ajk

9 hours ago, psamathe said:

and there is a rumour about making it much more resource intensive (which will not be good)

This is not what I am hearing:-

http://indilib.org/forum/general/1303-did-something-really-stupid-now-cant-start-indi.html?start=6

What leads you to believe it's heading in that direction?

10 hours ago, Vox45 said:

Just for my understanding, when you say out of tree does this mean that it is not yet included in the INDI project but will be in the future ? I can't wait to see your work added to the list of supported hardware on the official INDI page

Correct. I will do the work to ask Indi maintainers to pull it into their repo at some point, but before I do that I need at least another pair of eyeballs on it, that's where you come in

I fully expect feedback from you in the form "this doesn't work", "this doesn't work as I expect" or "this is great! But can I also have it do foo as well please?". Lets get it polished up. Then we'll go for inclusion in the main code base of Indi

6 hours ago, Vox45 said:

How do you plan on publishing the driver ?

https://github.com/A-j-K/hitecastrodcfocuser

Note, I did an "in tree build" with the INDI source tree. The repo up there is an "out of tree" build. Let me know how you get on (please use the Github issue tracker and not this forum thread to discuss the driver, building and installing as that way future people will find the discussions we have in the right place, where the code is, buried in a forum here helps no future people )

@Vox45 @JamesF @perfrej @Gina

OK, I have a working version of the HitecAtroDCFocuser now. Well, it moves anyway. Can control the slew speed and number of steps. 

The HitecAstro software allows for the slew speed to be set from 1 to 100. I matched this. However, I have found that values below 25 don't appear to deliver enough power to the motor to overcome even it's own gear train (found with my Indi driver and their own branded software). However, I will leave the min/max at 1/100 as per their software as other people may have different tolerances on their hardware (btw, I am using a 10 Amp bench power supply so it's not a dead battery!).

On a side note, I am going to start working on Indi more. In discussions with the maintainers I am starting by adding unit/integration tests and Travis CI integration. Fun times ahead

5 hours ago, Vox45 said:

we just migrated to GitHub

Ah, this is pleasant music to my eyes (eh, did I mix my metas?). I'm a big fan of Github and it's Fork/PR development workflow.

3 hours ago, Vox45 said:

" we just migrated to GitHub and re-building the whole packages again, so please try again in a day or two." 

I will wait a day or two then.

In the mean time you'll all be glad to hear I now have the USB HID Class Reports for controlling the focuser   It was pretty basic.

[edit: by reverse eng using an Ellisys Explorer. I haven't heard back for HitecAstro officially.]

Which explains why Windows is so popular. And people get cross with Windows when it doesn't work. They have no idea how bad it can really get

1 minute ago, JamesF said:

The only thing that immediately springs to mind is that perhaps you have an x86 VM and the indi-asicam package is only 64-bit (or the other way around)?  Either that or it just can't find the indi-asicam package.

James

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)

So, installing INDI. I had some Ubuntus lay about but failed to install, I noticed INDI wanted 15.04 minimum for their latest code.

So, download 16.04 Ubuntu ISO. Hour later and the VM is running. Let's install INDI now....

root@ubuntu:~# apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa  
  Latest INDI Library and drivers!  More info: https://launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/ppa 
  Press [ENTER] to continue or ctrl-c to cancel adding it 
gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp_y2chf3d/secring.gpg' 
created gpg: keyring `/tmp/tmp_y2chf3d/pubring.gpg' 
created gpg: requesting key 3F33A288 from hkp server keyserver.ubuntu.com 
gpg: /tmp/tmp_y2chf3d/trustdb.gpg: trustdb created 
gpg: key 3F33A288: public key "Launchpad INDI" imported 
gpg: Total number processed: 1 
gpg:               imported: 1  (RSA: 1) 
OK 
root@ubuntu:~# apt-get update 
<snipped lots of updates>
root@ubuntu:~# apt-get install indi-full 
Reading package lists... Done 
Building dependency tree       
Reading state information... 
Done Some packages could not be installed. This may mean that you have requested an impossible situation or if you are using the unstable distribution that some required packages have not yet been created or been moved out of Incoming. The following information may help to resolve the situation: 
  
The following packages have unmet dependencies:  
  indi-full : Depends: indi-asicam but it is not installable 
E: Unable to correct problems, you have held broken packages. 

I believe this is the main reason people pay for Windows (whilst students with plenty of free time don't). If someone wants to let me know when Indi becomes installable on Ubuntu I will continue with the focuser driver development. (And please no, don't ask me to use another distro, if it doesn't work on Ubtunu it's "too exclusive" a requirement for me).

[edit: yes, I Googled it and nothing obvious sprang up in the way of a fix for Indi. I guess I could get the source code and compile from scratch but I'd like the main user installs to at least work before putting effort into a project]

[edit2: developer manual recommends Kubuntu (http://www.kubuntu.org/getkubuntu/) for actual development. Downloading ISO now and will try that. If it works then this would be my recommended distro if you want to use Indi. If it doesn't work I'll ping the maintainers and bark at them a bit ]

James, I know about the serial number etc. It's as @perfrej points out, it's ASCOM that hasn't been built to allow for arrays of similar devices so HitecAstro have had to work around the short coming by making them look like two different devices.

And about the devices appearing in different places when you plug/unplug. True, but on Linux you can use the device mapper to use the vid/pid/serial-num to remount the device repeatedly in the same place  Just Google for device mapper and serial ports and there will be plenty of howtos for doing that.

I suspect INDI will probably handle arrays of similar devices better than ASCOM but I am yet to find out, cross that bridge when I get there.

6 hours ago, perfrej said:

That is so that they can use two instances of an ASCOM driver. ASCOM does have the slight disadvantage of only permitting one device per GUID, but on the other hand, if you had two focusers with the same data in the hardware description, how would you keep track of which focuser is which? You really need to give them separate IDs some way.

 

/per

So ASCOM is the pinch point in it all. Not used Indy yet, we'll see if they have the same issue.

@psamathe @Vox45 @JamesF

For the record I have emailed/contacted HitecAstro. It would be way simpler if they gave me/us/whoever both permission and the specification of the device. Lets see what they say.

18 minutes ago, psamathe said:

If it were me I'd be going for the Indi driver route

I intend to. The focuser presents itself to the OS as a HID Class device and it loads up a standard driver anyway. All that needs reverse engineer here is the command structure they are using. In essence "what button press/wheel spin represents what control of the focuser?"). No bespoke USB code required so the Indy driver would be the natural route.

@JamesF Thanks for the wikipedia reference but being an engineer and that text being lawyer speak it means nothing to me. 

1 minute ago, JamesF said:

I'm fairly sure that's not enforceable in Europe.  As far as I recall there's a European Directive that effectively enshrines in law the user's right to reverse engineer software and those rights can't be taken away by the EULA.

Generally, if I cannot affords a lawyer to clarify this in court and I may loose I prefer not to engage.

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).

One thing does pop out at me though. They sell a second DC Focuser with an alternative PID code and separate driver install so people can use two focusers at the same time. Strictly speaking this isn't how you are suppose to implement USB devices (image not being able to use two or more printers/serial ports/etc of the same type). So, they either did what they did to save of development costs at the expense of wasting a PID or they don't fully understand the USB specification (my guess is the former as it's cheapest simplest solution). Until you want to add a third focuser that is

@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)?

9 minutes ago, uhb1966 said:

A good one which gets heavy professional use is vmware.

VMWare is commercial (but it is very good).

However Virtualbox from IBM is free and using Vagrant to build out/provision is very useful.

Regarding Linux distros. For those touting their favourite, it would he helpful to say why it's your favourite and how it could benefit adoption. Just saying "I use it and it's great" doesn't help us make an informed choice or likely to try it.

So far DistroAstro is an obvious one as it's community is like minded people. Ubuntu also just because of it's popularity. I would learn towards one of these. 

On 28 May 2016 at 00:42, psamathe said:

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).

Some of the best software in the World never gets used because of this. However, as a developer myself, I can tell you some of the worst software in the World gets used, reused and over promoted because, although the software is rubbish it's very well documented and therefore can be consumed.

Now, I do try my best to write documentation but tbh, it can often get left behind in my eagerness to solve a bug or finish the latest new feature. If you are a one man band you have to try and find a happy medium in all this (also, we actually find it hard to write documentation because we often take many technical things that are simple to us for granted).

That's where "your community" comes to the rescue. It often helps if your early adopters/beta testers are also willing to help out by contributing documentation. These people may not themselves be developers but their contribution, say in forum posts, howtos, etc are just as valuable as the software itself.

Yes, end user frustration really is a big pita but not being able to finish off some code because "support" gets in the way can be just as frustrating for us.

Commercial software often comes with support and I've found much of the money you pay goes into support and manuals as actual code. If you want to use "free" software then you have to accept support from developers is a "best effort" basis. If you are not willing to "join it's community" and help out a bit yourself (ie you just want to take it and expect it to work) then better off going over to Windows and buying something instead. And I myself use a lot of commercial Windows software for exactly this reason. Time is often money.

That's the HitecAstro DC Focuser and a Skywatcher Auto Focuser on order from FLO. I'll probably have the software done before I have a telescope to attach it to!

7 hours ago, Vox45 said:

I've downloaded and compared a bunch of Ubuntu flavors. Not that I am advocating for a particular one but I had to start somewhere

I will almost certainly be starting with the distro you mentioned right at the start of this thread, http://www.distroastro.org/

Why?

i) it comes from the same base as Ubuntu

ii) It's tailored to what we are all doing already (and maintained going forward)

It's last major release was May 2015 which was a year ago. This may signal either "it's so mature no more major releases are needed, only repo package updates required" or "it's gathered dust due to a lack of community energy".

Regardless of which it to me seems a great starting place. It may just need some new community spirit pouring on it to set it going again. Last time I looked SGL is a pretty good community.

I will use this distro to write the HitechAstro DC Focuser INDI driver anyway as INDI is it's base so will make for an easier starting point. I'll see how I get on with AstroDistro and let you know.

10 hours ago, Vox45 said:

HitecDCfocus (there is a list of INDI drivers here, but nothing on HitecAstro)

I was planning on getting one of these soon. 

There are two ways to crack this, i. reach out to HitecAstro and offer to create a free INDI driver for them if they provide the specifications or ii. reverse engineer the spec.

7 hours ago, Vox45 said:

EQMOD are not cross-platform can be quite a turn off for some

There is an INDI driver set for Skywatcher mounts:-

http://indilib.org/devices/telescopes/eqmod.html

I also know of another for INDI but the name eludes me right now.

I think when it comes to hardware control Linux is probably mature enough if you know what you are doing. What I cannot comment on is image post processing for those doing camera work/imaging (or in fact controlling Astro dedicated CCD cameras).

I write software for both Windows and Linux so this is something that interests me (and potentially a cloudy night hobby )

So I have bought everything except the scope for AS. Swithering on that. But, to be honest, having read so many reviews (scare stories) and not having super deep financial pockets, this would swing it for me. When spending circa £1k I don't see £75 on top as a big deal. More like "insurance that actually paid out". So, come Autumn I'll be looking for a GT102