10 Micron - Voyager - And Pulse

Timothy_Hutchison · June 2, 2022, 5:41pm

Ciao Aygen:

I have been using Voyager and 10Micron together for quite a while. I also have an MGPBox connected to my systems. However, I actually only use the MGPBox to pulse the mount as a backup way of starting the mount if something goes wrong. Instead, from my DragScript I use the Wake-On-Lan functionality present in the mount to turn the mount on. This is trivial to set up and works easily with DragScript.

If you don’t know what Wake-On-Lan (WOL) is, I will explain. WOL is a signal that can be sent to your computer over the Ethernet connection to wake up the computer. In this case, the computer that we are waking up is the 10Micron Mount. You simply have to configure the computer (your mount) to accept the signal. If the computer (your mount) is off when it receives the signal, it will turn on. Simple!

Here is how I configured my system to use Wake-On-LAN (WOL).

First, you must be communicating with your mount via an Ethernet cable, not WiFi. I find this to be a better solution than using WiFi anyway. If you do not have a switch or a hub available, you can purchase or make an Ethernet Crossover cable to connect directly from the Ethernet port of your computer to the Ethernet port on the mount.

On the 10Micron controller press and select . On this screen, set “Wake On LAN” to “ON”. Make note of the IP Address and the MAC address for your mount from the same screen.

You will need to be able to send the WOL signal to the mount from your Voyager computer. I use a utility called WOLCMD. It can be downloaded here for free.
https://www.depicus.com/wake-on-lan/wake-on-lan-cmd
Install this on a folder on your hard drive. To use it from the command line use the following syntax:

WOLCMD macaddress ipaddress subnet
so, for example:
WOLCMD 038d775a99234d 192.168.1.100 255.255.255.0

Of course, substitute your real values.

This can be called from DragScript using the ExternalScript function.

That’s it! I hope you find this helpful. Feel free to reach out if you have any questions.

Tim.

ps. If your wondering, this completely bypasses the MGPBox. You do not need an MGPBox to use this functionality.

rkas12 · June 2, 2022, 8:14pm

Ciao Timothy,

Thank you very much for chiming in - much appreciated.

I am aware of the built-in WOL functionality in the mount - but was not really sure how to use it through dragscript. Now I got it, thank you.

I will of course give it a try since it seems very straightforward. If I got you well, I just have to download the WOLCMD, replace the values, and then use dragscript external function to send the “magic packet”, right ? Allow me one question though :

A) once your night session is over, would use once again the WOL function to turn off the mount ?

By the way, the “Serial Port String Transport” gives also very good results.

Best regards,
Aygen

ampleamp · June 2, 2022, 8:52pm

Thank you very much Tim, i wasn’t aware of this and having tried your method this evening, it works fine after some persuasion.

First off i had to add ‘C:\WOLCMD’ to the path in ‘edit environmental variables’ so windows recognised wolcmd as a command. I also had to add ‘9’ as a port number at the end to match the port number in MountWizzard so my string looks like - wolcmd 00c0089a716b 192.168.1.199 255.255.255.0 9

Thanks again, very useful

Timothy_Hutchison · June 3, 2022, 2:52am

Aygen - Sending the WOL command will wake up the mount, not turn it off. However, I do have a solution for that as well…

We can send a text string via a TCP/IP packet directly to the mount in the language that the mount uses to communicate. This string will tell the mount to shut down. This is documented by 10Micron in their “Command Protocol” document available on their web site, just in case you wanted to read it for yourself.

The string “:shutdown#” sent to IP port 3490 will cause the mount to shut down. The only thing we need is an easy way to transmit this IP packet. I used a utility called “PacketSender” to do this. It can be called from DragScript as well. Here are the instructions.

Visit https://packetsender.com/ and install the Windows version. The software is free, but you can choose to send a donation to the author.
Install PacketSender and launch the GUI. At the top, define a new packet that we will use to shut down the mount.

Name: ShutdownMount
ASCII: :shutdown#
HEX: (will fill in automatically)
Address: The IP address of your mount
Port: 3490
Resend Delay: 0
Protocol: TCP

Press the button and it will be added to the list below.

In your DragScript, where you want to shut down your mount, put an “External Script” command with the following arguments:

It is very important that you use packetsender.com inside of DragScript. This .com program will run as a command line utility, which is what we want. The “-name ShutdownMount” in the arguments is the name of the packet we defined in step 2.

That’s it! I’ve been using this for 2 years and it works perfectly.

Again, I hope this is helpful. If you have questions, feel free to reach out.
Tim.

rkas12 · June 3, 2022, 5:11am

Hi Timothy,

I don’t know what crossed my mind to use “WOL” to turn off te mount, - thanks for correcting. As a matter of fact, my question wasn’t really well formulated - but never mind - you did answer perfectly and I like your solutions !

I will have them on my “to do list”. Thank you Timothy, very very useful.

Best regards,
Aygen

rkas12 · June 3, 2022, 1:16pm

Timothy,
Just to let you know that your solution works like a charm !
Sincere thanks.
Regards,
Aygen

Fredd · June 11, 2022, 11:42am

Timothy. Thank you all these ideas. WOL worked very well. For some reason, I cannot get shutdown to work and have the following dragscrip messages :
19:00:50 814 - Instruction [3]=> External Script: C:\Program Files\PacketSender\packetsender.exe -name ShutdownMount
19:00:50 837 - Run Action => External Script: C:\Program Files\PacketSender\packetsender.exe -name ShutdownMount
19:00:50 838 - External Script
19:00:50 868 - Starting Executable (packetsender.exe) => C:\Program Files\PacketSender\packetsender.exe
19:00:50 869 - Arguments => -name ShutdownMount
19:00:50 871 - Wait for time of => 1000[ms]
19:00:50 882 - EXEC Output :
Error: Saved packet “ame” not found.
19:00:50 887 - EXEC finished OK
19:00:50 907 - External Script Done

Fredd · June 11, 2022, 11:54am

Found the issue.I had used -name ShutdownMount vs name ShutdownMount.
Thanks

Matt_Balkham · June 20, 2022, 9:24pm

Late to this topic but I have coded a pulse manually using viking/dragonfly with an I/O on wait 1s and I/O off. Works fine to turn on and off the mount as part of my perpetual script without the MGPBox in that loop.

rkas12 · June 20, 2022, 9:36pm

Very cool, Matt. Thanks to Timothy’s solution I am now okay also with my perpetual script. But happy to know further about your coded solution

Voyager · June 20, 2022, 9:39pm

This is exactly what I suggest to 10 micron users.

All the best
Leonardo

Matt_Balkham · June 20, 2022, 9:45pm

Here is a bit of my code

36 - Block: POWERING ON
37 - Update String: STATUS - “POWERING ON”
38 - Block: MOUNT POWER
39 - Remark: Power On Mount
40 - Remark: Viking #2 Relay #3 GM3000HPS POWER
41 - Relay On: 3 - ClientID 2
42 - If Error
43 - Update String: ERROR - “Activate Mount Dragonfly Relay 3”
44 - GoTo Block: UNRECOVERABLE ERROR
45 - Wait Time: 00:02:00 [hh:mm:ss] Interval
46 - Remark: Mount Pulse
47 - Remark: Viking #2 Relay #8 GM3000HPS PULSE
48 - Relay On: 8 - ClientID 2
49 - Wait Time: 00:00:02 [hh:mm:ss] Interval
50 - Remark: Viking #2 Relay #8 GM3000HPS PULSE
51 - Relay Off: 8 - ClientID 2
52 - Wait Time: 00:02:00 [hh:mm:ss] Interval

rkas12 · June 20, 2022, 9:47pm

Thank you for sharing. So, should this question arises in the future, people will have several options on the table.
Best regards and clear skies.

Genoafire · July 1, 2022, 11:24pm

Wow. Thanks so much again Tim. I finally got my PD-10 dome observatory completed and running smoothly in the backyard. I have been using Voyager and finally have that running smoothly just doing the on the fly. I have been trying to research how to automatically shut down the mount for a couple of days now- the last step in not having to get up in the middle of the night when the imaging is completed and turn everything off or just letting it run untill I wake up in the morning. Now hopefully with your information I can get a good nights sleep, lol. In my research I have found a lot of information, but for the layperson such as myself when it comes to computer programming I find it way over my head and just wish that somebody would lay out the actual basic steps. You have achieved that and I cannot thank you enough. In my years of experience in various hobbies and careers you possess a gift that few other educators have.
All the best,
Bob Masters

PANAGIOTIS_GALANOPOU · July 26, 2023, 5:56pm

Hello, can you please tell me how you made it work? I inserted the same numbers and did not open the MGP Box application and it still does not power on the mount

rkas12 · July 27, 2023, 1:10pm

Hello,

Can you elaborate a bit and tell us what you did so that we can better understand where the problem lies ?

Best,
A.

Geremia_Forino · July 30, 2023, 1:44pm

Awaken this post to clarify a small variation to be approached with the new version of Packetsender, to make Tim’s script continue to work, in Arguments : (-n instead of -name), beyond this everything remains as described by Tim.

my thanks to Tim