R.A. and Dec. Cable Connections
A “Y” cable with 10-pin connectors is included with your mount. Attach the connector from which the two cables emerge to
the GTO Control Panel. Attach the short part of the “Y” cable to the R.A. motor housing and the long part of the cable to the
Dec motor housing. Lock all connectors. Refer to the section above for further information about positioning the cables.
12V Connector
Place the DC power cord (included with your mount) into the DC power plug outlet marked 12V on the GTO Control Panel
and lock in place. Plug the cigarette lighter plug end of the cord into your power source. The acceptable voltage range is 11.5
to 16
.
Suggested power sources include: portable rechargeable battery pack, auto or marine battery, or power supply (filtered
and regulated) for 110 volts AC input with a minimum output of 5 amps at 12V DC.
There is no on-off switch. We recommend that you plug the power cable into the servo box after the keypad controller. To
turn the unit off, simply disconnect the power cable.
Considerations for observatory installations
: We suggest that you disconnect your GTO Control Box from 110V and any
other device (CCD camera, computer, etc) when you are not using your mount so that if your observatory experiences a
power surge or lightening strike, your mount electronics will not be damaged. If you operate your mount remotely, you will
have to leave your power cable connected just as you do for the rest of your electronic equipment. You may want to consider
surge protectors or other protective measures to protect from voltage spikes. A disconnect relay to remove power from both
the 12-volt and ground wire is highly recommended in this situation.
POWER Indicator Light
This LED will remain illuminated when your power source has sufficient output to drive the motors. If the voltage falls below
10.5 volts, the power light will go out and the motors will stop. The keypad controller will not function properly.
If the LED turns yellow, this means that your motors are overloaded, probably due to an unbalanced load on your mount.
Refer to the troubleshooting section of the manual for the solution.
KEYPAD Connector
Attach the 5-pin male connector of the keypad controller and lock in place (push in the knurled ring then turn).
RS-232 Connectors
These serial port connections are used to connect your mount to your PC computer. You must provide your own straight-
through (non-crossing) cables with a 9-pin (DB9) male connector to interface with the GTO panel. We have provided the
locking posts to secure the cable firmly. If your serial cable does not have a 9-pin connector, you can use a gender changer
or adapter to convert it.
When you are controlling the position of the mount with a computer program such as
DigitalSky Voice™
, Software Bisque’s
TheSky™,
or Imaginova’s
Starry Night™,
the microprocessor chip located in the servo drive box will send continual RA and
Dec. coordinate data via the cable connections to your computer. When you use the software to give instruction to slew to a
new object, the commands (RA and Dec. coordinates) are sent to the mount.
We provide two serial port connections on the mount so that you can use two software programs simultaneously. For
instance, you can use PulseGuide for advanced mount control, while using
TheSky
as a planetarium program. The telescope
control functions of TheSky are more limited so using both in a remote application is advantageous. Since the mount will
update the RA and Dec coordinates simultaneously, both programs are continually updated with the data from the mount.
You can watch the screen display of
TheSky t
o see where your telescope is pointing as it slews. This is most effective if you
have a reasonably fast computer with plenty of RAM. If you try this with a 100MHz processor and only 32 MB of RAM, the
response time will be slow since both programs must be continuously updated with position data.
You must have two serial ports available on your computer to take advantage of this feature. If you use a laptop or a newer
desktop computer, you may need to purchase a PCMCIA adapter to gain an additional serial port. Socket Communications
offers adapters for many computers. Check out their web site at
www.socketcom.com
. It is also possible (and much
cheaper) to simply use one or more USB to serial converters, depending on how many available USB connections you have.
One member of the Yahoo, Astro-Physics GTO User’s Group even reported success using a single USB connection on his
computer with a 4 – port USB hub and USB – serial RS232 converters. For a more detailed and up-to-date discussion, go
to the Yahoo ap-gto user’s group (access it through our website) and type “pcmcia” or “usb” into the search box.
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Summary of Contents for Mach1GTO
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