psamathe

1 hour ago, Astromaniac said:

Hi,

I'm new to Linux and the raspberry pi. I've got the p3, with Raspbian, with the goal of doing what you have done. However, unlike you, I'm not having much success. I've done exactly what you've done, followed the same procedures but making the pi an access point. Is that important? I haven't read anywhere that the pi needs to be an access point to connect to KStars on a laptop....

I suspect you only need to make the RPi an Access Point if you do not have an existing 2.4GHz Wi-Fi network.  I did not do this on mine, just used my existing Access Points (though I did have to switch one from 5GHz to 2.4GHz as the RPi is only 2.4).

The Indi web site has good installation step by step for the installation.

I have no idea about any QHY or HEQ issues but they do have a forum and when I had an issue they were very responsive to providing help.

Ian

On 1 June 2016 at 18:07, Dazzyt66 said:

A great series of podcasts are Astronomy 161. They are actual course lectures from Professor Richard Pogge at Ohio State University in 2006. There are 47 episodes which talk you through Astronomy and our solar system. Great if you want academic background to our hobby ?

These are lecture courses that are recorded and published on the internet.  Many also include course notes you can download.  There are several available.  Ones I am aware of:

• Astro 10P - Introduction to General Astronomy (Joshua Bloom, UC Berkely) https://archive.org/details/Astro_10P_Fall_2006_UC_Berkeley
• Astro C10/LS C70U - Introduction to General Astronomy (Alex Filippenko, UC Berkley) https://archive.org/details/Astro_C10_LS_C70U_Fall_2006_UC_Berkeley
• Astronomy 7B 001 - Introduction to Astrophysics (Joshua Bloom, UC Berkley) https://archive.org/details/Astronomy_7B_001_Spring_2010_UC_Berkeley_Introduction_to_Astrophysics
• Astronomy 141 - Life in the Universe (Richard Pogge, Ohio state) http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast141/
• Astronomy 161 - Introduction to Solar System Astronomy (Richard Pogge, Ohio state) http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast161/
• Astronomy 162 - Introduction to Stars, Galaxies and the Universe (Richard Pogge, Ohio state) http://www.astronomy.ohio-state.edu/~pogge/Ast162/

Some of these are available on iTunesU.

for the UC Berkley ones I've not found any lecture notes, just the audio.
for the Ohio state there are lecture notes and audio and it is all well structured (if a bit of a pain to download the audio).  I downloade dthe audio and the lecture notes and found the audio alone was "self supporting" and did not need the lecture notes.

Probably loads and loads of others.

Ian

I seem to be an avid podcast listener.

Astronomical Podcasts

• Astronomy Cast http://www.astronomycast.com (earlier ones were better because subject matter was better)
• Awesome Astronomy http://awesomeastronomy.com (recently added to my list)
• Cheap Astronomy http://feeds.feedburner.com/CheapAstronomyPodcasts (not my favourite and probably be deleted soon)
• Jodcast http://www.jodcast.net/rss.xml
• Spacetime with Stuart Gary https://audioboom.com/channels/4642443.rss (and other sources) - excellent, highly recommended
• Weekly Space Hangout http://www.universetoday.com (some interesting stuff, poor sound quality, more background listening until interesting bit)
• Sky at Night Magazine http://www.skyatnightmagazine.com
• Sky Tour Podcasts http://www.skyandtelescope.com (night sky for months ahead)
• StarStuff (Stuart Gary) http://www.abc.net.au/science/starstuff/ (replaced by Spacetime - see above) but a lot of old podcasts that are interesting

Plus a lot of the BBC Science Podcasts (and a few others)

• BBC Discovery http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002w557/episodes/downloads.rss
• The Naked Scientist http://www.thenakedscientists.com/naked_scientists_podcast.xml (but I never got on with the Naked Astronomy podcasts)
• Nature Podcast http://rss.acast.com/nature (as in Nature Magazine)
• BBC Science Hour http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p016tmt2/episodes/downloads.rss
• BBC Science In Action http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p002vsnb/episodes/downloads.rss
• Science Weekly (Guardian) https://www.theguardian.com/science/series/science
• Planet Earth online (NERC) http://planetearth.nerc.ac.uk/rss/peo-podcasts.xml

Plus a few world travel podcasts I'm not bothering to list as probably not of interest.

The BBC podcasts can overlay a bit - each "program" contains several items and the same item can crop-up in different podcasts.

Ian

1 hour ago, Vox45 said:

Thanks for this heads up. I only plan to use Ekos on the laptop and everything else at the mount, so no need for bandwith to download anything as I will use an SSD hard drive at the mount

Don't forget auto-guiding (if you are using it) which can require reasonable bandwidth to download the auto-guider images to Ekos.  Or you may be able to use Rapid Guide (depending on your guide camera) where the star location is worked out by the guide camera driver on the RPi and only the star position reported back to Ekos (reducing bandwidth significantly).  The Indi developers have done well keeping Indi "light-weight" (i.e. not requiring mega resources) but it does have a lot of dependencies and there is a rumour about making it much more resource intensive (which will not be good).

Ian

29 minutes ago, Vox45 said:

...This way I can have the RpI and powerpanel at the mount and control from a laptop over WIFI or ethernet if WIFI fails on me ...

My limited experience with my RPi3 is that the Wi-fi signal is not great.  I've tested both in and out of case and not a lot different (as my case is metal but has vent holes and I thought it would make a massive difference but it didn't).  Even a few meters from an Access Point and out of the case I'm 1 bar below full signal (though not done any detailed readings yet).  It could be partly because the Wi-fi is only 2.4 GHz and I'm used to good signal at 5GHz (so I've had to put in a few more APs running at 2.4 and most of mine as not dual bandwidth).  Though early days and I've still got more playing around and t look closer at the real data rate (i.e. iwconfig rather than the crude bars in the GUI).  Main concern to this point has been getting everything installed and running.

It works, not getting annoying dropouts.  So solid but where you'd expect to be at full signal full rate, I'm not.  The speed limitations were noticeable when I was testing with my Canon DSLR on 18 megapixel and the test images were taking a fair time to download (RPi->2.4Ghz->cabled net->5Ghz->laptop).

I'm thinking about getting an outdoor access point with a high gain antenna to cover where I set-up my scope.  I need some coverage out there (nothing spilling out from the house).

I find the INDI Web Manager a very useful tool http://indilib.org/support/tutorials/162-indi-web-manager.html.  Avoids having to SSH into the device to start the indi server.Ian

10 hours ago, ajk said:

I always use 64-bit. It seems they have a package they simply cannot build for what ever reason and so 3rd Party code (full-indi) cannot be installed.

On a side note I downloaded the code from SF (trunk) and I managed to build Indi Core at least. However, without being able to install kstars-bleeding (which itself needs indi-fiull) there's no point me carrying on with this. I will trash this VM and wait for the Kubuntu ISO to download and try that out. If that fails I'll have to email the maintainers. Not good given this is "step one" and many steps. Despite being a huge advocate of FOSS this is the one thing that annoys me about it, it's a time sink. And people complain about Windows. Windows "still wins" because a) it's easy and ii. for the most part "it just works" and doesn't totally sink your time (I've been at this ALL NIGHT and not jumped the first hurdle and I'm suppose to be a super-techie/developer/nurd, goodness help normal non-techie users)

I did a complete Indi install to a VM a couple of days ago (Ubuntu 16.04, indi-full, kstars-bleeding, gsc, astrometry, etc.) and it all went fine without any problems (and no missing dependencies, no hiccups, no problems).

So I wonder what has changed or if it is related to your VM or something along those lines.

Ian

13 minutes ago, ajk said:

Ian

Yeah, I can understand that point of view. I may email themselves so "present my CV" so they can have some faith (I've been writing device drivers in C and Assembler for 30 odd years now)....

If it were me I'd be going for the Indi driver route.  Maybe propose to them that you do it without their blessing and help (and are more likely to give-up of miss aspects) for personal use/distribution or do it with their help for general release to the Indi library and they benefit from wider software support and that maybe they would like to make a donation to the Indi project once the completed drivers were released ...

Ian

6 minutes ago, ajk said:

@Vox45 HitecAstroDCFocuser has arrived. However, after installing the software I see the EULA states no reverse engineering is permitted without their consent. Do you want to reach out to them and see if you can get any joy from them in terms of permissions (and even better technical specifications)?

 

I can see why manufacturers put in such constraints and can appreciate why they might not want anybody/everybody developing software for public release.  Whilst some of that software would probably be excellent and would significantly enhance their product, other software (e.g. novice developers) might be a bit "inadequate" and you could end-up with bad reviews that could reflect badly on their product (e.g. "High cost Systems mount with NoviceDev software - bug ridden, keeps failing and losing sync and could not follow anything for more than 2 mins ..." which might be the failing of the software but is closely linked to their hardware.

I think there are now several platforms emerging that deserve support from mainstream hardware and that manufacturers would be sensible to provide (or 3rd party contract) software/drivers for these platforms.  I think the hardware independent platforms are more important to many than their own software packages.

Ian

1 hour ago, NickK said:

My only concern with Ekos is that because it seems bound to kstars is that if kstars fails (due to a bug) it takes out the guiding/tracking/scheduling component of the system.. so you could end up 5 minutes out of a 8 hour unattended session. However with other apps it's almost the same and the growing number of users means the system gets a heavily tested - hence I'll accept that risk.

 

I think the risks/impact vary depending on development and user situations.  Should a new release introduce a serious bug in KStars then I guess (as every good IT person says) you have your backups.  and whilst a serious bug could arise in KStars, it is also possible a serious bug could arise in Ekos as well.

I agree that it would be nice to split the two aspects, partly as I personally don't like KStars that much - but that is personal preference and it is certainly not a "bad" bit of software.

In my own situation, I am a beginner just looking to start astrophotography, so I suspect that by the time I sort out buying auto-guiding gear and get t the point where I am more dependent on Ekos, other packages will be including the functionality.  I believe/hope that Indi is taking off right now and more and more existing software packages are including/adding support for Indi (e.g. PixInSight, PHD2?, AstroImager (CloudMakers), AstroTelescope (CloudMakers), AstroGuider (CloudMakers), etc.) plus others who have the aims to develop Indi support (e.g. Software Bisque TheSkyX - has asked for people to use the X2 interface to develop Indi support, which would quickly add a powerful and complete client side (auto-guiding, camera control/imaging, planetarium, plate solving, etc.).  So I suspect it wont be long until there are a lot more choices of Indi client.  And in my own case, I'll probably have more choice by the time my needs become more crucial.

(Sorry, just noted who I am quoting/responding to so not for me to be pointing out where Software Bisque are aiming to go Indi wise and development wise - but TheSkyX's (whole package NOT specific diver support) development status on Mac is another matter).

Ian

1 hour ago, Vox45 said:

After years of lurking, I just ordered a Raspberry PI 3

My endgame is to install Kstars on Linux Mint (once the ubuntu-16.04 version of Mint is release in july/august) and install the INDI part on a raspberry PI. This way I can have the "control" part at the telescope and use the interface at my desk over WIFI or an ethernet cable, I'll be free from my 5m USB cable at last

...

Likewise (except KStars installation on Ubuntu VM).

I was very surprised that for me (a Linux novice) the RPi setup and Indi install was very straightforward.  Indi seem to provide an excellent level of documentation - you don't have to read vast volumes of technical stuff but there is plenty to tell you what to so (and for me it worked).  Still got to test it all though (installations done, just got to connect-up and test/learn).

One useful utility I've been pointed to is IndiStarter - a Linux utility that will startup a remove Indi server (i.e. it creates the SSH link meaning you don't have to SSH into the RPi and use command lines.  Looks like it supports starting with different profiles so could make life a lot easier (I suspect it is an important/useful addition to the Indi system). https://sourceforge.net/projects/indistarter/

Ian

10 hours ago, Vox45 said:

And there is one major thing that I always forget to mention when talking about Linux in general is that when you update your system, you update EVERYTHING on it. No more visiting a bunch of website and keeping tabs on which version you have and which is current. In my case I just need to run this:

sudo apt-get update

that's it! Eveything is updated at once to the latest version availlable... less time spend managing your system, more time spent imaging

Except that can drive you/me "up the wall.  I've just had to trash an installation and restart from scratch because I tried to install what to many is a "traditional Linux app" - no documentation, no instructions and no help anywhere (no forums, no e-mail contact addresses).  You had to use "dpkg" (no apt installation) and it sort of installed but sometimes gave missing dependencies.  So used apt-get to find the missing dependencies and it found and installed loads, but at the end, seemed unable to find some and ... just could not find them.  So I could remove the package with dpkg but no way to roll-back all the garbage that apt's trying to find missing dependencies had put in !!

I'm sure if you used Linux all the time you'd get to spot such things and stop them before they happened - but most don't switch 100% to Linux and if my laptop was not so expensive it would have "been thrown".

And it was a package associated with INDI (not from Indi).  Actually I found the Indi stuff very easy to install as they have brief clear step by step instructions that work.  I'm surprised that developers can spend their time going through the development, testing, release, publish etc. and completely miss the step that allows others to actually use it (by a brief paragraph on how to install/run).

Ian