Lin_guide/RPi/StarsPi

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

Have a look at the indi website (indilib.org), for the stellarmate. That might be just what you're looking for.

I also use RPi with indi/lin_guider. Works good, but some basic knowledge of Linux is a plus. Although, as @Gina wrote: "monkey see, monkey do", is how I learned Linux.

 

Hi

I'm familiar with Linux though a bit rusty.. I think INDI/Stellarmate is too complicated for what I want. However, I'll see how I get on with the StarsPi. Mind you, I don't have a mobile phone that will run it, but maybe a tablet. This is all going to have to evolve bit by bit!

Louise

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

Been there, done that, never got the t-shirt.

If all you want is guiding, you can just use the RPi with only lin_guider. No need to install indi. Lin_guider is more "push here, dummy" than phd. But the "later on" may be sooner than you think.

You can connect to the RPi using xrdp and (windows) remote desktop, or team-viewer. But team-viewer on a mobile phone is a nightmare (bt, dt, still no t-shirt).

Hi

Yes, indeed. All I really want is Lin_guider. I can't use any remote control - I'll be too far from my 2nd floor flat and won't be able to just leave the kit unsupervised anyway... My old phone is pretty useless - it only runs Gingerbread  but I have a tablet that runs under Lollipop  Hopefully that will do the job - I just need to manage guiding and look after the kit which will be in a public space...

Louise

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

Been there, done that, never got the t-shirt.

If all you want is guiding, you can just use the RPi with only lin_guider. No need to install indi. Lin_guider is more "push here, dummy" than phd. But the "later on" may be sooner than you think.

You can connect to the RPi using xrdp and (windows) remote desktop, or team-viewer. But team-viewer on a mobile phone is a nightmare (bt, dt, still no t-shirt).

Hi

Yes, indeed. All I really want is Lin_guider. I can't use any remote control - I'll be too far from my 2nd floor flat and won't be able to just leave the kit unsupervised anyway... My old phone is pretty useless - it only runs Gingerbread  but I have a tablet that runs under Lollipop  Hopefully that will do the job - I just need to manage guiding and look after the kit which will be in a public space...

Louise

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

Been there, done that, never got the t-shirt.

If all you want is guiding, you can just use the RPi with only lin_guider. No need to install indi. Lin_guider is more "push here, dummy" than phd. But the "later on" may be sooner than you think.

You can connect to the RPi using xrdp and (windows) remote desktop, or team-viewer. But team-viewer on a mobile phone is a nightmare (bt, dt, still no t-shirt).

Hi

Yes, indeed. All I really want is Lin_guider. I can't use any remote control - I'll be too far from my 2nd floor flat and won't be able to just leave the kit unsupervised anyway... My old phone is pretty useless - it only runs Gingerbread  but I have a tablet that runs under Lollipop  Hopefully that will do the job - I just need to manage guiding and look after the kit which will be in a public space...

Louise

[Thalestris24]

Woohoo! It's Christmas! Just had my Raspberry Pi 3 delivered  So much to keep me occupied now, lol (so cloudy too  )

 

 

[Thalestris24]

Have made some progress with this  The Pi3 is up and running with the Raspian Jessie and starts Lin_guider when you power up. I have the StarsPi on a Nexus 7 tablet. I think I just have to configure the wifi at both ends... Not sure exactly how to do it yet but I'm working on it

Louise

[Dr_Ju_ju]

Umm, for better compatibility I'd forget Jessie & use Ubuntu Mate, i.e. https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

[Thalestris24]

6 minutes ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

Umm, for better compatibility I'd forget Jessie & use Ubuntu Mate, i.e. https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

Unfortunately, the StarsPi Android App is based on a custom version of Jessie on the Pi3. I can detect the StarsPi from the tablet app but just can't properly connect at the moment. I might just need to get the password right! Will have a play with it tomorrow. If I can't get the StarsPi App to work then I'll look at other options. I suppose with small, not-too-expensive, touch screens available then maybe the Android app isn't absolutely necessary - could just have an attached screen. I just liked the idea of controlling it from a tablet :). Lin_guider is running on the Pi 3 and talks to a qhy5l-ii mono quite happily - getting an image without any problems. Unfortunately, no clear skies to test it properly :(. The forecast suggests there might be some clear periods on Wednesday but who knows. I'll post again when I make some more progress

Thanks

Louise

[wimvb]

I never got starspi to work properly, and ended up installing lin_guider on the Pi, and connecting with a remote desktop. But that was more than a year ago, maybe the app has evolved since then. Good luck.

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, wimvb said:

I never got starspi to work properly, and ended up installing lin_guider on the Pi, and connecting with a remote desktop. But that was more than a year ago, maybe the app has evolved since then. Good luck.

Funnily enough I saw your post on Cloudy Nights, Wim. No, it doesn't look like he's done any further development on it  He mentions a blog with instructions but the link doesn't work so the app might be a dead end now  How far did you get?

I'll have another go tomorrow - nothing better to do!

Merry Christmas!

Louise

[wimvb]

Starspi looks good on paper, but I never got it to work. And as there was no support, I didn't pursue it. I think it's a dead project. You're better off installing ubuntu mate and lin_guider or phd. Then use remote desktop or teamviewer on your tablet. Remote desktop and teamviewer don't work well with a mobile phone, but that's due to the small screen. On a tablet it could work. The lin_guider window isn't that big either. Another option would be a small screen that can connect directly to the Pi, together with a wireless keyboard/mouse.

As I wrote before in another thread, my current solution is indi on RPi with ekos/kstars on windows. There is even an ekos/kstars lite for windows being developed. (But that hasn't come far enough, in my opinion.)

Ekos uses lin_guider and does allow you to also control your camera.

But since you're only interested in guiding, just lin_guider would be enough.

Merry Christmas to you too.

[Thalestris24]

27 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Starspi looks good on paper, but I never got it to work. And as there was no support, I didn't pursue it. I think it's a dead project. You're better off installing ubuntu mate and lin_guider or phd. Then use remote desktop or teamviewer on your tablet. Remote desktop and teamviewer don't work well with a mobile phone, but that's due to the small screen. On a tablet it could work. The lin_guider window isn't that big either. Another option would be a small screen that can connect directly to the Pi, together with a wireless keyboard/mouse.

As I wrote before in another thread, my current solution is indi on RPi with ekos/kstars on windows. There is even an ekos/kstars lite for windows being developed. (But that hasn't come far enough, in my opinion.)

Ekos uses lin_guider and does allow you to also control your camera.

But since you're only interested in guiding, just lin_guider would be enough.

Merry Christmas to you too.

Yeah, I mentioned a couple of posts ago that a Pi touchscreen would probably do. I think I'll get one anyway when the world comes back to life

[Thalestris24]

Well managed to get my Nexus 7 talking to the Pi  Just had to 'add a new network' of type WPA2 and with pw raspberry. Not sure how good it is though. Certainly works with the 'demo' guide cam. Seemed to sort of work with the qhy5l-ii but need to test it out properly i.e. with stars. I still might be better off with just a touchscreen. Will investigate further

Louise

[wimvb]

One thing I came to think of. The starspi dropped connection quite often, and I could never figure out why.

And one more thing that may come on handy: if you have multiple sd cards, you can use one for experimenting, and have a stable setup on the other. The cards don't have to be large; 8 - 16 GB will do. You can also make a backup image of your entire card, just to be on the safe side.

The nice thing about Raspberry Pi is that you can have completely different setups by just changing cards. As long as you use the same wifi hardware, this part is always the same, and you can set a fixed ip-address in your local network.

[Thalestris24]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

One thing I came to think of. The starspi dropped connection quite often, and I could never figure out why.

And one more thing that may come on handy: if you have multiple sd cards, you can use one for experimenting, and have a stable setup on the other. The cards don't have to be large; 8 - 16 GB will do. You can also make a backup image of your entire card, just to be on the safe side.

The nice thing about Raspberry Pi is that you can have completely different setups by just changing cards. As long as you use the same wifi hardware, this part is always the same, and you can set a fixed ip-address in your local network.

Indeed! As I say, if the Android interface doesn't work very well I can just use a touchscreen for the Pi - and probably will anyway. There's also a Linux version of PHD2 that might be worth investigating

Louise

[Thalestris24]

Ordered a 7" hdmi touchscreen and mini bluetooth keyboard for the Pi 3 today  Probably won't be delivered until 1st week of Jan but I'm patient

Louise

[Thalestris24]

Had a go with Lin_guider last night but wasn't too impressed! It was very laggy with the image, didn't show stars very clearly and I don't think the guide outputs were actually working...  To be fair, the version installed to work with stars_pi isn't up to date. It looks like I'll have to build the latest version and try that, and get either the latest Raspian or maybe Ubuntu. Gonna need a few sd cards!

Louise

[wimvb]

1 hour ago, Thalestris24 said:

and get either the latest Raspian or maybe Ubuntu. Gonna need a few sd cards!

Yes, good to have a few extra sd cards on hand. You can also take an image of a working setup and back that up to a hard drive. I use win32 diskimager for that.

If you go with a standard ubuntu desktop and just a guide program, there's really no need to stick with lin_guider. You can also use phd2. While lin_guider worked, and was very easy to use, I was under the impression that it was never quite as good at guiding as phd. It seemed I always got a little better guiding rms-wise with phd than with lin_guider. Not very much better, but still ...

What I did like with lin_guider was the ability to average over several exposures. This way it was possible to average out seeing effects. It smoothed out the guiding curve. Phd is better if you need to troubleshoot.

Imo, ubuntu mate easier than debian/raspbian. Installing software is very easy with ubuntu, and personally, I like its desktop.

[Thalestris24]

23 minutes ago, wimvb said:

Yes, good to have a few extra sd cards on hand. You can also take an image of a working setup and back that up to a hard drive. I use win32 diskimager for that.

If you go with a standard ubuntu desktop and just a guide program, there's really no need to stick with lin_guider. You can also use phd2. While lin_guider worked, and was very easy to use, I was under the impression that it was never quite as good at guiding as phd. It seemed I always got a little better guiding rms-wise with phd than with lin_guider. Not very much better, but still ...

What I did like with lin_guider was the ability to average over several exposures. This way it was possible to average out seeing effects. It smoothed out the guiding curve. Phd is better if you need to troubleshoot.

Imo, ubuntu mate easier than debian/raspbian. Installing software is very easy with ubuntu, and personally, I like its desktop.

It's early days for me! It's fun to experiment and try things. I've ordered a few sd cards  It should be clear tonight so will have another play. Maybe in the end I'll go with ubuntu/PHD - I'll just see how things pan out. I wish I could move to somewhere where I had a ground floor and could easily set up outside but it's just a dream.

Louise

[Marci]

Latest version of Lin_guider with QHY5 at 640x480, 2 sec exposure, high gain, controls my Nexstar LCM mount (in EQ north tracking mode on a kitchen-chopping-board wedge) fine from a Pi1 Model B+... pi runs headless, Jessie lite with pixel & linguider manually installed. (Jessie Lite with manual install of pixel has much lower memory footprint than most other distro/Ui combos if you're going for lightweight resource usage, although shouldn't be an issue on a Pi3).

Connect by VNC from my phone to set it going, then disconnect and leave it to it. When connected and viewing video preview CPU load is fairly maxed, but once disconnected from vnc it sits at 28% cpu load and guides happily, whilst gphoto2 controls the dslr.

[Thalestris24]

Um, can anyone give me a hint as to how I install the cccd camera drivers and firmware under Ubuntu-mate on my Pi 3? I downloaded the compressed file, unpacked it and tried building it but I get fatal errors related to a dsi2pro camera? Also there doesn't seem to be any references in the source to my camera (qhy5l-ii mono)?

Lin-guider seems to be otherwise working.

Any help gratefully received!

Cheers!

Louise

[wimvb]

Have you tried installing the indi drivers? At least qhy should be supported. Can't help with the dsi2pro problem, though. You could also try to contact the developer. I believe that Rumen is a frequent contributor to the indi forum.

[Gina]

May I suggest reading my Blog Setting up a Raspberry Pi for Astro Imaging and Control - Ubuntu Mate

[Thalestris24]

1 hour ago, Gina said:

May I suggest reading my Blog Setting up a Raspberry Pi for Astro Imaging and Control - Ubuntu Mate

Thanks Gina but I don't think your current entries help with my particular problem.

[Thalestris24]

3 hours ago, wimvb said:

Have you tried installing the indi drivers? At least qhy should be supported. Can't help with the dsi2pro problem, though. You could also try to contact the developer. I believe that Rumen is a frequent contributor to the indi forum.

I havn't Wim. Will they work with Lin-guider? I didn't want to bother Rumen, or anyone, as it's still holiday time! I have something to try - fingers crossed!