Is there a way to trigger the Capture and Solve alignment operation using PyIndi or does my python script have to rely on DBUS interactions? If so, please elucidate elaborately!

Pardon my confusion, but it seems like PyIndi is great for device manipulation, but only deals with the INDI part of KStars/EKOS/INDI... namely there is no way with PyIndi to interact with the KStars Planetarium GUI or the EKOS GUI tabs such as Alignment, Auto-Focus, or Scheduler. Is that right?

As an add-on question: how does one get a BLOB back from the CCD without using PyIndi? I know how to do it with PyIndi, but using DBUS-based iINDI interface methods getBLOBFile or getBLOBData after a CCD capture return empty elements.

You are correct that pyindi-client cannot interact with KStars/EKOS. INDI and KStars have similar development teams, but they are distinct products. DBUS is the only way to interact with KStars.

I tested the indidbus.py example script (after updating it for Python 3 and other things) and I experienced the same behavior. Slewing worked fine, taking an exposure worked, but getBLOBFile() and getBLOBData() returned empty data.

Thanks for that input.

As an interim kludge, I melded the DBUS interactions with PyIndi to get the blob data.

I suppose the truly DBUS way would be to just let KStars/EKOS (controlled by a DBUS python script) write the FITS or SER data to files as they normally would then - if needed by the script - read the data back in from disk.

I found this post in the forum that describes this exact issue and it sounds like getBLOBFile() is expected to *not* work based on functionality changing in EKOS. It sounds like using pyindi-client to get the blobs is the right way to go.

indilib.org/forum/clients/11022-capture-...-indi-dbus-help.html