What is ASCOM?
A. ASCOM is a piece of Windows software (really a protocol or language, but call it software) that acts as a Universal Translator. Software like PHD can send commands to ASCOM that are generic ASCOM commands. ASCOM drivers then translate these into things specific to each mount. So, PHD doesn’t need to know how to “speake Meade” or “speak Takahashi”, just to “speak ASCOM” and it can control any mount supported by ASCOM. You can download it hereNow about this delay in ASCOM that folks talk about – ASCOM per se doesn’t have any delay – really zero there. Here is the problem though:The handboxes we have in our GOTO systems have small computers. These are often set to read for new commands every, say 250 ms. Now, let’s say you send “start guide”, you wait 50ms and then send “stop guide” commands get sent in a flash, but the little computer there only reads them every 250ms. Not ASCOM’s fault that the onboard computer is slow to respond…
