x at most.
A note about the catalogue
Using the catalogue is fairly simple for DSOs. Just type the NGC number, Messier number or the common name (or portion therof and you'll be shown the matches from the catalogue with some information on each as below:
To search for one of the 1536 stars in the catalogue things are a bit different. You can search for a name such as 'Sirius' or 'Alnilam' and return information. If you want something like 'Omicron Orionis' where there are more than one in the database (Omicron 1 Ori and Omicron 2 Ori) it's probably best to search for 'Ori' and page through the entries till you find it. Of course, proper 3 letter contractions for the constellation names are used such as 'Ori' = Orionis, UMa = 'Ursa Major' etc. Information as below is shown:
With variable stars (as in the example) the minimum magnitude is shown at the top and the magnitude swing and period are shown in row 3.
(May not reflect the latest version)
 The Configuration Tab |
 The Alignment Tab |
 The Guiding Tab |
 The Focus/Shutter Tab |
 The Goto Tab |
 The Pulseguiding Tab |
 The PEC Tab |
 The Catalogue Goto Tab |
 The Planet Goto Tab |
 The Gearing Tab |
 The focus preset label window |
 The Goto/Intelly key entry window |
 The Intervalometer setting window |
 The Configuration window |
My mount setup for software testing.
Download it...
ftp://ozastro.dyndns.org/pub/eq6control.tar.gz
Back to the HEQ5 Project page
Back to Ozzzy's Astromomy page