Hamlib/rotators/meade

Meade Telescope Rotator Module

This module interfaces Meade telescope rotator via the LX200 serial protocol.

These rotators can easily be modified to carry antennas instead of telescopes.

Usage

1. Set the telescope manually to show to north with 0 degree elevation
2. Connect the Autostar and the serial cable with the telescope and control PC
3. Turn on telescope rotator
4. Press Speed on the Autostar to accept "Don't look into the sun" warning
5. Press Mode a couple of times until the Autostar display shows Object
6. Start rotctl or rotctld with the arguments -m 1801 -s <Serial Interface>

Have Fun.

Hints

1. The rotator has no lock on 360 degree azimuth. For example, if you go from 359 degrees to 002 degrees, it will go the short way. That means it is possible to make several rotations in the same directions. Please have a kind look on your cables and don't use the rotator unattended!
2. If a new position gets sent to the rotor while it is in movement, it moves immediately to the new position, but stores the old one and moves again to the old one after the new position is reached. To avoid this, a Stop all movement command gets executed if a position update reaches the rotator while in movement. That can cause a choppy movement when going to a new position which is far away.

LX200 Protocol

• 2003 Protocol Version
• 2010 Protocol Version

Current Status

The current status is ALPHA. It is tested with Meade DS-2000 with Autostar 494 (2003 Firmware) and Meade 506 i2c to RS232 interface cable, tested under Linux with rotctl and gpredict.

What works good:

• set_position works for azimuth and elevation (0-360,0-90 degree), high frequent update (<2s) can cause sometimes unexpected behavior.
• get_position works mostly fine, sometime the elevation gets not read properly
• init, cleanup, get_info work as expected
• open sends all setup commands needed for now
• close stops all movement of the rotor
• meade_stop stops fine
• park, reset move the rotor to home position (north, elevation 0)

What works with some problems:

• move works fine for elevation, but for azimuth it will sometimes move in the wrong direction caused by the short way movement.