Hey Fabrizio, where is the latest version hosted? Because the latest changes I see in master are from months ago.

github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty/tree/master/indi-celestronaux

Hi,
here there is the new version of the driver.

This version adds:
1. Eq support: mount type selection button in mount info tab.
The selection button instructs the alignment subsystem to cope with Altaz or Eq mount.
2. Enabled tracking management, formerly it was disabled.
In INDI mount control tab tacking ON/OFF buttons are enabled.

A few words about the alignment procedure.

1. Power on sync: this is the first manual sync operation.
First, put you scope in some known position with respect to the scope mount. Tipycally by using marks on scope axes. At this point, before version 3.5.0 of Kstars, it was needed to manually compute the celestial RA/DEC coordinates corresponding to this initial scope position. In fact, Kstars < 3.5.0 allowed only to sync to RA/DEC coordinates, a quite unfriendly feature, at least for me. So, I extended Kstars sync capabilities to ALT/AZ and HA/DEC coordinates that are terrestrial frame coordinates indepentent of sidereal time with fixed values for each fixed scope position. This feature is merged in Kstar 3.5.0.
Another added feature to 3.5.0 is coordinates value conversion when changing the coordinate type among RA/DEC, ALT/AZ, HA/DEC.
A sync example for an Eq mount. Point to south meridian with DEC axis perpendicular to polar axis. This position corresponds to HA=0/DEC=0. Open the Mount Control Box (the virtual hand controller of Kstars), select HA/DEC of type radio button, set coordinates values (0,0), click sync button. The first alignment point is stored into the DB of the Alignment subsystem. From this moment the goto commands should no longer produce crazy movements.

2. Plate solver sync
Use plate solving to add all required sync points, manually or automatically guided by Kstars.

3. Finally, since plate solving is probably much more accurate than manual pointing of the first power on sync, it is better to delete the first sync point. Go to Alignment tab of driver indi control panel, set point index to 0, select action delete, click exec.

A lot of forgotten things missing ...

Hi Fabrizio, I read with interest item #2 above (Plate solver sync). I have a CGX-L, and use the standard Celestron Indi driver. Some time ago, I was asking if platesolved sync's were sent to the mount to help build up a pointing model. If I remember right, I was told that the driver couldn't do this (no way to provide the offsets/updates to the mount). What do you mean by "add all required sync points"? Is this just for Kstars/Ekos use, or is it for the mount's internal pointing model (typically provided by N star alignment via HC)?

Do I need to build libindi Ekos from source? Or is there a different approach to add the two files above?

It is just for Kstars/Ekos use. Celestron AUX driver controls scope motors directly, bypassing/ignoring mount HC. All the alignment subsystem software lives exclusively in the celestron AUX driver, without any interaction with mount HC.
"All required sync points" means the number you wish, typically at least 2, in theory the more the better, also better if not too far from the sky region where you are observing. Kstars has a nice tool, the "Mount Model" for generating automatically sync points.

You need to build it from source, just copy the new files into .../indi-3party/indi-celestronaux .

Thanks fabrizio. I'll take a look. For the CGX (and I imagine the CGX-L) we have a USB port of the mount itself that uses the same protocol as the RTS/CTS, just without the actual RTS/CTS. It would be awesome to be able to use that. Also, these mounts will go to HA=6, DEC=90 when then MC_LEVEL_START command is sent to both axes. This would make the first sync point very easy to add for these mounts.

At present, the automatic serial interface detection of the driver (method Handshake) is based on RTSCTS presence:
1. RTSCTS is working -> connected to PC (RJ45) or AUX (RJ12) 19200 baud, AUX protocol.
2. RTSCTS not working -> connected to HC USB/RJ11 9600 baud, encapsulated AUX protocol.
This comes from my setup with a celestron CPC1100 with wired connection, the only I can test.

You have another configuration with an USB serial without RTSCTS using AUX protocol and NOT the encapsulated AUX protocol.
The question is " how to discriminate programmatically an USB serial connected directly to the mount and an USB serial connected to the HC?".
Any suggestion is welcome.

Yeah. I'm doing some testing now to see if I can figure out a way to automatically detect it. Might just need yet another switch on the driver to enable/disable the feature.

As a workaround, you can use CGX with the direct USB cable by treating it as a networked scope and running this command before connecting:

Just replace ttyS0 with your actual serial device name. Then you can connect to the scope as ethernet at 127.0.0.1 for the IP and 9801 as the port.

OK, so I'm a noob on doing this... But I think I've made progress. Here is what I've done.
Raspbain Buster img applied.
Installed Indi library, 3rd party drivers, and Ekos from www.indilib.org/download/raspberry-pi.html
Take Steps 3 from indilib.org/forum/general/210-howto-buil...st-libindi-ekos.html
I placed the 2 new files in /indi-3party/indi-celestronaux and replaced/overwrote the original
I ran cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr/local -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ~/Projects/indi-3rdparty/indi-celestronaux
But I needed to change the directory to ~/Projects/build/indi-caux/indi-3rdparty/indi-celestronaux
ran make, and get the output below.


pi@raspberrypi:~/Projects/build/indi-caux $ make
Scanning dependencies of target indi_celestron_aux
[ 33%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/indi_celestron_aux.dir/auxproto.cpp.o
[ 66%] Building CXX object CMakeFiles/indi_celestron_aux.dir/celestronaux.cpp.o
/home/pi/Projects/build/indi-caux/indi-3rdparty/indi-celestronaux/celestronaux.cpp: In member function ‘virtual bool CelestronAUX::initProperties()’:
/home/pi/Projects/build/indi-caux/indi-3rdparty/indi-celestronaux/celestronaux.cpp:631:9: error: ‘setActiveConnection’ was not declared in this scope
setActiveConnection(tcpConnection);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
/home/pi/Projects/build/indi-caux/indi-3rdparty/indi-celestronaux/celestronaux.cpp:631:9: note: suggested alternative: ‘getActiveConnection’
setActiveConnection(tcpConnection);
^~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
getActiveConnection
make[2]: *** [CMakeFiles/indi_celestron_aux.dir/build.make:76: CMakeFiles/indi_celestron_aux.dir/celestronaux.cpp.o] Error 1
make[1]: *** [CMakeFiles/Makefile2:73: CMakeFiles/indi_celestron_aux.dir/all] Error 2
make: *** [Makefile:130: all] Error 2



So how far off am I?

I think you may be off by 0.0.1. The Astroberry repo is still on INDI 1.8.6 and setActiveConnection was introduced in 1.8.7.

You'll either need to grab 1.8.7 from github or wait for Astroberry to pick up the 1.8.7 release.