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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Is there a way to minimize the Ekos GUI with window controls?

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Ctrl-k works nice to open/close Ekos and Ctrl-i work for the INDI window. I have not found a way to lose the lower portion of the screen as you describe. The dividing bar remained visible and responsive when I tried it.
4 years 2 months ago #47483

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Thanks for the tips on Ctrl keys (both responders). On the issue of lower screen lines lost, I don't lose the dividing bar, but it's often unresponsive when I get it in that state. I think it might have something to do with having reduced the GUI size to minimum. In my experience, both the divider, and especially the right arrow resize GUI control, are really difficult to use. I suspect it's a screen pixel region sensitivity issue (overly tight). Tricky to get just the right position to allow the control to work. Not sure if VNC is also complicating it, but I'll explore this a bit more. In either case, I can work around it...more of a nuisance than a serious issue. Now that I know how to minimize/restore the GUI, I can keep it larger and maybe the whole issue is moot.
4 years 2 months ago #47485

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I can confirm the problem with the dividing bar at the bottom. I don't know what exactly triggers it, but whenever it gets too small, and I then try to enlarge it again, it collapses completely. The only way to see the log then is to grab the handle and pull it more than halfway up the window. At that point the window will switch ENTIRELY to now show the log portion only. To get the EKOS GUI back, I now have to grab the handle on the top and again pull it down >50 % towards the bottom. At that point, the window will switch over again ENTIRELY to the GUI, without showing any log portion.

The only way to get out of this again is to quit KStars entirely and restart.

I meant to leave a comment to that effect a few times already, but always found it too hard to explain and I never explored systematically how to trigger this behavior. However, now that someone else has brought this up, I want to second the need/desire to fix that issue. It can become very inconvenient in the middle of an observation session.
Last edit: 4 years 2 months ago by Jose Corazon.
4 years 2 months ago #47490

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Yes, you can make the output window larger, it is actually quite simple. You need to modify the config.txt file accordingly:

www.raspberrypi.org/documentation/configuration/config-txt/

Two things to do:

1) set the 'hdmi_force_hotplug=1' flag. That forces your Pi4 to output a video signal even if no monitor is attached, as when you are using it with VNC only.

2) set the framebuffer values in the config.txt file to 1920x1080 (or whatever your monitor size is). You can achieve the same by adding a new startup command: xrandr --fb 1920x1080 or using the terminal to issue that command.

Jo
4 years 2 months ago #47491

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The full collapse is normal behavior and I can get the window down to 3 lines of text before that happens. Returning from the collapsed state is also not an issue for me as it returns once I've pulled the handle back up by about 3 lines of text worth of space.
I am running the latest nightly build as of a couple nights ago.
4 years 2 months ago #47492

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I use two desktops on my set up, and INdI will move to one no problem, but if I try and move ekos to a desktop of its own, it takes the whole of Kstars with it, it does not seem as if they can be separated, I would like to have Kstars planetarium page on its own desktop and INdI and ekos control panels on another...!!
4 years 2 months ago #47495

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EKOS can be separated. There is a toggle box in the options section for EKOS called Independent Window.
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4 years 2 months ago #47501

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This is the checkbox to be toggled:

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4 years 2 months ago #47509
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Hi,
I had the same problems with VNC, the screen resolution is set to 1920x1080 but it seems smaller...

I would suggest to try "remote desktop connection", here it works perfectly with my Pi4.
I installed "xrpd" in the Pi4 and "Remmina" as the client in my PC, as explained in this page:
raspberrytips.com/remote-desktop-raspberry-pi/

I add a screenshot, my PC has a 1920x1068 screen resolution, the Pi4 has 2880x1620 :-)

I hope this helps !

4 years 2 months ago #47559
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Related to the last post on increasing display size, in my situation, the Pi4 StellarMate OS main menu choices for "Preferences, Displays" didn't well represent my laptop monitor resolution. I needed to add an additional resolution size to the OS main menu Preferences - Displays selection menu.
Use instructions found at the website below to explore and then add the resolution that best fits your PC/Laptop display resolution:
ubuntuhandbook.org/index.php/2017/04/cus...tion-ubuntu-desktop/
I was able to follow those instructions exactly to add and resize the Pi4 display (and by extension VNC). You might not get an exact match to your desired resolution, but I found that if I entered numbers that I wanted, a nearest best match was returned. I then just configured and used the nearest match resolution, and it worked well. In my case, my laptop prefers a "closest match" window size (no scroll bars) of "1856x1000". Much better overall Pi4/KStars GUI real-estate config. So far, so good! Hope this helps others too.
4 years 2 months ago #47612

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Thanks Rolf. This is great to know. This behaviour has always annoyed me. This does raise the question, however, why isn't separate windows the default behaviour? What is the advantage of the current default behaviour?
4 years 2 months ago #47614

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Sorry to bump such an old thread but I just wanted to point out that I am also getting the same odd collapsing behaviour on the log output text at the bottom.  Trying to resize it at all results in it being forced collapsed with no way to reopen it other than a kstars restart.

The main reason I am posting though is regarding the 'Independant window' option for ekos.  I have enabled this checkbox for both the indi window and ekos.  It works as expected for indi, but the ekos window remains as it was before -- bound to kstars and without the minimize or maximize buttons in the top bar.

NOTE: This is on kstars 3.4.1 which is the version currently on apt (running linux mint).  Its possible this has been fixed in a newer version but not sure.
Last edit: 2 years 4 months ago by Andrew Buck.
2 years 4 months ago #77052

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