Scope Simulator Information

The ASCOM Scope Simulator is an ASCOM executable and driver with support for all of the ASCOM telescope capabilities.  There are two primary uses for this simulator:

  1. it can be used in place of a real telescope when testing higher level ASCOM compliant software.
  2. it can be used to validate test tools that will then be used to validate real telescope drivers.

The various capabilities can be turned on and off in order to simulate any particular telescope type.  For example support for parking, tracking control, pulse guiding, and many other features can all be enabled or disabled.  Also, the basic telescope type can be selected: Alt/Az , normal equatorial, or German equatorial (complete with pier flipping). Lastly, version 1 and version 2 modes are supported.

The follow sections are available in this document:

Handset

Display:

Controls:

Setup Dialog

The Setup Dialog in Basic mode provides for site information, mount type, and optics inputs. A few other useful controls such as controlling Park position are also included:

In Advanced mode, additional features are revealed for controlling what type of scope to simulate.  Items such as being able to set the numbers of axis give a great deal of flexibility.  But one of the nicer features is the Version 1 only checkbox.  In V1 mode the simulator behaves exactly as a V1 driver.

API Notes