diego is friends with Gerry Rozema

Just looking again at the handling of location in the temma driver, I think I've found an issue in the updating of location, and it may be the cause of your issue. It'll take some time today to sift thru and validate, my temma mount is currently not set up, but I'll get it in a spot where I can test this thru the day today and get an update in if this is indeed the issue.

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What does the mount site management panel show for your lattitude when you look at it from the control panel. Tracking for n/s hemisphere is determined by the lattitude being set into the mount.

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Gerry Rozema replied to the topic 'NexDome' in the forum. 7 years ago

diegocolonnello wrote: Last night i updated my Leonardo and installed the NEXDOME driver on INDI and also the NEW version on Windows...

First, when testing INDI, and after having issues with my mount, i decided to test the NEXDOME implementation, it connects to the board, i start homing the dome, the sensor stops the dome on the right place but somehow the board is not sending the message to the driver saying AT HOME!!! .


After homing the dome, if you move it by one degree using the indi control panel, does it then show 'at home' ? If that gets the dome showing 'at home', then you should be able to proceed from there. FYI, once the dome has been calibrated, doesn't matter if it was done from indi, or something else, that calibration is stored in the controller and it wont need to be re-calibrated. The 'AtHome' return is only required for start of calibration with the V1.10 dome firmware. Once it's calibrated, handling of the home sensor is internal to the controller, and it syncs itself properly when the magnet passes the sensor. There is no need to be 'athome' for any of the operattions after that.


There is another firmware update _almost_ ready that changes handling of the magnet detection on the home sensor somewhat in a way that we no longer need to start the calibration from the 'at home' position, but I cant finish testing it today because a storm has rolled in and the dome has wind locks on today

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knro wrote: The coordinates are not saved and will not be saved.

knro wrote: The geographical coordinates are saved and been that way for over a decade.


? Confusing....

Just went and looked in the xml here, they are saved in there.

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knro wrote: The coordinates are not saved and will not be saved..


Is there some good reason to NOT save the co-ordinates ? I can think of many good reasons to save them, and none to leave them out. If somebody is mobile, they have to reset co-ordinates all over the place anyways when they move, but for a permanent installation, it makes no sense to not save co-ordinates.

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Set your simulators to have the same focal length as the real one, then set the sim camera to have the same number and size of pixels as your real one, then save that configuration so when you load your simulator profile, it emulates your real hardware.

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knro wrote: ]

I don't understand the 2nd bit, is dome 2 established already as a device but not 'connected'? you can disconnect any device and connect them in INDI control panel. But perhaps I'm missing something here.


I start kstars, I have a profile labelled 'dome 1' in ekos. When I click on the 'start indi' button, it connects to the computer named 'dome1', and that has an indi server running, with drivers for the EQ8, the ST10, focusser, the dome itself etc. Once I have hit the 'start indi' button (which I believe should be 'connect' not start, it's been running for a long time already on the remote computer), then the converse, the 'stop' to make it disconnect from the indiserver in dome1 is greyed out until I hit the 'disconnect devices', which then sends a 'connect=off' to all the devices out there, which I do NOT want, there are still other programs connected and running against those devices.

Now I want to look at what is in the other observatory. I cant 'disconnect' from the indi server in 'dome1' without causing all the devices to be disconnected from the server, before I can select the other profile and connect to 'dome2', which is a completely different computer, running a whole different set of devices, in a physically separate dome.

I think we should be able to disconnect from one remote indi server, and connect to another, WITHOUT shutting everything down on the first one.

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knro wrote: It is made this way


I have mutiple profiles here too, I would like to be able to remove the simulator profile as I already have a vm set up as a set of simulators to emulate our real domes. Right now, if I start kstars, then open up the ekos stuff, it's always got the simulators selected, which I dont want to use, dont even want on the system here.

The other nitpick in this area, the button labelled 'start indi' actually doesn't start it, it connects to the remote. But once connected, it greys out the 'stop' until I disconnect the devices. I dont want to disconnect the devices, I want to leave them connected and running, there will be other programs using them. I would like to be able to 'disconnect from dome 1' then 'connect to dome2', WITHOUT interrupting all the devices in dome1.

Right now, the only way I can see to accomplish this is to close out kstars completely, without doing the 'disconnect devices' bit, then restart and connect to the other one.

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Gerry Rozema created a new topic ' NexDome' in the forum. 7 years ago

I've added a driver to the tree for the NexDome observatory dome. NexDome is located in the 3rdparty tree, it could have gone into the main branch but, I plan to add firmware update capability for the dome controller which will involve carrying hex files along with the driver, hence the placement into the 3rdparty tree.

NexDome is an affordable 2.2 meter observatory dome. The controller to rotate the dome is shipping, the controller for the shutter is in prototype form and not yet shipping, but should be real soon now.

The dome controller is based on an arduino leonardo, for which I wrote the firmware to control the dome.

We currently have one dome installed here, and will be installing a second one in the very near future as we finish construction on our 'his and hers' observatory setup. We live in a rural area on northern vancouver island, under a fairly dark sky. The domes are located about 420 feet from the house, and we put an optical fiber data link between the dome platforms and the house, so it can all be operated remotely.

NexDome folks took a different tack than most astro companies with regards to automation. When I first met them a little over a year ago, they said the goal was an entirely open source solution so that folks so inclined, can tinker with the setup as much as they want. So, the controllers are based on an arduino leonardo type of board, and the firmware for the controllers is all on github. All the drivers have been made available in source form on github as well.

This is a first release, there will be more updates over time as we add capabilities to the system.

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