Overview
This guide will cover the steps needed to add devices to your ASCOM installation and make the devices available system wide for use in your favorite image capture software.
What is Ascom Alpaca
Section titled “What is Ascom Alpaca”ASCOM Alpaca is the next standards based implementation for astronomy devices. It focuses on standard http / REST device access compared to the legacy com version. This new capability allows a driver less setup in some cases and can eliminate the need for a direct USB connection.
At Starfront this has the benefit of allowing us to make site wide devices available to all customers in a programmatic way, eliminating the need for file watching and the related issues for a much better experience.
Who is this for
Section titled “Who is this for”This guide is aimed at Windows users who use NINA or Voyager for example but can benefit everyone looking for more reliable access to site provided data.
NINA vs System ASCOM
Section titled “NINA vs System ASCOM”This guide walks through setting up devices manually with ASCOM. NINA does now support Alpaca devices and discovery but their solutions limits users and what can be configured for our setup.
ASCOM Alpaca also does support an automatic discovery mechanism but due to how the Starfront networking is setup and the limitations of the Alpaca protocol for discovery it is not worth the effort to support.
We will always be looking to simplify these steps to make it easy on our customers but until then this is the most robust way of setting up devices.
Devices Supported (links)
Section titled “Devices Supported (links)”Currently supported devices in our ASCOM Alpaca platform:
- SafetyMonitor - Monitor roof status without a file!
- ObservingConditions - Consume the same weather data we use to control the roofs.