Just in summary I have Raspberry Pi running the astroberry o/s. I purchased a JMI Motofocus Deluxe and it works fine with the little hand controller. But I have not been able to find a driver that will work when using the programs astroDmxCapture or kstars. Both of which support indi. When I went looking on the git site (github.com/indilib/indi/tree/master/drivers/focuser) I did not see anything with the JMI in it. I'm wondering if there is anyone out there with this focuser that has made it work?

This link (www.indilib.org/individuals/devices/focusers/jmi-motofocus.html) made me think the driver should already be available.

Is there a chance that my astorberry o/s needs an update? Or should I be paying the $59 (US) to get Stellermate?

Rob Steele
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I use a JMI motofocus on my C8 with a Shoestring FCUSB. Unless I'm misunderstanding your configuration you will need some sort of focus motor controller to connect to your computer - the motor itself is "dumb" and the handpad just routes power around from the battery to move the motor. I believe the LX200 had a built-in motor controller hence the misunderstanding with the LX200 driver.

Here's a link to the Shoestring site, Unfortunately they're closed til Feb 2.

www.store.shoestringastronomy.com/products_fc.htm

I would definitely be looking to upgrade from Astroberry since it's pretty old. There's a new version on the horizon supposidly but I would recommend Stellarmate, it's very good.

Thanks for your reply. I'll see what additional info I can feed your way to see if I'm on the correct track. I've got a 10" LX200 optical tube mounted on a Celestron CGEM equatorial mount. The nifty JMI MotoFocus Deluxe that I purchased from Farpoint came with a little controller that has a USB i/f and an interface on the top to the focus knob. It works really good as a stand alone motorized focuser. I did manage to connect my PC to the JMI and used a trial version of Sequence Generator Pro to at least move the focuser. (A big step forward). This is using the ASCOM i/f.

My target goal is to run everything on a raspberry pi that I connect in remotely from inside my warm house and avoid the 10 degree F temperatures for January and February.

I tried using FCUSB from indi while using kstars and astroDmxCapture. Neither of which allowed a connection to my focuser. I was just wondering if you had connected from your computer (maybe a pi) via the USB to the focuser and had that work. Did it?

I'll look over the shoestring site and see what I can get from that activity.

Ah, that's what I missed; the Deluxe has a USB port on it, so it obviously has a motor controller built in, so unless you ditch the hand pad, you don't need an FCUSB. So the question becomes, what is the command protocol on the hand controller? It's different than the Shoestring. Did you ask JMI if the unit is INDI compatible? Or is it compatible with any other type of focuser? If not then you're hooped - my motofocus has a cable with a 3.5mm audio jack on it to plug into the Shoestring, looks like yours has an RJ45 cable so unless you get a pinout for another cable the FCUSB is out.

Farpoint has been really unhelpful. They don't reply to e-mail and are difficult to get on the phone. The i/f is very basic and with simple serial sniffer I was able to back out the commands. Something I had asked Farpoint for and they wouldn't part with. At any rate they do not have an indi interface just the ASCOM i/f. I'm still open to the idea of witting myself if I can't find one that works. Or course, then I'd have to start looking into how to build the new functionaliy into indi - which seemed harder to find that I would have thought.

I'll re-ask Farpoint as they may have had personal rollovers. But, apparently the just purchased stuff from JMI and started selling it without knowing much about the innards.

If you have any other thoughts please post them here. Otherwise I'll just keep working on the interface. At least I did find the git library for the focusers so I'm hoping I can find one that has a similiar intrerface.

I purchased a ZWO EAF for my SCT 9.25, I control my equipment using Kstars/Ekos (3.6.2) on a Rpi 4 running Ubuntu 20.04 LTS. I found that the Indi driver was already installed ( I have ZWO ASI cameras). I recently installed the EAF and it seems to be working as it should. I did come across the Linux instructions to add the Indi driver using the usual PPA, but found it was already up to date.

Have you tried an "update" of drivers? Not sure I can offer much more help. Is your brand focuser listed when you set up an equipment profile?

JMI is listed - but not the model I purchased. So unless I'm willing to convert to ASCOM and windows my only path forward looks like to write my own indi driver. If I manage to get that to work I'd be happy to share with the world.

I'm in the same boat with a rotator I just got, except they claimed they had an INDI driver, but it didn't work. THey're working on one, but in the meantime I'm using a simple Python script to operate the rotator. I used the free Device Monitoring Studio from www.hhdsoftware.com to sniff out the protocol under ASCOM then wrote a Python script to operate the rotator. Once you you that working you would still need to build the INDI driver but at least you'd start out knowing the protocol side of things works. Good luck!

This is a great idea for moving forward. Just getting the serial connection working in python might be great first step. If I can get a driver going I'm assuming I be be able to use the autofocus functionality. But, just being able to remotely focus would be really nice. I don't know why if you are paying someone do do the ASCOM i/f the indi driver interface doesn't look much harder.