Ok, thanks. I was hoping one could just get the motor and hook it up to Indi Those controllers are crazy expensive....

Yes, you can just get the motor and hook it up to INDI without a Moonlite controller. That's what I do. The Waveshare Stepper Motor HAT (about $20 I think) will drive the Moonlite from INDI. You just need to wire up the HAT with four wires to a DB9 connector, that the Moonlite will plug into, and build and install the driver.

If you do go this route, shoot me a message and I'll dig up the proper wiring of the HAT to the DB9 connector.

Edit:

This assumes you're using a Raspberry Pi. I sometimes assume everyone around here is using a Pi, but I forget that not everyone is.

And if you're using the StellarMate gadget, that will work, but you'll need to put it in a bigger case.

Are you using the Moonlite motor? That is unipolar while most stepper controllers are bipolar. Bipolar motors have 4 wires while unipolar motors have 5 or 6 wires. If you have a non Moonlite motor then this may be irelevant.

Yes, I have the Moonlite CR2 on my Newtonian. The coil windings on the unipolar motors are basically the same as on bipolar, just with a center tap. Ignore the center taps, and treat it like a bipolar, only wiring the ends of the coils, and not the center taps.

I noticed a little annoying property of my NEMA17 and the WaveShare. It may be limited to my install. When I fire up the Pi, the motor "bumps" and locks in position. It apparently has hold voltage. This goes away as soon as you connect with INDI and does not return, so all is well with the world. It also "unlocks" if you unplug the motor, although this is not a good practice, as it requires a reboot to begin working again. Odd that. I would not think that the HAT would care if there was a load or not.

I do not want hold voltage for my uses, as I still use the manual focus some of the time, even when connected to INDI. This did not occur with the Arduino and its HAT (not that I would care to regress).

Yeah, that seems to be a property of the Waveshare HAT, as soon as it is powered up, it applies power to the motor. I know of no way to disable that feature, which is why that's the first thing the driver does when it starts, is to turn off the motor. But if you never run the INDI driver, it will sit there with power applied to the motor the whole time.

I've never tried unplugging the motor while the system is powered on. You're right, you would think the HAT wouldn't care. I'll give that a try later and see if the same happens for me.

I tested unplugging and plugging the motor back in, and the Waveshare HAT continues functioning normally (as expected). So there's something weird going on in your setup.

I'm blaming aliens for the present. I'll test again next clear night (if ever) and see if I can repeat the anomaly. Thanks!

I tested my setup last evening and was able to duplicate the problem of connecting the NEMA17 to the WaveShare board after power-up and it did indeed fail to function. Not an issue, just a point of interest. Otherwise, the system worked flawlessly.

I do have another question, however, since you've been into the fiddly bits. My camera (SVBONY305) will only operate with AstroDMx_Capture software. They are working on an INDI driver, but that's somewhere out there in the future. Meanwhile, switching back and forth from the focus control in INDI (did I mention it works flawlessly!) to the image software to check focus, even in linux with multiple desktops, is vacuous. I need to write a little popup to talk to indiserver. Am I correct in assuming it is a simple matter of a socket connection with some XML packets? And, does indiserver support multiple connections to the default socket? Failing that, I may have to use your driver as a model for a stand-alone socket server that my popup can own. I'm guessing this would preclude using the INDI driver to avoid misdirection. I'd prefer not to do this, but I like the camera and don't see another path...excepting dual monitors...and that gets a little hardware-busy.

Hey Chris - I'm curious about how you home your Moonlite - that is, how you can get it to a known 0-steps state in order to get back to a given starting point eg: for taking flats or to get to a known starting point for a given temperature?

I ask because I've owned both a Moonlite (still do) and now a Optec TCF-S and the Optec has a great feature whereby the controller forces the motor to step in 7000 steps (the range of travel is 7000 fully extended on teh 2" model) so that it knows it must be had up against to zero point and then from there it resets to the last known saved state eg: 3500 steps (or wherever you've saved it) from which point you can then either go into "auto" mode once you've trained the unit against a temperature curve or use software based autofocus as desired.

I have to say it's a far superior solution when it comes to remote imaging - you al always confident that you know where your focuser is in space even if you're hundreds of meter or miles away.

I have looked at the Moonlite and Pegasus versions of drivers and none of them seem to incorporate a reset feature.

Curious if anyone has a different experience.

Not sure if I'm the Chris asked but what I do is run the focuser to the inner stop and make sure that is zero. The focuser seems fine running into the hard stop.

Yes, same - which makes me happy!

My question I guess is, whether either the specific INDI driver OR the focuser module should implement a "re-home" API call/feature that you could, for example, insist is used at each session start-up - along with warming your heaters, cooling your CCDs, scaring off teh pigeons roosting in your truss OTA (hasn't happened yet, but I await the day!

My focus (pardon the pun) is increasingly getting my system to the point where it can run entirely autonomously - all of which requires what I would call an "assume nothing" model whereby unless it has a sensor, to use whatever logic is required to get it into a known/knowable state.