Telescope Reviews: Meade LPI and Linux

Have you installed the whole indi package, or just the libindi0 library ? The way I do it here, I start indiserver on it's own, with parameters for the telescope driver. For the celestron driver it would be

indiserver indi_celestron_gps

In the Kstars telescope setup panels, click on the 'client' tab, then set up a server connection using the 'add' tab for the indiserver running at localhost port 7624. Hilight that one, and click 'connect'.

For Cdc, in the telescope settings, select indi driver, then configure localhost port 7624, leave the 'automatically start' unchecked. Set the device port for your serial port (/dev/ttyUSB0) and in telescope type, it really shouldn't matter what's there, I have 'other' selected, but if you have the full indi package installed, there should be an entry in that drop-down for the celestron scope. That should only be used by Cdc if it's actually starting the indiserver, but the current release of Cdc has a few issues in this area, which have been corrected in the svn issue daily builds after I submitted problem reports.

When I first started using indi with kstars and cdc, I had some issues figuring out the right twiddling to get it all working, but once going, it seemed to work ok. I really wanted all of my gear at the telescope to work over the indi connection, so I dug in a couple months ago, and started writing some drivers. I have recently commited to the indi svn drivers for

SXV-H9 ccd with sxv guide head attached
Starlight Xpress filter wheel
fcusb focus motor controller
Synscan mount

In the process of getting all of the drivers going correctly, I ran into a few issues with both indi and Cdc. Much to my surprise / delight, bug reports to the Cdc bug tracker setup got response / fix within a week, and bug reports into the indi mailing list resulted in fixes showing up in the svn within 24 hours in most cases.

I believe most distributions that carry indi are still packaging 0.6x, but there is a ppa for ubuntu that has the most recently released 0.72 variant. It's listed with 'howto' for ubuntu at the indi website in the downloading section ( www.indilib.org ).

For our own use here, we will be putting indiserver onto headless little solid state boxes for set up at the telescope. I'm using a couple old atx motherboards, with a minimal lucid install that boots from a jumpstick. I've got pico-ps power supplies in them, and it's a fanless cpu, so we end up with all solid state, no moving parts for the 'outside' stuff. I'm running gigabit ethernet between the house network and the telescope location, so, we'll be using it all over the network, the little headless boxes at the telescope will have no user-land programs on them other than the basic indiserver and the drivers for telescope, camera, filter wheel and focus stuff. It'll be a good setup, and I'll finally have a proper 'network aware' remote telescope operation happening.

I have played with some of the other drivers etc in the indi package. The gphoto driver for dslr 'just worked' with my Canon 350, likewise the qhy5 stuff. I checked open-phd out of it's version control, and it built with no issues here. It looks just like phd on any other platform, but I haven't had a chance to feed it real starlight yet due to incessant and continuous rain over the last few weeks. Csc is hinting at some possible clear time over the next few days, so, I may get a chance to finally put starlight into all of this new stuff, but I'm not getting my hopes up to high right now.