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Meade Telescope Serial Command Protocol Revision L 9 October 2002 Introduction The Meade Telescope Serial Control Protocol utilized to remotely command and control Meade Telescopes. This command language contains a core of common commands supported by all telescopess. Due to different implementation and technological advances the command has extensions that are not supported by all models. The differences are noted in the descriptive text for the commands. Finally, there are a series of new commands for the LX200GPS. These commands are in the LXGPS module.

As an extension to the Telescope Protocol beginning with the LX200GPS, a possible response to any command is ASCII NAK (0x15). Should the telescope control chain be busy and unable to accept an process the command, a NAK will be sent within 10 msec of the receipt of the # terminating the command. In this event, the controller should wait a reasonable interval and retry the command.

Telescope Command Groupings: ------------------ Supported ------------ Command Group Command Designator Symbol AutoStar LX200<16" LX 16" LX200GPS Alignment Query x x x x Alignment A x x x x Active Backlash $B - - - x Reticule Control B x p p x Sync Control C p p p x Distance Bars D x x x x Fan f - - p x Focus Control Commands F p p p x GPS Commands g - - - x Get Information G x x x x Home Position Commands h x - x x Hour H x x x x Initialize Telescope I - - - x Library L p p p x Movement M x p x x High Precision P x x x x Smart Drive Control* $Q x x x x Quit Command Q x x x x Field De-rotator r - - p x Rate Control R p p p x Set Information S x x x x Tracking Frequency T p p p x User Format Control U p x x x Way point (Site) W x x x x Help Commands ? - x x - Notes: Commands accepted by the telescopes are shown in the table above indicated by an x entry. This means that the telescope will accept these commands and respond with a syntactically valid response where required. A "p" indicated only a subset of this command class is supported. Due to the differing implementations of the telescopes, some of the commands may provide static responses or may do nothing in response to the command. See the detailed description of the commands to determine the exact behavior.

Command line example:

from LX200 import * port = LXSerial(debug=True) port.connect("COM1") scope = Telescope(port, "LX200", debug=True) # scope.set_site(1) scope.set_align_mode("P") scope.set_slew_rate(FIND) if scope.determine_model=="LX200GPS": #optional scope.model = LX200GPS scope.auto_align() else: raw_input("do your alignment, then press enter ")

scope.set_pointing_mode(HIGH PRECISION) library = Library(port, scope) library.set_M_object(101) #fine adjust raw_input("center the object, then press enter ")

library.sync_object() # etc... comPort.close()

or, just run >python LX200.py do basic setup in main()

This code is not safe for multi-threaded serial port operation... The author(s) bear no responsibility for equipment, financial, or psychological damages due to use of this code.

From an email exchage: My rule of thumb for choosing between an attribute and a method is that attribute access should not create new objects.

Interesting rule... In NumPy this is not quite the rule followed. Bascially attributes are used when getting or setting intrinsinc "properties" of the array. Attributes are used for properties that are important in defining what an array is. The flags attribute, for example, is an important intrinsinc property of the array but it returns an flags object when it is accessed. The flat attribute also returns a new object (it is arguable whether it should have been a method or an attribute but it is enough of an intrinsic property --- setting the flat attribute sets elements of the array -- that with historical precedence it was left as an attribute).


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