stash_old

Perhaps you should read this https://www.element14.com/community/docs/DOC-92642/l/benchmarking-the-raspberry-pi-4-model-b?_ga=2.91698202.1256246369.1561375659-1063832030.1561375659&_gac=1.152376651.1561375659.Cj0KCQjw6cHoBRDdARIsADiTTzb6WWPmx0WeFOVZkgtKYjs_gedi8gNbmwQ2vPxLv_PlA_WwxW2-LroaAhP6EALw_wcB

Think I will wait -  being in IT has taught me is never a good idea to be the first and you get the sugar coated sales pitch first and THEN the bad bits come out. Having said that hope its true and lives up to the hype.  No Emmc or SSD for example except via USB

IMHO Great product management by PI they have just blown away most of the opposition in one move - not hat the spec it great or better than the opposition but the base support is far superior to most other products in the same price range.

Note it is V8 CPU (as the PI3b+) so Ubuntu mate 18.04 need to get its act together for 64bit true V8 PI support - else its 32bit and 16.04 still for Indi - off the shelve images that is.

Perhaps Jasem can do a trade in. Plus Jasem ,IMO,needs to get all of Indi ,not just the server,working on std Raspberry Pi Desktop - and quick before the "other manaufactors" who will no doubt be bringing out their "replies".

Well done PI.

1 minute ago, don4l said:

The second is that it seems too tightly linked to INDI, which makes operation across multiple PC's a bit more difficult (for me?).

I dont disagree on the first part Kstars and Ekos are like conjoined twins something I found annoying especially at first - IMO Kstars and Ekos should operate as independent items but I doubt that will ever happen.

Indiserver will, by default run across 'x' number of devices (Linux), as that's the underlying Indi protocol. At first it might seem confusing but bear with it - it is a simple process once you get past the Device names used from the command line.

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Probably also custom drivers to control that hardware

Probably true but IMHO that defeats the object of "Open Source" - fine if they publish the source as Indi Library(and custom drivers ?) is supposed to be Open Source quote INDI is a standard for astronomical instrumentation control. INDI Library is an Open Source POSIX implementation of theInstrument-Neutral-Device-Interface protocol..

I must admit Indi does seem to be on its way to becoming a commercial product in the same way Linux did - part very commercial,part open source - e.g. Red Hat etc. Can not really decide which side of the fence I sit on.

I did say IMHO 🙂 Quote The term "open source" refers to something people can modify and share because its design is publicly accessible

https://www.firstlightoptics.com/atik-accessories/atikbase-mini-computer-for-astrophotography-capture-control.html

Clue

• Offline EKOS Live mode - To allow the StellaMate web interface running on mobile devices to control the imaging system without requiring access to the internet or VNC.

Nothing wrong with the std Microsoft remote desktop software for remote working.

Install a web cam in your remote obsys so you can see what is really going off.

Plus as Hans says as there will be problems at some stage.

10 minutes ago, Ouroboros said:

With the plate solving methods do you have to be connected to the Internet for it to work or is the star database downloaded to your computer as part of the plate solving application?  

No - there are a number of stand alone packages (most use Linux emulation Cygwin) - even one by someone who posted on your thread LOL. 

They are

1. Astrotortilla

2. All Sky Plate Solve (ASPS)

3. Platesolve2

Plus others.

Most depend on an Ascom connected mount and download std Astrometry net index's depending on your FOV (19gb max if all downloaded). They do NOT use the internet just required reasonable fast SSD/CPU to do platesolving below 30secs.

Suggest you read a few other threads on SGL especially on the difference between "Blind" and "std" platesolving. 🙂

A bit of a mix really but IMO:-

1. Polar align using any method excluding Platesolving. So manually using polar scope and EqAscom as stated above or via something like Sharpcap Pro (£10). Problem is you have to be able to see Polaris 😞

2. Then use Platesolving.

3. If you use EQmod use N point alignment. Platesolving does not solve Slewing accuracy it just gets you to where you want to be and does this with a series of GoTo's. Using N point alignment does allow  good slewing within any triangle created in my experience. Then use ,if required,Platesolve to "dead centre" the object for AP. http://eq-mod.sourceforge.net/eqmod_polaralign.html - If you cant see Polaris Eqmod N point alignment will still work 🙂

Depending on your kit accurate polar alignment will place your slew,IMHO, near (not everytime) and minimise the number of Platesolve generated GoTo's  to be dead centre. 

Another alternative is "Drift Alignment".

1 hour ago, Vox45 said:

As a precaution, I bought 2 microSD cards and, once the configuration was to my licking, I burned the same image on both cards, so if I am in the field and something goes wrong with my OS or INDI I can just switch cards and reboot to a clean setup...

My god someone with common sense - all power to you - wish other people would save themselves problems. Nice one ?

1 hour ago, teoria_del_big_bang said:

Wow, what a discussion this is.

I have only just seen this thread and just read from start to the latest post. My passion at the moment is imaging but love to read threads about any aspect of Astronomy on often read observing threads as well as loads of other aspects of Astronomy.

I am not experienced enough in any form of Astronomy to say what is right or wrong (if there is a wrong?)  but a couple of things I would like to comment on.

• Congratulations to all for having what sounds to be a fairly heated debate at times from people with a passion for their particular aspect of this hobby without verbally abusing anyone for their opinion. That is what a good Forum is about and believe me I have been on countless others (not astronomy related) where the language does get somewhat offensive. 
• But having said that it does appear a very small minority that use NV are being ostracised from where they feel they want to be included (i.e. as observers) for no other reason than the true observers (which I admire greatly and do read many observing reports despite not being my area of interest) feeling it is not really observing.
• If it was the small minority wanting to break away then I would say yes a separate section is required and fine as there is still a large section of members left in the observing section, and they can still know where to find any NV reports if they wish and minorities should be catered for. But until there are many more than 3 or 4 that would post in that section I would say it is not required.
• My thoughts are that often we create too many sub sections and try to get everyone in a defined section. We have some wonderful images in NB showing wonderful colours. But these are not true colours. So as I take images in RGB should I not really want to see NB images in this section ? and probably both would offend somebody imaging in B&W as this is probably more realistic to the true image.

Sorry for going on but I think what I am trying to say is leave the small minority in the section they feel comfortable in. They must only contribute a small percentage of the posts in that section so anyone from the majority that are true purists that accidentally opens up a NV thread will soon realise and can soon close it again and move to the next thread.

And please nobody take offence to my very simplistic view I do not mean to offend any form of this wonderful hobby / obsession.

Steve

 

I would swop the lot - for some clear skies which no matter what form you use (except Radio Astro) we all need - ?

More options/opinions the better - have a lot of spare time thanks to awful UK weather.

Syncing from APT,CDC  or Stellarium just tells EQMOD to add the cord's to its alignment routine - All the software should be issuing the same "sync" command which EQMOD will recognise - so long as you have the correct setting it EQMOD  - "Append to etc"

So you could run CDC,APT Stellarium together it should not matter which software product you sync from - you check the counts in EQMOD which should increase by +1 each time you sync. I use CDC and APT and sync from either with no problems todate ?

You can - but I dont - get APT to "SYNC" automatically (check Platesolve settings) on successful Platesolve - normally I do it manual by hitting the "sync" button in APT Platesolve Window,

If I am wrong Chris S will correct me am I sure. 

Yes is the simple answer I and many others have been doing VA or whatever you want to call it today with DSLR ?

For example using Astrotoaster you have "Live" stack and view EAA images - remember EAA is not all about getting a photographers level image - IMO.

Using Astrotoaster you are able to get a live view on a local or remote PC within a couple of frames depending on the object.

In effect its like doing DSS and looking at the finished image after post processing - only in "near Real Time".

All I do is pre create "Darks"  and a Master Dark select the folder where the images will be placed by ,in my case,APT and let Astrotoaster do its thing - while watching and "tinkering" with adjustments to get something I am satisfied with - quite a simple process. The image appears within 2 or 3 frames and just gets better as the images are stacked. 

Attached is a screen print of an actual image shown - with text added later of course ?

The ideas are not new Nasa even experimented with a large "Gun" ("Verrnie") and even an "Elevator".

The "AltonTowers " rig still depends on Scram jets working - hence why the USA is pouring more money into Sabre than the UK does and all the engine testing is in the US.

As for the "balloon" - I think Helium has far better uses in medicine(MRI scanner) and it drives me mad that we just let it be used for kids/party toy balloon. Oh and before some one say's it - it costs 10,000 times more to create industrial Helium and cannot be produced by chemical reaction.

If SciFi inventions come from films/Cartoons then you just need anti gravity paint "Cavorite" - look up "First Men in the Moon" LOL

On 30/03/2019 at 16:26, wornish said:

So I have now updated my RPi to 18.10

You do realise that 18.04 64bit official Ubuntu Mate version is released but  is only beta1 so is/may not be stable.  Unless you are still using 32bit ?

But if it works for you great ?

Nice tidy set up by the way ?

21 hours ago, cjdawson said:

I think you are completely missing the point of the program.

 

Let me explain "MY" problem in detail.

 

1. Telescope Meade LX-90 EMC with Autostar #497 running firmware 43G.

2. Laptop running Windows 10 Pro with Ascom installed.    Intention is to use PHD2, SGPro and SharpCap.

 

The problem, I have a ublox gps receiver.   At the moment, there is nothing in place to get the data from the GPS receiver to the scope.   Inserting extra things like a Pi Zero, won't change that,   my laptop still needs to get the current date time, to be accutare.   I still need to set the Lat/Long for the scope.

 

The program that I'm writing is to take the information from my GPS and inject it into Ascom. As far as I'm aware, there isn't a program like that.

Ok I have read your "MY" detail again still the same SO LONG as you are already using Ascom Mount Driver to control the Meade nothing I said has changed.

With Ascom(Alpaca) in place on the Laptop and using Ascom Alpaca Remote protocol you can set any property that Ascom uses  REMOTELY (that's where Ascom Alpaca comes in).

Because the Ascom Mount Driver properties are exposed by Alpaca you can set its Time,Lat and Long properties from the PI Zero(w) (or any other device) using REST API.

Therefore anything that can talk RESTAPI (example Node-red but Python and other languages can too) and that can read the GPS data from the Ublox GPS receiver  (so time,lat and long) connected to a PI Zero(for example) can set the Long,Lat and Time on the Windows Laptop Ascom Mount Driver. This would work for ANY Ascom Mount Driver that supports the Ascom protocol correctly.

Before your thread/post was created I had,on another project, already set the Latitude setting on a Ascom Mount Driver,running on Windows 10, from Ubuntu Linux AND Raspbian Linux. Admittedly it was just using the Ascom Mount Simulator.

See Attached pictures showing simple Node-red set up ,Ascom Profile display and Ascom Set up details - GPS-2/3 are showing details after the Node-red flow(on RPI3B in this case) has set the new Site Latitude value.

The above all assumes your Meade mount already uses (or can) a Ascom Mount Driver which supports all the std Ascom mount properties- if not then ignore all ?

It was only just a suggestion so good luck with your project ?

19 hours ago, cjdawson said:

Plug what into a Pi Zero W?      I think there's a load of context missing that would be needed for this to make sense.

Any USB GPS device - e.g. u-blox USB GPS which works very well . Just pointing out that you dont need windows to produce a GPSD service and GPSD (a Linux Daemon) on Linux has been around for decades.

You can even pick it up on Windows(or any other OS ) via Node-Red / MQTT (IOT approach) (https://www.npmjs.com/package/node-red-contrib-gpsd) so you could produce something in a matter of hours(or less). Plus using Alpaca Ascom you can produce/interface with any Ascom driven device that accesses the GPS property - No need to reinvent the wheel. ?

Handy if you have more than one device OR ,as with most USB GPS devices ,they need to be outside and have been running for a while to get a fix - so could be left permanently running in an Obsys as the Pi Zero (w) uses very little power when compared to a Laptop/Desktop etc.

Or you could just plug it into a Pi Zero W and use GPSD to distribute GPS - works great with Linux but cant remember if Windows (any) has access to GPSD.

6 hours ago, discardedastro said:

Not well explained ?

So indiserver running on the box doing all the hardware interface stuff is fine and great, and works well. What I basically want is the equivalent for Ekos - the alignment, focusing, guiding, etc state of "where am I pointing/what am I imaging" and observatory control. Ekos is great but complicated, and if KStars crashes I lose all the state in it. Plus I have no way to remotely get at it other than VNC. Ideally I'd have two Ekos clients seeing the same state so I can have a KStars/Ekos session on my PC in the house and see the same sequencing etc information as I would on an KStars/Ekos session out by the scope on the PC.

Going to spend an afternoon faffing with udev to get everything static and that should make life a whole bunch nicer, either way!

Just to add a foot note - I had another look at Indigo (1yr since last look) and I must say it has come on a long way - Indigo Sky is what Indi should have produced - install on SD/boot/sets up AP/Does what it says on the can - works (on RPI3b+ as its Raspain based) - and free. Impressed so far but early days.

So maybe that might help in your quest but it does not appear as sophisticated as Ekos IMO  - it does use HTTP to provide a control panel but its clean  and simple to use IMO.  

2 hours ago, alacant said:

take-50-exposures

This is not as bad as you think I have done that  passing parameters to DSLR Gphoto2 command line program(app) on Linux to do imaging (even from Windows) is not a problem. Granted I would not like to do CCD/CMOS scripts ,even if it was possible(?) as they call SDK provided interfaces - but never tried it. Its all just Rock and Roll no matter what new names are used ?

if you were used to Linux/Unix BEFORE Gui front end's than it is what you had to do - hence why Unix/Linux has so many parameters for command line calls but yes messy ?

1 hour ago, discardedastro said:

Not well explained ?

So indiserver running on the box doing all the hardware interface stuff is fine and great, and works well. What I basically want is the equivalent for Ekos - the alignment, focusing, guiding, etc state of "where am I pointing/what am I imaging" and observatory control. Ekos is great but complicated, and if KStars crashes I lose all the state in it. Plus I have no way to remotely get at it other than VNC. Ideally I'd have two Ekos clients seeing the same state so I can have a KStars/Ekos session on my PC in the house and see the same sequencing etc information as I would on an KStars/Ekos session out by the scope on the PC.

Going to spend an afternoon faffing with udev to get everything static and that should make life a whole bunch nicer, either way!

You could of course keep Indiserver (1 or more) running hardware stuff. Run Ekos/Stars concurrently - on the "hardware Indiserver pc"s and again on the laptop in the warm room. Indi is client / server system and so allows for one than one Client (where ever they maybe) to be connected to itself. Never tried that - but have done Indiserver on 2 or more PC's (e.g. 2 x RPI Indiserver chained ,1 x fast Laptop where Kstars/Ekos resides - where I could but never have need to see Kstars/Ekos - via reverse VNC from Obsys to Warm house laptop). IMO I wouldn't bother just VNC from the "Hardware Indiserver" to the "House PC" if you want to see what Kstars/Ekos is up to.

You do have a valid point as Kstars/Ekos are like twins if one or more becomes "ill" that normally means a reload for the PC they reside on. But he Indiserver will continue it doesn't care about clients "dying" and when the Client reconnects it should be able to continue (ok mostly) where it left off.. Hopefully  they will get more stable or resilient.

If you find a solution/idea please let us all know - seriously I guess many,including me, have the same problem or thoughts as you.

Oh forgot to add to can of course use DSUB or even write your Python interface (sadly only on Linux - correct me if I am wrong someone!) as the SWIG API to Indi API exists.

Bu as someone else as said wha is he point of "reinventing the wheel"

33 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

I'm going to see what I can do with udev rules to at least get all my USB devices assigned to their tty filenames consistently, and then I can configure everything to use those static assignments. I also have issues with gpsd eating other USB devices even though I've told it not to.

The only way to go  and to be fair Windows COM devices are just the same nightmare - especially for those who are not perm set up.

36 minutes ago, discardedastro said:

The one bit that doesn't quite sit right with me is control/state - I don't like having a desktop application/GUI managing all the state about my capture session and observatory. I'd much rather have a server manage all of that (and do so in a careful, robust fashion) and keep the GUI complexity out of it. Then again, INDI is an open protocol, so maybe I'll have a stab at something...

Dont really understand that statement ( me thick)  - A web server manager is available but that is still a GUI interface ,as opposed to a Command line which you can have even if you dont have remote devices - just use "Remote in Indi devices" as 127.0.0.1 then you can start Inderserver program yourself from the command line (or even write a simple script so that you always get the correct device address  without Udev rules if you most ) - to a point as Ekos will still "talk" and expect "answers". You are stuck with Ekos/Indi devices(cant separate them unless you use other software) working this way but you can use other Indi aware software such as Free CDC , ANVP etc etc and maybe Cloudmakers items(not free)  if you run on Apple OS - and perhaps Indigo but  its fairly new so there could be problems as normal with any new software offering but ok if you accept that (does use Indi protocol and "backward compatible").

If you can explain better perhaps there is a better answer from the  Indi experts/developers - not me by the way.

On 16/03/2019 at 08:21, Dr_Ju_ju said:

If the motor gets hot, try setting "coil power - off" in your configuration settings, for me, its not needed, as the motor holds position ok with no power, but then I use motors with planetary gearboxes. 

No quite true Julian switching off the coil power will also sometimes ,depending on micro stepping chosen, mean the focuser will move slightly regardless of the weight of the camera - IME .

You are ok as the planetary geared stepper require a lot of torque to move any way - as felt when you try to turn it by hand when switched off.

Steppers also get hot because of the stepping chosen and the driver miss match - too much current being supplied https://community.parker.com/technologies/electromechanical-group/w/electromechanical-knowledge-base/928/why-is-my-stepper-motor-getting-hot this also possibly means that the voltage needs to be higher or altered e.g. as per A4988 (or equiv).

https://reprap.org/forum/read.php?4,109216 - not astro but there are a lot of  experienced Reprap users ?

Robert's software did have the ability to switch off coil power last time I looked. 

1 hour ago, SlimPaling said:

RADMIN

But isnt free ?

RealVnc would have been the best alternative to RDP (I use both) but today you can only use a free version for Internet only connection except RPI's which is non internet and free. It now costs £42/yr/Server ?

17 hours ago, RonKramer said:

and use the PI only for a webserver

Sorry dont understand that statement - do you mean just run Indiserver (this is NOT a web server) on RPI(s) acting as the Device server and Kstars/Ekos "client" on  Windows- plus use a browser to start Indiserver on the PI ?

And how much in terms of cost is your "in house PC" compared to the PI - you buy a Mini or you buy a Ferrari they are both cars but that's were the comparison ends.

As you use the Indilib forum I think many would have already pointed out they use higher powered/cost PI equivalents which work far better with little or no lag - plus less cables(off mount) - normally only power  if they opt for Wireless(some dont for valid reasons!).

In your situation you didn't need Stellarmate at all just the PI (even just a Non GUI headless server - e.g. Ubuntu 18.04 or even Stretch server) and basic Indilib. This gives the best PI performance as no "GUI luggage". No need even for a Web Browser really but except it maybe easier for you - "Cleaner" as you say.

Good luck with your set up and Clear Skies ?