README
1Telescope Control Plug-in for Stellarium
2========================================
3(Version 0.1.9; Bogdan Marinov <bogdan.marinov84@gmail.com>)
4
51. INTRODUCTION
6===============
7
8This plug-in allows Stellarium to be used as a software interface for
9controlling a telescope on a computerized mount (a "GoTo telescope"). Up to nine
10connections to separate telescopes can be maintained simultaneously.
11
12Unlike the previous version of the same feature that still is integrated in
13Stellarium, this plug-in offers a more user-friendly graphical interface
14for setting up and configuring a telescope connection.
15
16You can directly control a telescope connected to your computer, or set up
17a connection over a network/the Internet to a telescope connected to another
18computer running the appropriate software. As of version 0.1.9, the plug-in
19supports only the simple Stellarium telescope "drivers" and
20any third party software compatible with Stellarium's telescope protocol
21(e.g. StellariumScope). Support for INDI and/or ASCOM is planned for future
22versions.
23
242. REQUIREMENTS
25===============
26
27As of version 0.1.9, this plug-in IS NOT compatible with Stellarium
28versions 0.10.2 and earlier.
29
30As of version 0.1.9, this plug-in uses embedded telescope servers, which means
31that it no longer needs external telescope server executables. Nevertheless,
32they can be used to override the embedded code.
33
34You can set the path to the servers directory. The default path is:
35
36<user data directory>/servers/
37
38If you want the latest versions, you can check out the source code and build the
39binaries yourself:
40
41https://stellarium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/stellarium/trunk/telescope_server
42
43
443. USING THE PLUG-IN
45====================
46
47Some minimal instructions:
48
49The main Telescope Control window is opened by pressing the "Configure" button
50for the Telescope Control plug-in in the "Plugins" tab of the "Configuration"
51window. It allows you to Add, Configure, Start and Stop (Connect and Disconnect)
52a telescope connection.
53
54Pressing Configure for a running connection will cause it to stop. After
55finishing with the configuration, you will have to restart the connection by
56pressing Start/Connect.
57
58Pointing a telescope to a given object, a star for example, is done by selecting
59that object and pressing [Ctrl+the number of that telescope] (Ctrl+1 to Ctrl+9).
60
61You can edit the "Serial port" drop-down list to add serial ports that are not
62included in the list. For now, this list is empty in the Mac OS X version, so
63the names of serial devices always have to be entered manually.
64
65