Well, I haven't kept this thread updated for a long time despite constant Ekos development

So recent additions:

1. HFR graph in manual mode.
2. More support for DSLRs in Ekos & INDI as well.

Ekos/KStars is going to gain back its DBUS interface so it would be possible to script it via DBUS in addition to indi_setprop and indi_getprop tools. A tutorial is in the works on how to do that.

Ok, so most of Ekos interface is now scriptable via DBUS. You can pretty much automate the whole astrophotography session using DBUS now. Since I was imaging the horse nebula a few days ago, something came up again: Meridian flip! I had to do a meridian flip, re-calibrate guiding, and restart the capture process. Wouldn't it be nice if this step is automatic?

I am probably thinking of adding another option to Ekos capture modole
[X] Auto meridian flip if HA > [ ] hours

Once the HA for the object been tracked exceeds the specified value, a new slew command is sent to the mount. Of course, the command has to wait if there is any capture process in progress. After we stop the guiding, we flip the mount. The actual flip must be done in the mount driver itself, Ekos just waits until the telescope is tracking again; afterwhich is solves and captures to ensure we're on the right stop. Then it will initiate the guide module calibration process, followed autoguiding and resuming the capture job. The calibration/guide step is where most likely things go haywire. Well, the only way to find out is to implement this and see how it fares in real life!

Meridian flip is complete.

Now the mount module has Altitude limits, i.e. you can minimum and maximum allowable altitude. If it is exceeded, the mount is stopped.

Now you can find out individual star HFR by clicking on a particular star and holding the mouse button. You'd have to "Mark Stars" from the View menu first if it's not done already.

Hi, I'm new to INDI and have some issues. I run KStars and Ekos fine using my mouse. But situation gets worse when I'm trying to access it using dbus. I got example from INDI page (indibus.py) but python tells me, that path /Kstars/INDI not exists. I'm on ubuntu 14.04 and INDI is installed. If I change the line in py script to remove INDI than it crashes two lines down that INDI is needed for object list detection or so.

Could you please guide me to get this working? I'd like to use telescope/ccd remotely using www wrapper. I can run KStars at backround I suppose so this approach could satisfy my needs or maybe you'll recommend me to try something else (not Kstars and Dbus?).

Anyway thanks for any help

regards
rudolf

well most of the DBUS stuff were just added recently, so you'd need kstars-bleeding on Kubuntu 15.04 to test these things out.

Hi,

I am trying to script some tasks with DBUS and Python. Accessing INDI worked pretty easily thanks to the tutorial but I am not able to find out how to call Ekos Mount DBus methods.

My guess was;
but it doesn't work. Any advise?

You must specify the full object's path. Try:
remote_ekos = bus.get_object("org.kde.kstars",
"/KStars/Ekos/Mount"
)

Hope it helps.

Thank you Daniel, but I am afraid I tried that too.

It seems I am not updated. When I run introspection for ekos I get:but not Mount. I thought that running apt-get update and apt-get install kstars-bleeding would keep me on the last version, but I must be missing something. It's clearly a lack of knowlegde on my part

Hello Jasem,
As I needed to understand the principle of alignment with EQmod & EKOS I thought it would be useful to translate in french the tuto there:
indilib.org/support/tutorials/137-alignm...with-eqmod-ekos.html
And it works I understood it but need now to apply now
I don't know if you are interested in this translation but as we say in France (raw translation) "It doesn't eat bread" to send it to you.

Thanks, but that tutorial is out of date, I need to refresh some documentation here soon. Will let you know once the updated version is up!