EQMOD com port/driver madness

[bigfish]

Hello Everyone,

I'm having a crazy time getting EQMOD to recognize the COM port on my laptop. This happened about a month ago when I first started using EQMOD and Stellarium and CDC. I was about to give up then one day it magically started working without me changing any settings or hardware.
I was using it with my Orion Skyview Pro mount for a couple three weeks. Since then I bought a SkyWatcher mount and successfully connected it on the first try. I used it all last night without any issues.
This morning I tried to use a simulation telescope in EQMOD and that's when the problem started. Now I can't connect either mounts and EQMOD says com port "not found". EQMOD also doesn't open when Stellarium opens like it used to. I read some other posts and it always seems to end by someone saying "buy a Cable of some sort". LOL I dont want to buy another cable , this thing was working great last night.
So of the things i tried.
System restore
Different USB cable
Uninstall port driver
Use different USB port
Reinstalled EQMOD
Turned off Windows firewall and anti virus software. The computer is new and working flawlessly, btw.
Any help would be appreciated! This is super frustrating.

[chartram]

Are you connecting directly to your computer or via USB hub? I’ve had issues when I forgot to turn power on to the the hub.

[turboscrew]

You did select COM3 in the SkyWatcher set-up?
I couldn't see what's in the ASCOM window.

[bigfish]

Are you connecting directly to your computer or via USB hub? I’ve had issues when I forgot to turn power on to the the hub.

I'm hooking it up directly to the computer.

[bigfish]

You did select COM3 in the SkyWatcher set-up?
I couldn't see what's in the ASCOM window.

The field is blank in the SkyWatcher COM picker.
And in EQMOD it says COM port not found.

[Gordon]

It’s been a long time since I’ve had problems with com ports but one area that I’ve had to deal with in the past was making sure I had the correct prolific driver. I would try getting the Latest prolific driver from the SkyWatcher website and see if that fixes it.

[SkyHiker]

Is it possible that the planetarium plugin is somehow still configured for the simulator?

I just tried my EQStar Losmandy box with EQMOD (connected through a COM port over USB), switched to the simulator, then back to EQStar and had no problem. I would just check that StellariumScope and the EQMOD Toolbox both show that they are connected to the mount not the simulator.

I presume you had to go through the planetarium plugin so this can't be the issue. I can't reproduce your problem.

[bigfish]

After hours of playing with EQMOD I figured it out!
It was the BAUD setting. By default it was set to 128000.
I changed it to 115200 and it works!

[turboscrew]

After hours of playing with EQMOD I figured it out!
It was the BAUD setting. By default it was set to 128000.
I changed it to 115200 and it works!

Two weird things: the port with bad baud setting is not even visible, and where the heck that 128000 baud came from?
In most cases the default baud rate is 115200 (or 9600).

[Gordon]

Well,

That's a new one!!!

Congratulations for getting it sorted out!

[lostone]

There has been several times with my Skywatcher EQ8 that I have to unplug the USB and plug it back in, than it works. I haven't been able to figure out the problem myself and it's been a recent development.