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Hi Everybody

I could not compile indiprop on my ubuntu 22.04 system. I created a fix and a PR for the original repository, although the github account seems to be inactive since a number of years.
My fork with the fix is here:
github.com/peter-englmaier/indiprop/tree/fix-compile-issues

Does anyone know why the github account is no longer active? Is Indiprop still a useful tool to have?

Best, Peter

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Thanks. Is there a link? I googled it and found that I could install something to set up a Joomla. I just want to access the files. Didn't see that. Who hosts INDI's Joomla?

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Glad you found an issue. . . did you find earlier in the night when I started with the SEP star detection routine? It ran and didn't find any stars even though the sky was clear around Polaris at that point. When I switched to another detection routine, the stars were detected.
.
Looking forward to testing your fixes.
.

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Hi Keith,

Thanks very much for the log, very helpful.

So what happened was that around 21:58 star detection started finding less and less stars until it found no stars. Most likely, clouds came in or something like that. That should have been handled by retries but looks like there's a bug that meant that the restart of Autofocus didn't happen correctly that caused the hanging condition you observed.

What you should have got is this popup...

You could have then retried if the clouds passed or stopped the process. What I would do in this scenario is to take a view on whether it's worth keeping anything or just re-run it all. For example, if you had results for Lum against Red and Green and it failed on Blue, I might manually update Red and Green directly in Filter Offsets (before dismissing the popup) and then run Build Filter Offsets again for Lum and Blue (with 0 runs for Red and Green).

I did think about what you suggest in terms of allowing partial results to be saved and reloaded but I'm not convinced that it would help a great deal. If, for example, you have 3 of 10 AF runs on Blue if I coded up reloading the 3 AF runs you could pick up where you left off but I suspect those 3 runs won't be great as maybe run 3 had partial cloud, who knows. Its cleaner to start again with Blue when the cause of the original problem has been resolved.

Anyway, I've fixed the hanging bug now in my environment and will test it some more over the weekend (assuming I get enough time) before pushing the fix.

Sorry for the inconvenience this bug has caused, and thanks again for the feedback.

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Hello Jasem,
So, the feature doesn't exist yet. I thought I had missed something.
Is it worth opening a feature request, or just wait for the things to go their way ?
Rgrds,

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Hi Bret,

I had a look at the Celestron Indi driver and the Reverse Motion option isn't enabled which is why you don't see it on the Indi panel. So I then did a bit of digging around and it looks like the Focuser doesn't have this function (as far as I can see there is no mention of it in the doco - I'm not 100% on this however).

I then looked at the Celestron Indi driver and it looks like you can enter +/- backlash values where + values operate in what I would call the "standard" way of adding the backlash to an outward move and when that completes moving in by the backlash value as a second move. - values, appear from the code, to operate in the other sense of subtracting the backlash amount from an inward move and when that completes moving out by the backlash value as a second move. I think this is what you are after. So you could try setting Backlash to, say -500 (or whatever value is appropriate for your setup) and set AF Overscan = 0 and see what happens.

I have to say this is the first time I've seen a negative backlash value so I don't know if it would work with Focus at all. Certainly the way Focus currently works with most of the sweep being out->in isn't optimal for this setup as each step will be a backlash move (2 individual steps).

I then thought about this some more and have managed to convince myself that actually it "should" work fine with a positive backlash value (and AF Overscan = 0). So, if we take the example of backlash = 500. Let's say we have a Linear 1 Pass sweep from 22000 to 20000 (11 datapoints), step size = 200. Let's say Focus determines focus point at 21000. So after the sweep Focus will attempt to move the focuser from 20000 to 21000 so it will:
1. Move out from 20000 -> 21500. When complete...
2. Move in from 21500 -> 21000.

However, the Focuser will move the primary outwards (CCW) during 1. but although move 2. is CW its just taking up the slack and NOT moving the primary. So the last primary mirror movement is CCW (which is what you are after).

The issues with this are the usual issues with Backlash which is you need to be exact on the number. The benefit of AF Overscan is that you can just specify a value >= actual backlash and it works. So if you measure backlash 3 times and get 510, 490 and 500 you'd take an average and say backlash=500. With AF Overscan you could set it to say 750 and it will work. With backlash if you set 500 and it's actually 503 then you'll be 3 ticks off and you'll get Focuser creep over time. If your backlash varies with temperature and over time Overscan does a better job than Backlash.

So, in summary, you could try a negative backlash just to see if it works, but I'd suggest measuring actual backlash as accurately as you can and setting either the Backlash field (or AF Overscan) to the actual backlash (e.g. 500) and using that. You might need to periodically check it for creeping values.

Hope this makes sense and helps a bit.

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That's actually a valid concern, I think we should add simple controls in the App to control the video resolution because it is independent from regular capture. Sometimes you cannot control it, but if you can then setting a resolution would be best to get high FPS.

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They're kept in the website Joomla CMS. Unfortunately, we don't have anyone maintaining them at the moment. Volunteers are definitely welcome.

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John,

Finally got out a couple nights ago and ran kstars/ekos with the verbose logging enabled. The system behaved the same way it did when I started this thread. It seemed that "SEP" algorithm wouldn't see any stars, so I switched to the other algorithms to get something to autofocus. Once I got a good Autofocus with my Luminance filter, I then tried to run the Build Filter Offsets Tool (5 runs each filter) and it eventually failed somewhere in the middle of the Green filter. The routine just stopped responding and I had to stop it after it froze. I also noted that the Build Offset Tool doesn't seem to save it's results as it goes so it needs to start from zero each run. If possible, I'd like to see that tool save it's results as it goes along so in case of failure it can pick up where it left off (or start over at users choice)
.
Hopefully these logs can help. Let me know if you need any other information.

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I'm going to try the new Raspberry Pi Connect feature for a while and see how it works. (connect.raspberrypi.com) You need to switch over to Wayland to get it to work.

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Not sure it is directly related, but each time I connect my Atik camera, I get these errors:

2024-05-09T17:56:19: Driver indi_atik_ccd: No IText 'FITS_OBJECT' in Atik 460ex.FITS_HEADER
2024-05-09T17:56:19: Driver indi_atik_ccd: indi_atik_ccd dispatch error: Property TELESCOPE_TYPE is not defined in Atik 460ex.

I do not see any TELESCOPE_TYPE field in the Atik tab of the Indi client. And I have no clue of what king of IText is claimed in the Fits Header.
The camera seems to work correctly, so these errors might be just warnings. In that case, why are they displayed ?

Using the 2.0.7 Indi version. And I got the same behaviour with the previous flavour.

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INDI 1.9.7 is old. Try update to latest one. If you have latest KStars with old INDI there can be additional bugs as they are quite tightly coupled.

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Yes, you can connect to local and remote INDI servers at the same time.
Yes, the client (Ekos) constructs the GUI from the drivers declared properties.

This question may be a little to involved to get a complete answer .. I'd just like some opinions on whether I'm on the right track. Thanks in advance.

I'm building a Skyshed roll-off roof observatory. I have a small form factor PC running my main Indi server (mount, imagers, focuser etc.). In addition I wan another smaller (old raspberry pi or Arduino) that is always powered up and has a minimal Indi server with a driver for things like opening and closing the roof, turning on and off lights, reading temperatures, reading level sensors on my mount etc. I could do this without Indi .. but I like the idea of wrapping all this in the Indo ecosystem so I can have a custom panel in Ekos for all these odds and ends. I'm comfortable with programming and understand the XML message passing "guts" .. but there are a few things I'm not clear about being a Kstars / Ekos newbie: (1) can Ekos connect to multiple Indi servers at once? (2) how do custom Indi control panels get made? Do they automatically "spring into being" based on the XML parameters advertised by the Indi device driver?

Thanks!

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Hello indi people,

I have an old webcam Philips SPC 900 NC I have modified for long exposure using the led control (so called lxled mod).
I was using it for quite some time with indi and was happy about it despite I had to happy a rather ugly patch to the indi-v4l2-ccd driver to make it work. The patch can be found in this thread: www.indilib.org/forum/development/8752-i...borting-capture.html
I recently upgraded indi to 1.9.8 re-applied my patch and installed but then the long exposure mode stopped working when trying to start exposing in php2 (loop mode) I get the message below (translated from french):

Unsupported type or read error when loading FITS file

And the loop stops here. No other error from the console where indiserver runs:

indiserver -v indi_v4l2_ccd indi_simulator_telescope                                                                                                                       ✘ INT  1m 55s
2024-05-16T22:02:21: startup: indiserver -v indi_v4l2_ccd indi_simulator_telescope
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: pid=507965 rfd=6 wfd=6 efd=7
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: pid=507966 rfd=8 wfd=8 efd=9
2024-05-16T22:02:21: listening to port 7624 on fd 5 
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Local server: listening on local domain at: @/tmp/indiserver
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: HaAxis: TrackRate 1, trackingRateDegSec 15.041067 arcsec
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Using default decoder 'Builtin decoder'
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Supported V4L2 formats are:
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Y16                                                                        
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: NV21     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: BA81                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: YU12     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: NV12        
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: YV12     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: BYR2                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: RGB3     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: RGGB                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: GRBG         
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: JPEG  
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: MJPG           
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: RGBO                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: RGBP     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: YVYU                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: YUYV     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: GREY           
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: VYUY     
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: UYVY                                                                       
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: snooping on GPS Simulator.GEOGRAPHIC_COORD
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: snooping on GPS Simulator.TIME_UTC
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: snooping on Dome Simulator.DOME_PARK
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_simulator_telescope: snooping on Dome Simulator.DOME_SHUTTER
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on Telescope Simulator.EQUATORIAL_EOD_COORD
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on Telescope Simulator.EQUATORIAL_COORD
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on Telescope Simulator.TELESCOPE_INFO
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on Telescope Simulator.GEOGRAPHIC_COORD
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on Telescope Simulator.TELESCOPE_PIER_SIDE
2024-05-16T22:02:21: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: snooping on SQM.SKY_QUALITY     
// When I connect using phd2 client
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Client 11: new arrival from 127.0.0.1:36214 - welcome!
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: VIDIOC_CROPCAP: Inappropriate ioctl for device
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder usesoftcrop true
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: VIDIOC_ENUM_FRAMEINTERVALS: Invalid argument
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder  set format: YU12 size 320x240 bpp 8
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder: Colorspace is 8, using default ycbcr encoding and quantization
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder allocBuffers cropping false
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Class User Controls
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Brightness
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
// enable the LXLED mode
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Contrast
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Saturation
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control White Balance, Automatic
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Menu items:
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Indoor (Incandescant Lighting) 
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Outdoor (Sunlight) Mode
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Indoor (Fluorescent Lighting) M
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Manual Mode
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Auto Mode
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Red Balance
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Blue Balance
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Gamma
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Exposure
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Gain, Automatic
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   boolean
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Gain
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Backlight Compensation
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   boolean
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Color Effects
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Menu items:
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   None
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   Black & White
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Band-Stop Filter
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   boolean
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Auto contour
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   boolean
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Contour
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Dynamic Noise Reduction
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Auto White Balance Speed
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Auto White Balance Delay
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   integer
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Save User Settings
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   button
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Restore User Settings
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   button
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Restore Factory Settings
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   button
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Class Flash Controls
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Strobe
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   button
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Control Stop Strobe
2024-05-16T22:02:41: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd:   button
2024-05-16T22:02:42: Client 12: new arrival from 127.0.0.1:36222 - welcome!
// starting exposing in loop with a duration of 0.5s
2024-05-16T22:03:07: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder  reset crop
2024-05-16T22:03:07: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: Decoder allocBuffers cropping false
2024-05-16T22:03:07: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: setlexstate to 2
2024-05-16T22:03:07: Driver indi_v4l2_ccd: setlexstate to 0

No error neither in the INDI console

Reverting to 1.9.7 makes the cam work again. After investigating a bit further I nailed down that particular commit: github.com/indilib/indi/commit/d3e668303...9e0e92f0680c4717e791
As it was introduced very late in this release I tried reverting it and the newly compiled package works nicely. However of course, further commits in 1.9.9 require that change and so I can't upgrade any further.
I took a look at the commit and on its own it just looks like fairly innocent change rename 2 functions and changing some of their arguments...
I have no idea why this messes up with the cam and I'm seeking for help fixing that. If possible I'd rather avoid another ugly patch so I'm more seeking for guidance/answers and better understand the problem, so I can hopefully try to fix it myself in the right way (despite my limited knowledge of C and hardware coding :-/ )

Let me know if specific information would be required

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