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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

AstroPi3 Scripts revised

  • Posts: 61
  • Thank you received: 12
AstroPi3 script installed just fine on a RPi3 even while running on low power. A couple questions I have:

1) Incorporating the RTC on the stellarmate was straightforward; sudo hwclock -r while connected to internet over LAN showed the time had been set. On AstroPi3, this was not the case- I suppose because it was not native to the AstroPi3 script. Might I request this feature, or did I look over it while reading through the editable options?

2) The purpose of this AstroPi3 machine (on which I am typing this message now, over Firefox!) is to run as a chained slave to the stellarmate, supporting only my Losmandy Gemini mount. I have them both recognizing eachother, and I have indiserver running on startup, but still couldn't connect from the stellarmate. I found that indiweb was not installed, so I have installed it. I'm not fluent with INDI, so I will ask if indiweb is required for my proposed chaining to stellarmate? Would it be a good idea to include indiweb installation in the AstroPi3 script as well?

Great script, very easy to deal with, made my life easier- I *am not* complaining, only bouncing a couple requests off the author, to gauge if they find my suggestions of any value.

Many thanks for this easy workflow- I wish I'd had it two years ago, when I gave up on KStars on Pi for quite a long time. Luckily, stellarmate has me back in the bullpen, troubleshooting as usual.


Best,
Jacob
4 years 6 months ago #43693

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RTC requires a separate module correct? So such a thing would not be good to include and have turned on by default. If it is just a quick set of commands, then it could be included and commented out with instructions. But I don't know anything about it, so I couldn't write it.

I also have no experience with chaining Pis/drivers. I have seen it mentioned online, but I have never tried it. Someone else could answer this much better than I.

As for indiweb, it is definitely installed by the script along with the new program that I made INDI Web Manager App. As INDIWeb is required to make the program work, it needs to be installed. It gets installed to the user's local python programs, rather than to the system python programs because then its more flexible for the user.
4 years 6 months ago #43729

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Actually I did start this script back in October 2017, which was about 2 years ago, but it was not what it is today. At that time it only worked on Ubuntu MATE 16.04, and the features were not as refined as they are now. I've made a number of improvements, especially over the last 2 months.
4 years 6 months ago #43730

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I've one minor problem, conky shows the CPU temperature as 'init C'.
This seems to be down to this line in .conkyrc:
$font${color DimGray}Temp: $alignr ${exec /opt/vc/bin/vcgencmd measure_temp | cut -c6-9} C

vcgencmd is returning 'VCHI initialization failed' and the cut is selecting 'init'

I replaced it with
$font${color DimGray}Temp: $alignr ${exec cat /sys/class/thermal/thermal_zone0/temp | cut --complement -c3-} C

and all is well, although I'm not convinced it is the correct solution.

This is a Pi4 system running Raspbian and I'm using a different default user, not pi. Maybe that makes a difference, the system seems to be resistant to changing that.

Chris
4 years 6 months ago #43794

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I tried changing that a couple of weeks ago to something that I thought would work on more systems. But a bunch of people said it was worse, so I changed it back. I don't know that there is one universal way to get the temperature. Another problem I encountered was that some methods, though they might work on multiple systems, actually were reporting temperature readings of different components. So on one system, one reading could be the temperature of the cpu, but on another, it could be a totally different temperature sensor.
4 years 6 months ago #43798

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Thanks Roy,
Yes, searching for Raspi CPU temperature gives a multitude of ways and for Linux even more. A previous attempt gave a good temperature with the unmodified script, but that was using the default pi user.

Whilst I'm here I suppose that INDI, Kstars and EKOS can be upgraded by running your script again?

Chris
4 years 6 months ago #43801

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Yes Certainly. Running the script again is sure way to update.

Depending on the version of the script you ran, there is also an update icon in the utilities folder. That works great for a number of things, but nothing that the script had to actually build. For example, on Raspbian, PHD2, KStars, and INDI all have to be built by the script, so as of now, the update script won't do that. On Ubuntu MATE, the you can just run the update script from the utilities folder because on those systems, it isn't built by the script, it is installed from the PPA.
4 years 6 months ago #43836

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Thanks, Yes I was thinking of the Raspbian version. Looking forward to a Ubuntu Mate build for the Pi4.
4 years 6 months ago #43840

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Replied by Hy Murveit on topic AstroPi3 Scripts revised

Rob,

I wanted to commend you on these scripts! I ran the setupAstroRaspbianPi.sh script and it work flawlessly. I had previously put together my Raspbian Astro setup manually, but decided to redo it, and wow--what a time saver!!

I hope you don't mind--when I like something I tend to want to make it even better, so here are a few small suggestions (nits really) for you to consider.

1) There are 4 questions that I needed to answer during the course of the script. The script takes a long time to run. Some of the questions were asked after quite a while. When there is a long running script, I have a tendency to go do something else, and the script stalls waiting for my response. Why not front-load all the questions? Ask them at the start and store the answers in variables and use them when the time comes.

2) A few times I really wasn't sure what to answer. E.g. is there a downside for a static IP address? (I wound up saying no static IP, but then realized I wanted it later, and manually executed your instructions). Perhaps add some more doc about the plusses and minuses of the answers, or better, a link.

3) This would take a little ongoing work for you, but why not have the Raspbian script compile the latest release, instead of the bleeding edge? In my case, after the script was done, I ran the following: cd ~/AstroRoot/kstars; git checkout 17dcb543a; cd ../kstars-build; sudo make -j 6 install
Yes, I had to figure out from "git log --oneline" that the commit for 3.3.6 was 17dcb543a. It would be great if there were tags for all the official release, but even in the absence of that, if you were willing, you could update a variable in your script pointing to the commit for each new release.

4) You say "Raspberry Pi 3" a bunch of times in the script. I'll bet pretty soon most people will be running Raspberry Pi 4's. s/3/4/ ?

5) First time I ran it, I reflexively typed "sh setupAstroRaspbianPi.sh". That fails (because it needs to run bash, not sh). Of course, that's my user error, but you probably could check to see if bash is running and if not let people know. (I know you have the #!/bin/bash at the top, but if you do what I did, you don't get bash).

Thanks again for the very nice scripts.
Hy
4 years 6 months ago #43918

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Thanks, some good ideas here. I will look into them soon!

Rob
4 years 6 months ago #43945

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Note that there is one issue with asking questions at the beginning as you said, some of the questions are not asked by the script. Some of them are asked by the installation or configuration of software. So those particular ones could not be asked earlier. But there is no reason I couldn't ask all the ones I ask at the beginning from a programming perspective. They were just asked at the spots they were placed for organizational reasons. If somebody wants to remove some component of the script, it is all in one place.
4 years 6 months ago #43946

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Replied by Tom on topic AstroPi3 Scripts revised

What I can say is all the scripts run flawlessly. Raspbian now is very smooth and stable. No complaint at all in hotspot and cable connections. Thanks.
4 years 6 months ago #43962

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