[Added to List]Add my location via GPS?

[rottielover]

Hi, I'm sorry if this is a dumb question, I just got the trial not to long ago and it's been cloudy till last night and tonight.

I started to play around with Prism just a little last night, enough to connect the hardware. Tonight I'd like to try and get some test images if possible. I have been looking at the tutorial videos, but alias I'm not understanding some things...

Is it possible to update my observatory location by using my GPS unit?

[Hamza Touhami]

Excellent question, I will need to verify with my own GPS to see if it is possible.

[rottielover]

I have a GPS "dongle" type device that plugs into my laptop via USB. I can use it with EQMOD and it will read the GPS coordinates and update my mount location. I was hoping this might be possible for prism.

[Hamza Touhami]

PRISM will read the data and display it as well as update the FITS headers. This is commonly used for asteroid occultations.

[rottielover]

I am sorry to dig up my old thread but I'm back after having purchased Advanced.

My GPS dongle appears to be working in that I am currently showing 9 satellites visible, I can see on the Satellites tab of the GPS window the sky locations, however on the main tab everything put the number of visible sat's is all " ?" question marks.

I'm obviously getting data into Prism from the GPS, but I don't think Prism is able to calculate its position?

I'm using a U-Blox M8/8 USB GPS receiver, here is the link to the one on Amazon:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B071XY4R26/re ... UCb3QKP7JP

[rottielover]

Hey Hamza,

I think this one might be a bug. I used this same GPS to update the location inside EQMOD and it worked. I've used this GPS unit for a couple of other (non-astro) programs as well. As I said above Prism will tell me how many GPS satellites it can see but it will just continue to display "?" in every field and never get's a "fix". I also made sure that no other programs were trying to use the com port at the time.

I am also hopeful (feature suggestion?) that in the future the GPS could be used to sync the computer's clock as well. I occasionally travel to dark sites where there is no internet or even cell phone service (I went out and got my HAM radio license just in case I ran into any trouble at these sites).

Thanks!!

[Hamza Touhami]

I will absolutely add this feature request to the list, thanks

[rottielover]

Much appreciated!!

[jason]

@Hamza Touhami
a variation of this would be to use the ascom provided latitude longitude altitude from a mount (wgs84 )

https://ascom-standards.org/Help/Develo ... escope.htm

My iOptron CEM 60 and az mount pro mount have this built in, celestron also sells gps their mounts use... it's pretty common.

Astro photography tool has this capability...

[Hamza Touhami]

I understand Jason, I have added this "feature" to be implemented/corrected. We keep a list of all the suggestions and implement whenever the developer can. This list contains some really great ideas.

[rottielover]

Update: It's been a long time but I tracked down the answer. This GPS unit is a bit of a pain to configure, and by default is not setup to output what Prism is looking for, so Prism get's confused.

If anyone else out there is using a U-Blox GPS, the fix is to go into the U-Center Software, open View then Messages View. Navigate the tree to UBX-CFG-NMEA, set "main talker ID" = GPS and check the box for Compatibility mode, then click the send button. (you need to be connected to the GPS unit for this). Disconnect and try again in Prism and you should get a fix and be able to auto-update the computer clock if you ran Prism with Admin Privileges.