Newbie here, so maybe I’m doing something very stupid. Under Equipment, selected “PlaneWave Interface 4 (PWI4)” and get Error:
“Check Driver: cannot create object type of progID: ASCOM:PWI4.Telescope”
I naively assumed the L-350 mount could be controlled by SGP via ASCOM.
Brian
ASCOM diagnostics program returned this error:
ASCOM.PWI4.Telescope (both 32 and 64 bit)
This driver is not registered for COM (can’t find ProgID), please re-install.
Hm, may need to reach out to PlaneWave to see if something is up with their driver. Or try reinstalling the driver and potentially even repairing the ASCOM platform if the driver reinstall doesn’t get things going.
If there’s an ASCOM driver it should just work however if it’s 32 or 64bit specific then you may need to use the corresponding SGP version as well. However most telescope drivers seem to handle 32/64 just fine.
Jared
Thank you, Jared. The PWI4 Planewave mount control software changelog indicates they are chasing a lot of ASCOM issues.
Secondly, another L350 mount owner at my remote observatory just told me he cannot get the L350 and PWI4 to work with either CCDautopilot and Voyager.
So i will focus on PlaneWave to try to solve the problem.
Should my Planewave L350 mount prove to be incompatible with SGP, could I ask for a refund?
Jared,
SUCCESS! Following your sage advice, PlaneWave had me download their latest beta PWI4 mount control software. I just got SGP to do an automated sequence (slew to target, don’t center/solve, take 5s exposure, park). SUCCESS!
The only hiccup is that SGP gave me a warning that the scope was not tracking (though I had previously homed the scope and had it tracking on an object). I clicked on the warning to start tracking and all was fine. If you have any insight on that, let me know.
THANKS!!!
Brian
Hi Brian,
I’m the software developer at PlaneWave, and this post was brought to my attention. I’m sorry to hear that the ASCOM driver didn’t work for you the first time around. Is it possible that PWI4 was installed before the ASCOM Platform software was installed? If ASCOM Platform doesn’t exist on the system, I believe the PWI4 ASCOM driver will not register properly. I’ll need to look into this further, and perhaps add a warning in the installer if registration fails.
As you saw from the changelog, I recently made a few changes to improve ASCOM compatibility (and I have even more awaiting an upcoming release), so I certainly recommend running the latest beta version of PWI4 for best compatibility. These fixes may also help the other mount owner who was having trouble with CCDAutoPilot and Voyager. (In fact, a few of these fixes were specifically to address Voyager compatibility). If you’d like to put me in touch with with that customer, I’d be happy to help them ensure that everything is working as expected.
I intend PWI4 to be compatible with any ASCOM-compliant software out there, so if you run into any further issues related to PWI4 please don’t hesitate to get in touch!
Kevin Ivarsen
PlaneWave Instruments
Hi Jared,
FYI - if you have any PlaneWave users on the forum who are having trouble with our software, please don’t hesitate to send them my way and I’ll try to help them out.
Cheers,
Kevin Ivarsen
Software Engineer
PlaneWave Instruments
1 Like
Kevin,
Will do. Thank you!
Jared
Kevin,
Thank you for your VERY quick response.
YESS, I believe I might have installed PWI4 BEFORE ASCOM platform. This would very likely be the cause of my problem, and the reason why the beta24 worked!
Brian