Remote mount control / guide setup

[dyfiastro]

Hi everyone

I am in the process of doing research into my first astro setup.
I currently have a perfectly powerful computer for everything I need to do. However, It is located in my bedroom.

As I intend to do the main of the imaging in my backyard (at least to start with) I am trying to come up with a way that I could do all of the control and guiding without having to get a dedicated laptop as part of my initial setup (and put the money to other bits).

Having used Raspberry pi's for other projects I figured why not try and come up with a way to use one as an interface between the mount/guide scope and my remotely located computer.

Whilst doing a bit of research I came across this

http://store.raspberrypi.com/projects/virtualhere
 

This would turn a raspberry pi into remote USB server that you could then connect to over a network and mount the usb devices which then show up as if they are local devices connected to your computer.

I was wondering if anyone had any experience in using this or had looked at doing something like this.
My initial thoughts are mixed, my main concern would be latency.

Any thoughts and input would be great

Regards

Mark
 

[Gina]

Sounds a very interesting idea - I'd like to know of anyone with experience of this too

[cjdawson]

Two thoughts come to my mind.

1. Raspberry Pi 1's usb ports are not full power, so use a powered hub.

2. Raspberry Pi 2 is a quad core affair  which might make for a better overall experience.

That looks like it's a very very useful app for controlling a telescope, and cameras over a network.

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Before I mounted a local PC at the mount, I used to use one of these http://www.maplin.co.uk/p/gigabit-network-server-4-port-usb-20-hub-n01jz

[Landy Dave]

I am currently investigating running  http://indilib.org/ on a RPI 2 to remotely control my scope initially from the garden then if I get brave from my parents farm on Exmoor.

One of the other members on here is running it on an Odroid C1 with the scope in Germany and he is in Surrey!

[cjdawson]

Something to think about if going for anything RPI based - the network port in the mobel B is only 10/100 so may struggle if you are trying to capture movies using the RPi as a USB server method.

[dyfiastro]

Thanks for the replies.

I did a little more digging and looks like it may be a viable solution with one slight change.
Indeed the one bottle neck in the RPi system is its network speed. The new version 2 is slightly better but another alternative may in fact be something like the

Banana Pi as that has a 10/100/1000 nic.

If I get a chance over the weekend I will give it bash with bother an original model B and the version 2 using a webcam and see what it is like.

[D4N]

I tried this with mixed success.

The PI is able to guide all on its own using either linguider or PHD (in theory anyway, linguider didn't like my mount). I think I saw a picture of one stuck to a scope as a sort of DIY auto guider.

You can also send data from the PI in various ways;

Serial port forwarding - reliable and easy to set up for mount control.

USB port forwarding - suffers from network bottleneck, but allows you to use software and drivers on your main computer.

Indi - suffers from network bottleneck and has to have device drivers.

The main problem seems to be getting the data from the PI across the network fast enough, it all seems to fall apart when the data becomes too much and programs hang on latency. Sometimes it would work and then other times an image download would fail. If you are taking long exposures you don't want to lose subs like that.

If you can get the guiding running locally on the PI and have a fast enough network connection it may work.

It may also be possible to capture the image directly on the PI and then transfer it during the next exposure, this would prevent data loss if the network hangs. It probably wouldn't be much fun to do though.

/Dan

Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[chrisvdberge]

I am currently investigating running  http://indilib.org/ on a RPI 2 to remotely control my scope initially from the garden then if I get brave from my parents farm on Exmoor.

One of the other members on here is running it on an Odroid C1 with the scope in Germany and he is in Surrey!

This is actually quite interesting! Thx for the tip, I'll dive in to this deeper for my (near) future backyard observatory as well