Remote telescope connections cannot be re-configured

[arsiamons]

Hi,
i am using Stellarium for some time and appreciate the work done!

To visualise the position of the telescope and send target coordinates to i use the delivered telescope plugin with a telescope configured as "external telescope". The configuration dialog does not parse the entered data correctly if opened another time. This also leads into connection problems.

A small Howto to reproduce the bug:
1.) Once the correct connection data is entered - check the 'External Software or a remote computer' radio-button and the 'start/connect at startup' checkbox - the connection can be established manually or by restarting the program. (Why isn't the connection established immediately after hitting 'OK' if is selected?)
2.) After connection is established opening the telescope configuration again results in immediate disconnection. The 'telescope controlled by' is now switched to 'Nothing, just simulate'.
2a) Hitting 'Cancel' the connection can be established manually or with restart just like in 1.
2b) Hitting 'OK' the type of the telescope connection switches to 'virtual' and the connection couldn't be established anymore.

A little glitch: When the telescope ('External Software') is centered (space key) and the telescope server closes the connection, after some seconds stellarium shows garbage (white screen).

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

Which model of the mount you use?

[arsiamons (arsiamons)]

The problem occurs for both linux (tested: 0.10.6) and windows (tested: 0.10.6 and 0.11.0) versions.

The telescope software is custom made, but this bug is independent from the server-side implementation.
Just try this:
1.) Open Telescope Plugin.
2.) Add new Telescope - Settings to choose: 'External software'
3.) Press 'OK'.
4.) Choose the new telescope and click 'configure'.
-> Selection of the telescope type has changed to 'Nothing, just simulate'.

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

1. You are set incorrect port in configuration dialog .
2. Which model of the telescope you use? If you don't use hardware telescope then you need choose 'virtual' telescope

[arsiamons (arsiamons)]

1.) My stellarium server listens on port 10000 as described here: http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Control_%28client-server%29
Sending current pointing coordinates and receiving triggered target coordinates functions without a problem.

2.) The second, even more simplified example demonstrates the problem even if you could not connect to a telescope server! This does not mean that i do not have a telescope hardware to connect to!

[Alexander Wolf (alexwolf)]

About point 1 - it's my mistake, sorry.

Point 2 - different telescopes manufacturers used different commands for control of own telescopes. And more - Stellarium have implementations of telescope control commands not for all models. For example: commands for control to LXD-75 (Autostar) don't compatible with commands for Paramout and Stellarium can't control Ultima 2000 (Celestron).

We can't help you when you don't say about choise of telescope.

[arsiamons (arsiamons)]

To clarify things i write up all the aspects mentioned before seperately:
a) I use a self-developed telescope server where stellarium can connect to - not any of the provided implementations. As described before my telescope(stellarium) server works perfectly fine!
b) As i understand the problem it is completely related to stellarium/the stellarium telescope plugin: Opening the configuration dialog a second time it does not show the entered data correctly - this is what i tried to explain in the third post. In addition this wrong information is saved when clicking 'OK' and destroys the entered data.
This is one major probem.
c) Why the telescope plugin closes the server-client connection (http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Control_%28client-server%29) when opening the connection dialog is also a problem within stellarium as this is completely unrelated to the client-server connection.
d) The next thing i was wondering is that the connection is not established if entering valid connection data, using auto-connection and leaving the configuration dialog with 'OK'.
e) The described glitch: If the telescope server closes the connection with a locked telescope marker leads stellarium into showing a white screen is also completely independent of my telescope server implementation as this behaviour must be taken care for in server-client socket connections.

I mixed these problems in my post before - sorry if i confused you.

[Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab)]

I'm really sorry about that. :( I should have tested it better.

[Bogdan Marinov (daggerstab)]

A fix has been committed as revision 5035 of the trunk branch in Stellarium's Bazaar repository at Launchpad:
http://bazaar.launchpad.net/~stellarium/stellarium/trunk/revision/5035

The bug has been even mentioned on the StellariumScope site. :(
http://www.welshdragoncomputing.ca/index.php?option=com_content&view=category&layout=blog&id=31&Itemid=39
> You will also find that when you access the setup using Stellarium, Stellarium will set the "Telescope controlled by" option to
> 'Nothing'. You will have to reset it to "External software or remote computer".