The Software Bisque Paramount mounts require TheSky for controlling them. In addition, these Bisque mounts are designed to work with TPOINT pointing and tracking correction, so with a Paramount, these instructions are for you.
You might also have another type of mount for which there is no ASCOM standard driver that can be used by ACP, but which is controllable by TheSky. Or you may wish to use TheSky's TPOINT capability with your mount (though ACP's pointing corrector is probably good enough!). In these cases, you can select TheSky Controlled Telescope in ACP's telescope setup (the ASCOM chooser, see the image below), and use TheSky as the controller for the mount. ACP talks to TheSky as though it were an ASCOM standard telescope.
Now, if you have TheSky X Professional 10.2.0 or later or TheSky 6 Professional 6.0.55 or later, set your version up as shown below. We no longer support TheSky 5! The Paramount comes with all of the needed Software Bisque software.
TheSky X only
TheSky X is frequently updated by Software Bisque as a so-called "daily build". TheSky X is a complex program, so it's important to make sure you are on the latest build as a first step to solving telescope/mount control issues. Instructions are on the Software Bisque web site. Typically you must have a customer account on the site in order to download updates.
This is "once-only" setup. After you succeed, you should be able to simply connect to the telescope in ACP and TheSky will automatically start and connect to the telescope.
There are four very important things to do with TheSky X:
Run TheSky X once only in Administrator mode. Find TheSkyX.exe in Program Files (x86) and right click. Choose Run as administrator. Let it come all the way up. Then shut it down. This one-time operation is required for it to register itself with the Windows operating system.
The "Sleep on Minimize" option in TheSky causes TheSky's sidereal time to stop and become inaccurate if you minimize TheSky. This means that, after minimizing TheSky, the next slew can have a huge pointing error or fail to flip when needed. This battery-saving option must be disabled when using TheSky to control your Paramount. In TheSky, Tools menu, Preferences..., Advanced section (icons at the top), disable (uncheck) Sleep on minimize.
It is really important to slow down the cross-hair update in TheSky when it is controlled via its scripting feature (which is how the ASCOM driver works). In TheSky's Telescope menu, Telescope Setup... Mount section, Preferences area, change the Cross hair update interval to at least 500 ms. 1000 ms is better. You aren't using TheSky interactively anyway, and this prevents TheSky from consuming lots of CPU time.
If you are going to use software guiding ("pulse-guiding") as opposed to guiding relays, you'll need to turn on a Enable Tracking Offsets, and Enable PulseGuide. You can try out the new DirectGuide support as well if you wish. These options are defaulted to off because of a quirk in TheSky 6 that does not exist in TheSky X.
TheSky 6 only
Before doing anything else, if you are using TheSky 6 you need to validate that its external control support is available, and that control of the telescope position and coordinates is enabled. You may use TheSky's Simulator telescope for this test or your actual mount. In the end, you should test this with your mount!
This is "once-only" setup. After you succeed, you should be able to simply connect to the telescope in ACP and TheSky will automatically start and connect to the telescope.
Start TheSky.
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Select Help/About TheSky... In the popup window, verify that you are running TheSky 6.00.55 or later. Click OK to close the Help popup.
Select Telescope/Server Settings. In the Remote Client Capabilities area, make sure all options are enabled (check marks in the boxes). Also enable Remote clients use Orchestrate's "Image then slew-to" command with a check mark in its box. For the time being, uncheck (turn off) "Allow Remote Connections". Click OK to close the Server Settings dialog.
Connect TheSky to your telescope (Telescope/Link/Establish). Verify that the crosshair icon appears on the planetarium display at the correct location!
The following test may trigger an Internet Explorer "unsafe" warning because TheSky doesn't tell Windows that it is "safe for scripting". Ignore the error popup, answer Yes. Click this button
to see if TheSky 6's scripting is enabled.
If you get a "Permission Denied" message, you failed to perform step (3) above. If you get another error message like "ActiveX can't create object", you probably don't have TheSky 6.00.55 (or later) running. You cannot continue with ACP until you get this working. Refer to Software Bisque documentation for more info.
You must have completed the above test successfully. The following test may trigger an Internet Explorer "unsafe" warning. Ignore it, answer Yes. Click this button
to show the TheSky ASCOM Driver preferences. Select TheSky 6 (we no longer support TheSky 5). Then, if you are using TPOINT with TheSky, turn on the Inhibit Sync to Protect TPOINT model option.
You must have completed the above test successfully. The following test may trigger an Internet Explorer "unsafe" warning. Ignore it, answer Yes. Click this button
to test for ASCOM controllability of your telescope through TheSky. If the above tests succeeded, this one should succeed as well. If not, review the steps above. You cannot continue with ACP until you get this working.
Virtually all problems with controlling telescopes through TheSky 6 are a result of not having the correct settings in TheSky's Remote Capabilities (step 3).
This is "once-only" setup. After you succeed, you should be able to simply connect to the telescope in ACP and TheSky will automatically start and connect to the telescope. 