Документ взят из кэша поисковой машины. Адрес оригинального документа : http://www.astro.louisville.edu/software/xmtel/archive/xmtel-3.1/README Дата изменения: Tue Oct 17 06:49:28 2006 Дата индексирования: Mon Oct 1 20:54:58 2012 Кодировка: Поисковые слова: comet

XmTel
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Copyright 2006 John Kielkopf
Email: kielkopf@louisville.edu
Last update: October 16, 2006

Distributed under the terms of the General Public License (see LICENSE).


XmTel is a telescope control interface designed to to communicate with
Elwood Downey's XEphem. It will also operate as a free-standing program
for control of telescopes that use the NexStar, LX200 or RCOS command sets.

XmTel is accompanied by routines which support the necessary
communication and commands for running Meade Instruments LX200,
Celestron NexStar telescopes. A version for RC Optical Systems
Professional Series mounting is available from the manufacturer.

The functions in protocol.c for the LX200 were developed from a
version of lx200.c written by Ken Shouse (ken@econtrols.com)
with modifications by Carlos Guirao (guirao@eso.org). However,
several changes to that source were made for this application.

The functions in the protocol.c routine for other telescopes provide the
same or improved functionality. The implementation here of
NexStar control remains actively under development. In the present version
we use the hand-controller interface (your computer plugs into the jack on
the handcontroller) in order to take advantage of its built-in features.
Future versions will directly connect to the motor control computers
through the jack on in the mounting.

We expect to have a version soon that will allow fully remote and scripted
control through a daemon process running on a computer at the telescope, while
the graphical user interface will operate on the user's desktop. This mode
will be especially useful for control of telescopes where the communications
suffer latency, or where the network speed and capacity are limited.

While this software is useful for us in operating our telescopes,
it is supplied here without warranty of any kind. Our intention is
to offer a framework and examples that may be tailored to your own
applications. Please test the provided routines with caution and use them
at your own risk. XmTel and its protocols are not yet reliable enough for
remote unsupervised operation.

IMPORTANT for alt-az mode users: the mounting may
acquire a target with an expected sense of rotation leading to
undesirable cord wrap. Allow slack in cabling, and watch
for the possibility that cables may be under stress.

There are no intentional dependencies on XEphem source code
in this software, in order to comply with the terms of the XEphem
Copyright. XmTel runs as an independent program which communicates
with XEphem.


Credits
-------

Many thanks to Elwood Downey for maintaining XEphem
a program of extraordinary quality, and for his help to make the XmTel
controller responsive to XEphem.

Carlos Guirao, Ken Shouse, and Peter McCoullough contributed to the routines
that implement the Meade LX200 command set.

Andre Paquette provided documentation and assistance with the auxiliary command
set for NexStar, and Joe Haberman offered insights into the many features of the
Celestron control system.

Rhodes Hart and Ian Waite of Mt. Kent Observatory at the University of Southern
Queensland have patiently have helped with debugging the software for use with
the NexStar command set.

Dan Azari's remarkable programming skills made an interface to RC Optical
Systems Professional Series mounting possible.



References
----------

"Motif Programming: The Essentials and More", Marshall Brain, (Digital Press,
Burlington, MA, 1992). The book was also re-released by HP Technologies
and may still be available in paper. ISBN 1-55558-089-0.

"Motif Programming Manual", Dan Heller and Paula M. Ferguson, (O'Reilly and
Associates, 1994). This volume (6A of the series) and its companion (6B) are
also available on-line at http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/motif/.

"Astronomical Algorithms", Jean Meeus, (Willman-Bell, Richmond, VA, 1991).
Indispensable!