EQMac News

It has been quite a while since the last update of EQMac and this has mainly been due to work commitments over the last year or so. I have, however, been working slowly on EQMac v2.0 and now summer has arrived and some holidays, I've been able to test it a bit and hopefully I'll be able to release something soon. The new version of EQMac completely rewrites the low-level mount driver code so that it can support different backends and protocols more easily. This was primarily to add support for WiFi control of the mount using devices such as the Nexus-S, but may also allow control of other types of mounts too in the future. The new driver code will also better handle communication errors - I had not really had a problem with that, but people using long serial cables and in the future WiFi connections may have issues so it is better that the software start to deal with it more gracefully.

I also hope to revamp some other things such as the handling of sync point data so that you can load and save different sets of data depending on location or other factors. I have also been working on a better pointing model based around the mathematical models used in larger telescope setups. I have been trying to get a pointing model working for some time but testing and correcting things is very time consuming. What I may end up doing is releasing the new alignment model stuff so that people can test it out and report back their experiences, but also provide a way to turn it off and use the current nearest-point pointing model for people that need the software to "just work".