BOO YAH!! I have it working with Sky Safari in NexStar mode. It auto-discovered the ASCOM mount (the simulator but it would have found any ASCOM mount). Nice work using the discovery. To make things interesting, I have ASCOM Remote running on a PC which is on a separate subnet from the WiFi LAN where the Raspberry Pi and the iPad are located. Brilliant, Auto-Detect SkyFi instantly found AlpacaScope on the RPi as a NexStar. ASCOM Remote is on a routable IPV4, going through the WiFI/Router serving the RPi and iPad (Sky Safari).
This is the bomb. I can use any mount that has universal ASCOM PC software like PlaneWave's, Astro-Physics', EQMOD, 10 Micron, even Software Bisque Paramount mounts... and move it around from Sky Safari on my iPad. No software changes on the PC, all off the shelf. Basically the $35 + $10 RAM Raspberry Pi is now an adapter for Sky Safari to connect to a fancy automated observatory running Sequence Generator Pro, ACP, CCD Autopilot, MaxIm DL, etc. On Sky Safari you can watch your automation software move the scope around. Or on a manual observatory with imaging software like SharpCap, TheSky, MaxIm, whatever, you can use SkySafari to manually move and manage the mount.
NICE WORK!!!
I did see one thing.. When I connected the scope in SkySafari, I got a console/shell message from AlpacaScope:
ERRO[0459] Tracking commands (t) are not supported by ASCOM
This may indeed be right depending on what it means. My interpretation of a "tracking command" is one that can start and stop the sidereal tracking on the mount? Is that what you mean? If so then ASCOM definitely supports tracking on/off. I didn't notice AlpacaScope checking CanSetTracking though, so maybe this has a different meaning to you. And I had the simulator set to allow turning sidereal tracking on and off. You can probably clarify. Maybe Sky Safari doesn't know how to start/stop sidereal tracking (I am a doofus with SkySafari though I love it).
To try to answer my own question, I decided to turn off the SiderealTracking in the ASCOM Simulated Scope. Now I get this error in AlpacaScope and it is correct.
ERRO[nnnn] Error talking to scope: 1035: SlewToCoordinatesAsync is not allowed when tracking is False
If I turn on sidereal tracking in the scope's virtual handbox then GoTo works fine in SkySafari.
PPS I started an issue on the GitHub page for this.
Edited by Bob Denny, 20 January 2021 - 08:28 PM.