Background

The Sphinx GOTO mount from Vixen Japan has a number of highly innovative features that make it a one of a kind at present.

One particularly tantalising feature is the ability to communicate with the Sphinx via a network interface. Unfortunately Vixen Japan have shown no interest in providing English software to utilise this interface.

As I do not speak or read Japanese and in the interest of being able to control the Sphinx myself, I have developed an ASCOM driver for the Sphinx to allow it to be managed from any ASCOM compliant program.

This driver has been developed with little or no support from Vixen Japan and to date they have not officially recognised its existence. It has been entirely a labour of love (and some pain!) for myself and I decided early on to make it freely available to the Sphinx community – I hope you like it!

Chronology

2004-08-17 The first release of my ASCOM Sphinx driver that allows current pointing position of Sphinx to be displayed in ASCOM compliant planetarium software.

2004-09-30 Vixen announced in their Japanese 1.2 build 24 update that the firmware would allow control of the Sphinx via the Japanese language only planetarium software StellaNavigator from AstroArts. Vixen state they have no plans to provide support via an English language product.

2004-10-10 The first version of my ASCOM Sphinx driver that allows ASCOM compliant planetarium software to control the Sphinx pointing position.

Note that ASCOM is a Microsoft Windows only solution at present so this will not be usable by MacOS or Linux users – sorry about that.

Installation

Status: Release
Download 4.40

• You need to have Star Book firmware 1.2 build 26 or later.
• You need to have ASCOM platform 4.1 or later installed.
• Download the latest ASCOM Sphinx driver by clicking the link above.
• Run the installer and fire up your favourite Planetarium or other telescope controlling software.

Use

In order to control the Sphinx from your computer you will require ASCOM compatible client software. Cartes du Ciel and Starry Night Pro 5.* are a couple of planetarium applications along with more specialised software such as GuideDog. You can find a full list of ASCOM compatible clients at the ASCOM web site.?

To get started you can use POTH (short for plain old telescope hub) which is provided with the ASCOM installation. You can find this in your Start Menu under ASCOM Platform/Scope-Dome Hubs.

The first time you fire up POTH you will need to choose a telescope driver. You can do this by clicking the Setup button which opens the POTH Setup dialogue (not shown). In the top right corner of the setup dialogue you will see a button titled Choose Scope. Clicking this should display the ASCOM Telescope Chooser dialogue.

If the ASCOM Platform menu or POTH is missing then ASCOM is not correctly installed.

?Select Sphinx from the pulldown list. If Sphinx is not listed then the Sphinx ASCOM driver is not correctly installed.

Assuming Sphinx is available, before clicking OK, click the Properties button to display the Setup dialogue for the Sphinx driver itself.

When the Vixen Sphinx Driver Setup dialogue is first displayed it will have a default IP address displayed and the status will be Unknown with many of the fields shaded grey.

It is almost certain that the default IP address will be incorrect and you will need to change this to match the IP address displayed in the Star Book. You can find this by pressing the Menu button on the Star Book then scrolling ?down to the About STAR BOOK entry in the System Menu. Change the IP address in the Setup dialogue to match that of the Star Book and press the Check button. This will attempt to connect to the Sphinx and retrieve information such as longitude and latitude as well as the firmware version installed on the Star Book.

If your firmware is older than the minimum version support by the Sphinx driver, a message will be displayed and you will need to update the firmware.

Assuming the IP address is correct and a network connection can be establised to the Sphinx, the status should change to Okay and many of the fields will be shaded bright green. Don’t worry about the other settings for now and press Okay.

You should now be back at the POTH Setup so click OK again to return to the main POTH window. Click Connect Scope and the fields at the top of the window showing the position of the telescope should now be updated.

Change the pulldown list from 30° to 5&ddeg; and click one of the compass directions. The telescope should now perform a short slew in the specified direction. If this works as expected then the Sphinx driver is properly configured.

Configuring the Sphinx in other applications is done in a similar manner and if you followed the POTH setup above, ASCOM should already be configured to use the Sphinx driver and it will most likely be a simple matter or telling the client software to use ASCOM. Support for specific clients is outside of the scope of what I support and you should join the ASCOM or Sphinx discussions on YahooGroups for assistance.

If you have have made a donation as thanks for my efforts in providing this driver, you can send me an email directly and I’ll do my best to assist.

History

4.4.0

2006-03-01

Fix: Enhance polling check for position and time to avoid possible rentrancy.

Update: Remove some optional ASCOM settings including Aperture, Diameter, FocalLength and SiteElevation that were only implemented in the driver itself and had no affect on mount operation.

4.3.2

2005-09-04

Fix: Change implementation of CanMoveAxis to remove incompatibility issue with Starry Night Pro.

4.3.1

2005-08-29

Fix: Decimal minutes in RA were not correctly converted in non English versions of Microsoft Windows resulting in a rounding error.

4.3.0

2005-08-25

Update: Remove support for AltAz methods as these are not directly supported by the hardware and are redundant.

Fix: Return value for RA and Dec may not be current due to polling interval.

4.2.74

2005-08-18

Fix: Problem where cached responses get corrupted causing type mismatch errors in some situations.

Fix: Error generated due to mismatch in variable type for Soft Error and Reset Mount options.

Fix: Return value for RA and Dec may always not match actual RA/Dec due to polling interval.

Add: Start converting driver into a telescope hub.

4.2.71

2005-07-11

Add: Soft Errors option to suppress raising error events. This is mostly useful for testing new scripts.

Add: Reset Mount option that allows you to reconnect to the Sphinx without the driver resetting it. This is mostly useful if you lose connectivity and want to reconnect but allow the mount to continue tracking. If the Star Book is in the initial startup state you will need to manually progress to the Chart/GOTO mode.

4.2.70

2005-07-03

Update: Rework setup dialog handling of connection to the Star Book to provide more conservative connection attempt and more accurate error messages.

4.2.68

2005-04-14

Fix: Reworked handling of concurrent network requests to eliminate driver hanging problem.

4.2.66

Release Candidate

2005-03-14

I have experienced a number of unexplained crashes and hangs with the driver in this update. Please let me know if you have any problems!

Add: SyncToAltAz, SyncToCoordinates, SyncToTarget

4.2.65

Release Candidate

2005-01-20

I have experienced a number of unexplained crashes and hangs with the driver in this update. Please let me know if you have any problems!

Update: Major rewrite of network interface code to support setting properties on Star Book and improve reliability of responses.

Fix: PulseGuide was incorrectly using duration in seconds rather than milliseconds(!).

Add: Altitude, Azimuth, SlewToAltAz, SlewToAltAzAsync

Update: Get SiteLongitude and SiteLatitude from Star Book.

Update: Get UTCDate from Star Book.

4.2.30

2004-10-29

Update: Tweak handling of no valid connection to make display of SetupDialog faster.

Moved from Beta to Release status!

4.2.20

2004-10-22

Fix: Home now works correctly.

Add: GuideRateDeclination, GuideRateRightAscension

4.2.15

2004-10-21

Fix: Rework code for network connection to not rely on setup dialog. This completely removes topmost window error and ensures consistent re-entry into telescope object.

4.2.14

2004-10-20

Fix: Remove topmost window error produced in some ASCOM clients. This may cause the setup dialog to appear underneath some badly behaved applications.

4.2.13

2004-10-20

Fix: Check for ability to connect in SetupDialog could return Not Found even if there was no problem.

4.2.12

2004-10-19

Fix: Remove check for ASCOM platform 4.0 for now as it is not publicly available and produces a couple of minor error messages.

4.2.11

2004-10-18

Fix: Look for astro32.dll in same directory as the driver.

4.2.10

2004-10-18

Fix: Corrected problem in installer that caused the driver not to register correctly in many circumstances.

Add: Initialise Star Book state for consistent behaviour.

Add: Set Star Book to maximum slewing rate for faster slews. Star Book automatically steps down as it approaches target.

4.2.9

2004-10-11

Update: Updated installer to create required ASCOM registry key for first time installation. No changes to the driver.

4.2.9

2004-10-10

Add: AbortSlew, CommandBlind, CommandString, PulseGuide, SiteLatitude, SiteLongitude, SlewToCoordinates, SlewToCoordinatesAsync, SlewToTarget, SlewToTargetAsync.

Moved from Alpha to Beta status!

4.2.1

2004-09-03

Update: Revised version number to be consistent with forthcoming ASCOM Platform 4.0

Update: Upgrade driver to ASCOM Platform 4.0.

Update: Replaced sidereal calculation with one based on Meeus.

Fix: Error in N/S and E/W handling on setup form.

Add: ApertureDiameter, ApertureArea, FocalLength.

0.2.1

2004-08-30

Update: Switch installer to Inno Setup. Remove unused files from previous installer.

0.2

2004-08-22

Fix: Fixed problem with some ASCOM clients having a problem connecting immediately after using the Setup dialog.

Add: Allow choice of polling interval.

0.1

2004-08-17

First public release