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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Indiserver WiFi option for Synscan Goto?

Thank for the feedback Jon. I wanted the driver to be similar in EQMod. i.e. on startup, it assumes to be in HOME POSITION. For equatorial mounts, that looking at celestial pole with counterweights down. For Alt-Az, that's looking north/south with telescope at horizon level (zero altitude and azimuth). From there you can slew anywhere and then capture & solve and it should be the same as EQMod. But I never tried it yet in this manner as it's been raining here for a week, and setting up a 16" Dob is a chore.
3 years 3 months ago #63808

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It makes sense to do it that way (Park/Home). That does, after all, follow the standard operating procedure set forth by Skywatcher for their SynScan product. They want a North-facing, horizontal scope to start. This way, the expectation is that your first attempt at alignment is at least in the general area of the known star they allow you to seek. So, you have a procedural match with both the other INDI drivers as well as the SynScan product.

And yes, the 10" is enough of an effort to setup and tear down for each session. I can only imagine a 16". And here's me thinking of something smaller as a "next scope." :)

By the way, the indi_synscan_telescope driver has a few holes in it as well, but that is an issue for another time. It isn't terrible, and it works at least as well as the SynScan Android App, though that isn't saying much.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Paul Muller
Last edit: 3 years 3 months ago by Jon Carleton.
3 years 3 months ago #63813

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Jasem,

I have checked out the code from github, and I've given a test to the indi_skywatcherAltAzMount code. Only indoors, since it is cloudy here since weeks. It seems to work OK.
I agree that the driver should assume a home position on startup. In the old code we had a problem that we have two drivers (AltAzMount and AltAzSimple) and they had different behavior. One assumed pointing to polaris the other being horizontal. Either could work, just it should be consistent.
It is true, that a Virtuoso mount by itself (without synscan) assumes to be turned on pointing to the polaris (it learns the Lattitude of the location from that), but when used with the hand controller or synscan app it also assumes to be initially horizontal pointing north. The same as my 250 dobson mount works. So it is OK for the driver to assume horizontal north, as it is consistent the operation of synscan (with which new users is most likely familiar).
The driver starts up unparked, which is welcome by me. Also the old behavioral of on unpark turning to some default location was not so good idea, as new users may get confused by that, seeing the mount turnin somewhere, without any apparent reason.
I have tried the driver with my Virtuoso mount, and it seems to be working consistently. I have tried to instruct it to follow mars (at south), and it seems to point to the right location.
I have never understood the comments in the code like "The altitude degrees in the Virtuoso Alt-Az mount are inverted." because it seems to me, that the big dobson mount works exactly the same way as the Virtuoso mount.

One strange thing I've found is that when I try to control the mount with the "mount control" panel buttons or with joystic, the Az axis turns in the opposite direction. I mean the mount position shown in Kstars is consistent with where the mount is pointing/moving, just the left button turns the mount east->west and the right button turns the mount west->east which is the opposite of what I've expected. The up/down seems "normal": the up button raises the mount, the down button lowers.

I've also noticet that when I disconnect and restart the driver (without turning the mount off/on), after reconnect it reads the coordinates from the mount, and shows the mount in Kstars pointing to the position where it is left, which is a welcome change too.
3 years 3 months ago #63867

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@Gubi:
I agree with all your points. Although, the left being right and right being left didn't bother me, as I rarely move the scope other than slew to position or plate solve. I especially agree that UnPark is a good starting position. On Park it returns nicely to start (North horizon) instead of loosing its mind and dancing a jig.

You were right about indi_simulator_guide. It works fairly well. As I am clouded out too, it was a better option than setting up Stellarium on the TV monitor and trying to focus the guide scope across the room.

@knro:
No joy on testing today. I have been trying to test guiding, but kstars is fighting back:
* Tried to use indi-dbg and kstars-bleeding-dbg with Pi4, but they are not available as source that I can see nor is there an arm64 version yet.
* Kstars won't compile on the Pi4 presently. It barks on config looking for StellarSolver, that is apparently not included in the git download. There is a problem with the git instructions as well. It looks for a URL as git://, that does not work. It downloads fine by replacing the git:// with https://...excepting for the missing StellarSolver code.
* Setup a new nightly-build kstars on a Ubuntu amd64 desktop, but it crashes the moment Ekos connects to a mount. I tried several mount drivers that will connect to my mount and it crashed with each one. I may try wiping Kstars completely and doing a distro install, then compile the new driver and move it in place. I did find that starting the indiserver and connecting with other software works as expected, which seems to point directly at a Kstars issue with this OS.

What I want to accomplish is to find out why guiding isn't moving the scope. There are debug lines in the code that will output the very variable values I am interested in and verify that sections of code are running, but I have not yet found a way to view them. All I want is: System.out.println("VariableName " + someVariable); // but alas, Toto, we're not in Java anymore. So far, turning on the Ekos logs hasn't been very helpful. I am certain that if I took the time figure out how to run the whole mess inside NetBeans or QtCreator, I might be able to extract what I need or at least set breakpoints and know half the answer. And that may be the endgame if I can't just view debug information in Kstars. Presently, I have NetBeans happily doing gits and compiles of indi and syntax checking, but not running code.

@All:
By the way...what part of the planet are you two camped in? I ask as general interest and for time-zone reference. I am in NW Georgia, about 60 miles NW of Atlanta (Bortel 4).
Last edit: 3 years 3 months ago by Jon Carleton.
3 years 3 months ago #63875

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Hoover!! ..um..no....Dyson!!....uh..no....EUREKA!! (yeah, that's the one). For some completely unknown reason I tried the indi_skywatcherAltAzMount and GUIDING WORKED! The setup was the Skywatcher 250P Synscan GOTO mount with running a minimal config of indi_skywatcherAltAzMount and indi_simulator_guide on a Raspberry Pi4 with Raspberry Pi OS for arm64 (Debian 10 [buster]) with KStars Internal Guider. I am reasonably sure I have tried this configuration before and failed. The only change I made was to enable and additional check or two in the debugging section of the Indi Control Panel for SkywatcherAltAz. I am not sure if or why that would have made a difference.

I am going to try again shortly and capture the logs to a file so I can be sure that WORKS means WORKS PROPERLY.
3 years 3 months ago #63878

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That's great to know! For rpi4, do this:
sudo apt-get -y install libstellarsolver-dev

Then KStars should compile OK.
3 years 3 months ago #63879

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Why do you want to compile Kstars? You don't need that to debug indi.
Debugging is somewhat trickey, you should enable debugging in the KStars config panel EKOS tab, and in EKOS on the specific driver. Just chek both "log to client" and "log to file", and open the log file in a terminal widnow with "less" or "tail -f". You will find the file name in the EKOS message window. It is under the ~/.inid/ directory...
For quick dirty debugs instead of System.out.println() you have printf() you know. Quite powerful.You just need to run the indiserver in a terminal window, and set EKOS to "remote host: localhost".
But in the driver source code there is DEBUG(DBG_SCOPE,....). Same power, and goes to the log file. That just works, if you enable "driver debug" checkbox in EKOS.

I'm in Europe, CET time zone. It is almost midnight here now...
3 years 3 months ago #63880

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Glad to see it's working. The strange thing that I noticed is that when using the W/E directional buttons is that the mount "fight back" and tries to over-compensates by returning to the tracking position. Maybe this is a side-effect of the pseudo-tracking code in the driver, I didn't have the time to investigate further.
Last edit: 3 years 3 months ago by Jasem Mutlaq.
3 years 3 months ago #63881

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I wonder what is the difference between indi_simulator_ccd and indi_simulator_guide?
But be careful, on the guide tab in EKOS be sure to select Via: Skywatcher AltAz, otherwise you may not get what you want. You know, there is no ST4 guiding for our mount.
3 years 3 months ago #63883

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Jasem,

I have spent quite a lot of time around that "fight back". It is about that the mount control move must update the tracking target, which is kept in Ra/Dec in one of our driver, and Alt/Az in the other. I have committed some fix around that a few month back, without that it was not working at all, you had to stop tracking before you were able to move the mount, which took away the whole point of "making small adjustments by hand" thing. Still it is not perfect yet.
3 years 3 months ago #63884

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@Gubi:
I want to compile KStars, because when I download the kstars-bleeding for my Ubuntu 20.04 amd64, it segmentation faults on mount connect. The apt install download for the Raspberry Pi OS for arm64 (Rpi4) is old. If nothing else, it gives me better version control across both platforms. I found what I was looking for in the debugging in the Indi Contro Panel->SkywatcharAltAz->Options menu. It gives me what I wanted to see. I tried the Ekos debugging and it wasn't giving me some of the types of debug message I wanted to see (don't ask me which at the moment, I have slept since I looked at the code) weren't showing up. They show completely when I run kstars from a terminal an redirect terminal output to a file.

I have ran into the Via: issue in guiding the first time I used it and wondered what went on, but I sorted it out and made a check in my test setup to avoid that distraction.

@knro:
Thank you for the compile advice. I have not duplicated my success because it was such a surprise that I didn't make note of which machine was running indi and which was running what version of kstars. Rather than have that happen again, I prefer to have everything running the same version so it won't matter. I know it worked once, and seemed to work well...based on the guide simulation.

Tomorrow, I plan to have another end-to-end test and see if I can make it through to guiding. Thank you both for your help!!!
3 years 3 months ago #63888

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Folks, can we get some sort of documentation going for the driver? I can add the screeenshots..etc, but perhaps some introduction and formal documentation lingo about using the driver & mount.
3 years 3 months ago #63909

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