Control of a solar telescope via WAN connection

A solar telescope in southern Europe can be configured and controlled through an integrated serial port. The operating university, which already had a large-scale network, was researching a way to make the data gathered by the telescope easily available to institutions scattered all over the world.

The central problem arose in connection with the device-specific Windows software, which, as a communication port, only provided for direct connection through a local COM port.

With respect to the hardware, the configuration was carried out from a Com-Server installed at the telescope. As regards software, COM Port Redirector was used on the respective computers. The RS232 port on the Com-Server then became accessible to all the computers as a local COM port.

To the application