This is the home of the ASCOM Initiative, a loosely-knit group of astronomy software developers and astronomy device manufacturers devoted to vendor-independent plug-and-play control. ASCOM is a many-to-many and language-independent architecture, supported by most astronomy devices which connect to Windows computers. The diagram below shows how ASCOM differs from traditional astronomy instrument control architectures.
For more information on the ASCOM Initiative, see the About ASCOM section.
Required for all drivers (see notes for Windows 7 and Windows XP!). This will install the Platform on a new PC, and it will also upgrade earlier installations of Platform versions 4, 5, and 6.