I upgraded to SGP 4 to try out the new switch support with my Pegasus Astro Powerbox Advance. I tried to open the Equipment Profile Manager in SGP and got the following error message: “Error! Could not load a required dependency! Please make sure ASCOM 6.4 or later is installed. Could not find file c:\Users\DKuchta2\AppData\Local\SequenceGenerator\Pegasus Astro - USB Control Hub.cache.”
I checked and I have ASCOM 6.4 SP1 installed.
-Dan
P.S. - I just checked that file path and instead of the file mentioned in the error, there is a file named “Pegasus Astro Powerbox Switch.cache”. So it appears that SGP is mistaking my Powerbox for a USB Control Hub instead of a Powerbox Advance.
It gets interesting when an external physical device spans several ASCOM logical devices:
telescope/focuser/dome/switch/observing conditions etc. I’m writing one at present to interface to a combined safety and observing conditions Arduino project. They are tricky little devils.
The ASCOM driver has to act as a hub and appear as multiple devices to the outside world. This might not be an SGP issue but a driver one. Have you run the Pegasus driver through the ASCOM conformance checker? That is a good place to start.
To note, a common ASCOM diagnostic misconception is to compare an application, like SGP, with one like NINA, Sharpcap or the device’s own utility, where the former is interfacing through ASCOM and the later ones have decided to not use ASCOM but interface directly to the device through its device driver (API). In those cases, a problem with an ASCOM driver will only affect those apps that use it.
If an application uses the device API, it may have performance benefits but causes considerably more work to write, verify and keep every device interface up to date…the whole reason that ASCOM came into being.