--- In xephem@y..., John Perry <perry@j...> wrote:
I was also wondering if there were any plans to support other DSCs
with a serial connection?
The short answer is no, but XEphem sends and receives RA&Dec to and
from its telescope coprocess (lx200xed by default) in simple ASCII
form. So supporting other GOTO or DSC devices would just be a matter
changing the serial protcol being used.
The long answer is also no, but that's because I have grand plans for
a very generic XML-based instrument control protocol. The key idea is
that each instrument will become self-describing which means it
reports all the commands it supports along with possible
interdependencies and constraints. With this info, a GUI program
interrogates the instrument and displays suitable controls on demand.
Or a batch program could control the instrument in an automated
fashion. Since everything is self-describing, nothing changes except
the driver for each new instrument. For example, adding a filter
wheel, or focuser, or weather station or spectrometer would require no
change in the GUI control panel code itself. And you guessed it:
XEphem will offer that panel capability and Clear Sky Institute will
provide sample drivers for a few instruments. What I hope happens then
is the protocol will take off and everybody can join in. This is why
the current Telescope Configuration window in XEphem is so anemic --
it is destined to go away and so is lx200xed. For more details on
this, you are welcome to read my paper at
.
