The new driver is based on the .NET platform which is now the preferred underlying technology used by the ASCOM platform. You don’t need to understand anything about that other than to be comfortable knowing that it ensures my driver will be more future resistent regarding new versions of Windows (touch wood!).
There are a couple of fairly minor issues with the current 4.40 driver which I will address but otherwise the changes should go largely unnoticed as I am focussing more on making the backend code more resilient to connection issues caused by dissimilarities between the ASCOM standard and the communication protocol used by Vixen.
The most obvious change is that it will be called ASCOM Star Book driver rather than ASCOM Sphinx driver as it was always a driver for the Star Book hardware rather than the mount itself. I believe it should work with the Star Book provided with the SX and SXD mounts as well as the Star Book type S.
No ETA at present but I thought you might like to know something is happening!
Hi peter i would like to know when you post the new driver for vixen mount
i waiting for it.
thanks
David
Hi David. I haven’t had an opportunity to work on this for some time but it is still on my list of things to do!
The only issue with the current driver is related to non English versions of Windows that use a ‘,’ as a decimal separator rather than ‘.’, so there is no reason to wait for a new driver unless you have that particular problem.
Peter,
I’m getting my Sphinx next week, and already see that I will be looking at controlling it via the Ethernet port.
I looks like your work on the new driver may be going slow. Any chance of getting source code and possibly helping out? I’m a product manager in the US for a Japanese company that sells precision motorized stages (among other things), so I am familiar with the frustrations of Japanese documentation (or lack thereof). I also have colleagues in Japan that might be able to assist with getting information from Japan.
Another thought that has occurred to me is if it possible to actually guide from the PC, using a USB camera and doing the image processing on the PC, avoiding any special guiding hardware.
Thanks for all of your efforts over what looks to be several years.
Best regards,
Clayton Summers
Clayton, people have had varying experiences using the Sphinx for photography. I suggest joining the yahoo group and posing your questions there.
The driver as it stands works fine apart from the bug I mentioned in previous comments so it is a case of “if it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. Thanks for the offer though.