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:
- it can be used in place of a real telescope when testing higher
level ASCOM compliant software.
- 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 - how to drive the simulator
- Setup dialog - how to set the simulator capabilities
- API notes - interpretations and foibles with respect to
the standard
Handset
Display:
- LST - Local Sidereal Time. (The setup dialog will allow geographic
coordinates to be set.)
- RA - Right Ascension
- Dec - Declination
- Az - Azimuth
- Alt - Altitude
Controls:
- Motion Buttons - Just like a handset
- Track checkbox - Used to turn tracking on and off
- Park and Home buttons - command the scope to these distinguished
positions. Green "LED"'s will light up when in these states.
- Setup - brings up the Setup dialog
- Traffic - brings up an ASCOM traffic window so that incoming ASCOM
commands can be monitored
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:
- The Auto Unpark/Track checkbox allows version 1 type behavior for
backwards compatibility. Version 1 drivers would unpark and track on
connect.
- No Coordinates when Parked allows simulation of those scopes that cannot
return coordinates when parked.
- Disconnect on Park simulates those scopes that go completely away upon
parking.
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
- All V2 calls are implemented. Optional calls will throw errors if
disabled by the Setup Dialog.
- In V1 mode all new V2 calls become
"unimplemented"
- CommandBlind, CommandBool, CommandString will swallow any string.
- CommandBool always returns True.
- CommandString always returns "".
- The optional "Raw" parameter is supported for V2.
- If Raw is set in V1
mode, an error will be thrown.