If AP were to introduce a GTOCP4 with an ethernet port instead of or in addition to the serial ports, I would happily order two.

--- In ap-gto@..., Pete Su <pete.su@> wrote:

I could get behind Ethernet.

I find the fascination with RS232 in astronomy circles to be puzzling.
While there are certainly reasons that embedded industrial control
applications still use them (super simple device interfaces) this is
not what we are doing with telescope mounts. Telescope mounts (and
cameras, and all the other devices) use the serial line to send
commands to the mount controller which are then translated into lower
level signal to the motors or whatnot. The only rational reason I can
see to prefer RS232 for this above anything else is cable length, but
even that's a red herring IMHO. Ethernet cable runs can be just as
long and what "everyone" ends up doing anyway is to remote control the
mount using a second computer and TCP/IP, which doesn't even need a
wire.

So yeah, ethernet. It's almost as old as RS-232 anyway (invented in
the 70s, vs. the 60s).

Pete