Top of Handbox
Contents
The top of the driver's hand box window contains some useful information and controls. On the upper right the driver version number, type of mount, and mount firmware revision (FW:) are displayed. Clicking the ASCOM button will open a browser window to the ASCOM site, http://www.ascom-standards.org. To the lower left you will find the Clients count. A client is a piece of application software that wishes to communicate with your mount and/or focuser through the ASCOM platform and the Astro-Physics ASCOM V2 Driver. Examples might include your planetarium program or autoguiding software. To the left of the slash is the number of Telescope clients currently connected. To the right of the slash is the number of Focuser clients currently connected. |
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If you ever have a problem with a client application not releasing itself from the driver you can close the driver forcefully by double-clicking the Clients label (see the yellow arrow in Figure 1 to the right). This will bring up the close dialog shown in Figure 2. This method is used to prevent people from accidentally closing the driver by accidentally clicking the close icon, which might leave ASCOM client applications hanging. |
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If mount communications fail the text at the top of the driver hand box will turn yellow with blue text. Also the LST, RA, DEC, AZ, and ALT fields will soon turn blank. If you click the Blue/Yellow text region the hand box will open to the page with Communications errors. |
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Clicking the Expand >>>>>> button makes additional controls visible. The Expand button splits into two buttons: <<< and NEXT >>>. This is shown in the images to the right and below. |
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Clicking <<< shrinks the driver window back down to its default size. Clicking the NEXT >>> button will cycle it through one of the other three pages. You can view all the controls simultaneously by checking Expand window to show all controls. Each of the sections in the driver are explained in the following sections. |
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