Good morning,

I would like to assemble or write scripts that will allow me to have pre-automated control over slew rates and orientations of my mount. Ideally, something that allows me to set time-tagged commands. For example, 

  • turn on mount
  • unpark
  • track & observe target at coordinates X for 5 minutes (or 00:00 to 00:05)
  • slew at a rate of Y degrees per seconds to coordinates Z
  • track & observe for 10 minutes
  • etc.
  • park mount
  • power down
Less important, I would like to get the data to be automatically uploaded and saved on a server.

I have been having a look at the object & sequence selection in ekos and observation planner in kstars, and am not sure how to use the advanced features of these things (when I set a time in the observation planner, then wait for that time to arrive, nothing happens; sometimes my ekos mount control will only slew at 1x the sidreal rate despite changing it in multiple places). There seem to be lots of posts that mention or refer to some of these automation techniques; does anyone know where I could find a comprehensive instruction manual or detailed tutorial video on these topics? Ideally, I would be able to do it from command line in a terminal (thus the scripts), but I would like to learn first how to set this up using one or both of the user interfaces that seem dedicated to this goal in kstars. 

I imagine this post will turn into a longer thread. I'll be very grateful to anyone who has the expertise and time to help me out. 

Thank you in advance,
Dave

iOptron GEM28 mount
CMOS Monochrome Camera
Proprietary Camera
Linux Ubuntu

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