Wiki

This chart shows the status of testing for the various Meade telescopes. If your scope is not listed, please get involved, help test out the with your scope and send your result to the support group. I'd love to be able to confirm support for all Meade telescopes.

GVP	Telescope	Firmware	Format	Guiding	Guide Rate	Precision	UnPark
	Default		High	Old	No	Settable	No
n/a	LX200 Classic (EMC)	All	Low	Old	No	n/a	Yes
Autostar	Autostar #494	All	High	Old	No	Settable	No
Autostar	Autostar #497	Below 31Ee	High	Old	No	Settable	No
Autostar	Autostar #497	31Ee and up	High	New	No	Settable	No
Autostar	Audiostar	All	High	New	No	Settable	No
LX2001	LX200GPS	All	High	New	Yes	Settable	Yes
????????	LX200-AFC	All	High	Old	No	Settable	Yes
????????	LX600	All	High	Old	No	Settable	Yes
????????	RCX400	All	High	Old	No	Settable	Yes

Legend

The first entry, marked default is the settings that will be applied to all new telescopes.

GVP

This is the product code returned by the handset after connecting, it's in the trace file. The LX200 Classic (or EMC) does not support the GVP command, but I can detect that. And GVP marked as ???????? means that I do not know the product code for that scope. This means that I have to set the default values rather instead of the best options. If you want the features supported for your scope I'm more than happy to work with you to be able to tune the settings.

Format

The coordinate Format of the telescope

	RA	Dec
Low	HH:MM.T	sDD*MM
High	HH:MM:SS	sDD*MM’SS

Guiding

There are two techniques for issuing guide commands.

Old - This uses a series of commands which are to the scope one after another. The timing of the guide correction is carried out by the driver. This means that there may be latency involved which may effect guiding accuracy. New - This uses new commands that are built into the scope, as it is one command, the latency is lower and the scope can operate more fluently. For corrections over a 10 second threshold, the old technique will be used.

Guide Rate Setting

The LX200 scopes allow you to set the guide rate. This is not supported by the LX200 EMC, Autostar and Audiostar based telescopes. For these scopes the guide rate is set at 2/3 sidereal time, which is the default value in the setup dialog. Changing this value will upload the predefined guide rate when the driver makes the first connection to the telescope. For scopes that are not supported, this value does nothing.

Precision

In the driver settings there is an option to change the pointing precision. This can be set via the handset.

Low precision is what's normally used. High precision is when you issue a slew to target command the telescope will first slew to a nearby bright star to help guide the scope in with more accuracy.

The third option in the driver settings - unchanged, means that the driver will not reprogram you hand controller to a specific precision.

Unpark

Autostar 2 based telescopes can unpark without having to physically turn them off. This make them power tools in a permanent setup. However, as I need to be able to support lots of telescopes, I've had to assume that the scope cannot do this by default. The Autostar II based telescopes can all unpark. I'll need to tweak a setting in the driver to enable it for a specific model of scope. If you come across a telescope that isn't unparking please let me have a driver trace log and I'll be able to turn the feature on for future driver builds.