Setting up a Pulsar Dome (Pt 2)

In part 1 we looked at getting a Pulsar dome to follow movements of the telescope when slewing from within Cartes Du Ciel. This time we’ll build on this foundation and add Maxim DL to the mix.
Recall from part 1 that both EQAscom and Shelyak dome driver have only POTH connected to them. POTH intercepts mount movements and calculates dome movements to match. This is required as the planetarium does not have the ability to connect to a dome.
Maxim DL does have the ability to directly control a dome so by connecting it’s dome output to POTH we can control the dome either via Maxim or the planetarium. POTH acts as a hub enabling us to connect more than one program to a single device. The telescope device EQAscom also acts as a hub and multiple programs can be connected to it, however, by connecting Maxim to POTH we can ensure that the system waits for the dome to finish it’s slew after any telescope move.
All of the dome slaving measurements that we made previously have to be entered in Maxim as well from the Options button on the dome tab of the observatory window. The setup screen specifies inches as the unit of measurement but this is not important provided the same unit is used for all values within this screen. Don’t forget that the dome size is specified here as the radius and not diameter.
The telescope type should be set manually as German Equatorial and the pier side as ASCOM Normal. These setting are available from the observatory setup tab’s Options button.
The dome home azimuth can be set but leave the sync option unticked as the driver will do this for us.
And that’s it! Additional programs can be connected provided you follow the same rules as we’ve adopted here for Cartes Du Ciel and Maxim. If you’ve entered all of the measurements and the home azimuth position accurately then the dome should follow the telescope as it slews and tracks around the sky driven from both Maxim and your planetarium program.