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Hi,
I attached a ZWO ASI 120MM-C to a William Optics Spacecat (F4.9) with a 40 mm extension tube in between. The Spacecat has 77.7 mm back focus, excluding 24 mm of rings behind the point indicated in a diagram, and the sensor sits 12.5 mm inside the camera, so I thought I could compensate for the remaining 1,2 mm by adjusting the focus on the Spacecat.
diagram.jpg
However, when I turn on Ekos during daylight, all I see is a white image, which turns dark when I cover the lens with my hand. At night it is completely black, no matter how I adjust the focus.
Did I understand this wrong, or do I need to change some settings in Ekos?
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I am very grateful you put that tutorial together. It helped clear up many points for me 
I would say the most important documentation to start with would be a very detailed account of how to set up the development environment. Especially with the removal of KDESudo and the new look QTCreator. Also a look at what the difference is between native and 3rd party drivers. Am I developing a 3rd party or a native driver ? I have no idea. And which should I produce ?
Then for both client and driver developers a detailed look at how the messaging between them occurs. I don't mean at the protocol level that indiserver implements but at what that means for developers. For a driver what functions get called by a client and when. Can a driver send a message to the client at any time etc etc. So some practical examples with diagrams as to how this all works. For example a diagram of what the server sends to a driver when it connects. When does the does the driver creator function get called ? When does the initproperties function get called etc etc. So a timeline drawing of how the client, indiserver and driver interact during the initial connection, for the interactions during normal operation and finally during shutdown.
I know that the project is very focussed on error free communication, that is obvious from the sample code. However it does not make the sample code easy to read when a large part of the functionality is built into the condition statement of an If Else. Much more readable would be to separate that out. So the functionality sets a local variable to true or false which is then tested. The conditions that have double negatives in them are even words. I know this makes for elegant code that shows off the skill of the programmer as to how much he can get done in a single line, but for a C++ newbie it means 10 minutes deciphering a single line of code !
I would suggest some code with no error checking is published. Not for operational use of course but to make the basic program flow easier to understand. Then a version with error checking included but in the simple manner I describe above, and then the preferred final version. Only then can the student get their head around the flashy code that the best programmers can write
All this could be done in a simple driver that just talks to an arduino or some such device to get and set a single value and display it. Maybe with a switch element as well. Then the student can play with everything they need to know. It's all very well having tutorials that don't talk to a real device but that leaves a steep learning curve as to how to actually do serial communications with the hardware for which it seems Indi has some useful functions.
I was also very confused about where everything gets put in the development environment. I wound up with the source code, a build folder and I was never sure where the installed code I was writing got run from. I wound up with multiple binaries of my driver and didn't have a clue which one was actually being used when I invoked them from EKos to try and debug. I would up always changing a bit of text in my code, like the name of the driver, so I could see from the client what was being actually run.
And that's before we get onto XML files, where they go and if I need one for my driver for Indi to see it.
So a map of where all the files go during the development process on a standard Linux machine and what are being run when would really really help.
Hope this helps, if it sounds confused it's because I am
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Hi all,
I'm trying to get my NiteCrawler up and running using a self-compiled indi installation from git. This is on a raspberry pi 4 running debian arm64 rather than the stock 32-bit packages. I can see from the dmesg log that the serial port gets created at ttyUSB0 with the ftdi_sio driver but no combo of trickery lets me connect – I always receive a timeout when the driver tries to query the firmware version. The same cable and focuser work fine from Windows through ASCOM but I have to power cycle the focuser or else ASCOM also refuses to the connect to the port. I
Using the the version of indi bundled with Kstars 3.5 on my Mac works just fine. I suspect it's a low-level serial issue related to the FTDI driver. Has anyone else bumped in these problems? For the matter, would someone be so kind as to send me their indi config for the NiteCrawler?
Thanks in advance,
Mo
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Hey Tim, thanks for the really good and detailed feedback. We can't get better as a project and community without knowing what we need to fix. I can talk to at least one of the points. The reason it took you so long to get to that information is that I didn't create it until you voiced your issues with the existing documentation. I threw that together basically overnight to try to fill in the gaps, trying to remember my pain points when initially getting into INDI development. Obviously I didn't quite fill in enough of them, but if you are willing, I'd like to work with you make it better. I've been doing C++ development for a long time, so I forget the learning curve of someone new, and having your perspective would be nice as I'm updating the docs.
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Well, I have the same error - running on a Raspberry Pi 4B with 2GB. I installed it on Raspbian/buster with the latest release just yesterday and tried to follow the instructions for installing the Raspi HQ Cam.
indilib.org/raspberry-pi/raspberry-pi-camera.html
But the command
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppaTraceback (most recent call last):
File "/usr/bin/add-apt-repository", line 95, in <module>
sp = SoftwareProperties(options=options)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 109, in __init__
self.reload_sourceslist()
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/softwareproperties/SoftwareProperties.py", line 599, in reload_sourceslist
self.distro.get_sources(self.sourceslist)
File "/usr/lib/python3/dist-packages/aptsources/distro.py", line 93, in get_sources
(self.id, self.codename))
aptsources.distro.NoDistroTemplateException: Error: could not find a distribution template for Raspbian/busterAny hint on how to get this working?
Thank you,
Herwig
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Hello,
If the crashing occurred before applying the Phonon common libraries and QT5 upgrade, normal use is back. To me, that says that while not INDI related, the Phonon isn’t catastrophic in crashing PH2D.
In Linux, a package can be checked for dependencies. It isn’t unrealistic to think LIBINDI 1.8.8 has missing support packages. I have had to augment multiple packages in my past use. Whatever a developer has installed at build time, can creep into a package.
Keeping verbose logging on fills up space quickly when deducing a problem. Be sure verbose and to a file are enabled before each session. INDI, KSTARS, and Drivers used. One of them changed.
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I look forward to seeing the results of your documentation project, it's definitely the right thing to do.
I just had a long chat on the phone with one of my professional programmer friends. He had looked at the documentation in an effort to help me but also found it somewhat sparse and confusing. I really think that once this is sorted the uptake of Indi will be much stronger and that uptake could be exponential. I would also imagine that even more device manufacturers would then be in the position of having to write Indi drivers much as in the past they had to write ASCOM drivers for their product to be accepted into the astronomy community.
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I had this issue only once, now though ever since after a meridian flip it can no longer plate solve. Personally I am creating a new profile at the moment to try and see if it something I did in the set up.
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Thank you Tim for the great detailed feedback. I'm going to put aside $500 to any of the existing developers to work on re-writing the documentation again (for both drivers + clients) using detailed & clear to use instructions with images + text + examples...etc. If anyone is interested in taking this task, please let me know.
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I have this same thing, but on Astroberry, but hopefully see this fix. I also have another problem with the solver I have posted elsewhere, still trying to resolve where it is. Essentially after solving first time when I do a Meridian Flip is never solves the same place. I shift to a different nearby star that is fixed distance away. At the end of the session when it automatically parks is shows 177 deg AZ and 77 deg ALT. When i shutdown the server and restart it come back to the correct 180/90.
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I looked at all of these and all match. This issue has only started in the most recent release of Indi, prior to this I had nothing like this at all. Wouldn't have a clue how to report a bug.
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It's only fair that I should let you all know what I found so difficult.
Setting up the debugging environment. This page indilib.org/develop/developer-manual/163...ent-environment.html is the only one I found on the topic. There are two videos where the action runs at a pace I could barely keep up with. Some explanation of what each step does would have been useful as well. I've never used QTCreator before for example and the mouse flashing around the screen, presumably to point things out is just confusing. It took a while to understand when the mouse stopped and was clicked. Worse, it's not an up to date version of QTCreator and the new version has those buttons in very different places. Add in that on the latest versions of Ubuntu there is no KDESudo command as the page acknowledges, but it puts in a cryptic note that to install I have to run
sudo make -j8 installHow a driver actually works and how to set properties etc. This was a minefield for me. I could not understand any of it for a week or more. The fact I had to call "define" completely passed me by. Fortunately a very kind guy, Rick, sent me a link to this page rickbassham.github.io/indi-dev-tutorials...0-project-setup.html . This was a revelation and things started to make sense. But why did it take me over a month of frustration to find this information. Even then it's not part of the development guide and so not available to all. This page should be made easily available to everyone from the project home page.
There is little or no advice on how client actually interact with drivers. I am still not clear on how this is done. I understand that properties are initially gathered from initProperties function which I guess is called as soon as the driver loads the driver (notice the words "I guess" !), then they are updated from the UpdateProperties function when the client tells the driver to physically connect. But then how do the values of the properties get updated after that ? If my dome moved and my dome gets that info from the hardware how is that published to the client. I assume the client asks for an update from time to time but I can find no explicit references as to how that mechanism works in the indi documentation.
There have been several responses to my questions that I should just look at already existing open source drivers to get answers to my questions. That's probably good advice to those who are very familiar with C++ . This is my first project in C++ . I'm an airline pilot by training though I have written a lot of code in the past, one of which gained me a lifetime achievement award for gliding, that has all been in Pascal (Lazarus) with a little VB. To then have to read someone else's poorly documented code in a language I'm trying to learn at the same time is not very productive of my time. Add to this that different developers have different styles and so scatter code around in different places and it was a real struggle. So this catch all phrase on the forum of "just read the open source drivers, it's all there" is disheartening and discouraging.
Folks should not need to go to the forum to get all this type of information. And I've seen several responses to others along the lines of "why don't you search the forum first before asking this common question again". To this I would make three comments 1) there are around 7000 topics on the forum. Put in a search term and you get swamped with topics that are not what you are after 2) if it is such a commonly asked question maybe it should be in the documentation, 3) I know for those in the know about Indi such repeated questions must be a pain and rather boring but that response is hardly going to endear the platform and community to a new user who is after all just trying to learn.
The website has a fair few broken links on it, or links that go nowhere. Currently when you click on Get INDI | Ubuntu you get a page that just says "Category Ubuntu" indilib.org/get-indi/download-ubuntu.html . This is not helpful and for anyone visiting the website who is maybe interested in trying Indi it gives the impression that the project is not active. I have found other links to the developers manual that give a 404 error. Again this just gives a bad impression.
I have taken quite some time to think about and write the post and I do it in the spirit of wanting Indi to succeed. I have spoke to more than one other person who has been put off by the lack of documentation and so rejected using Indi. One of those was another professional software developer. If I was to suggest anything which would make this project really become popular it would be documentation above development for now. Not documentation only a professional developer can read and understand but documentation someone like me can understand and feel confident with. I'm not a computer newby, I wrote a driver for my dome under ASCOM that took around a week to write and debug. I regularly do observing sessions of 5 or 6 hours and that driver has never failed me yet. So whilst I'm an amateur given the right information even I can write reasonable code.
I hope I haven't offended anyone with this post as I know how much work must have gone into Indi and I do appreciate it.
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Why not to select/recommend a (mock?) device (i.e arduino-based) easily accesible to everybody and build and document an example driver for it ?
This will allow people like me, with programming background but having difficulty swallowing the whole syst linux-indi-c++-hardware-Qt development ecosystem in the short time I have left to live, to get in business faster.
That could by a nice toy to play and learn.
Does something like this already exist?
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This is done automatically if you use the INDI PPA packages. I use this driver almost on daily basis in my observatory, there are no recommended settings per se, it just works.
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