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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Microtouch/Feathertouch Focus Controller Driver?

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Hello,

I added some Debugging Code to the driver. Please post more information. I am not able to reproduce it here.

Marco
7 years 8 months ago #9248

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Hi all,

Peter has compiled a new INDI server for me. I installed it, and turned on every debug feature I saw. Next I connected, and tried moving the focuser. No matter which direction I requested, the focuser moved to smaller values. This was true for relative or absolute motion requests. I disconnected, and am placing the log file here. Most of the commands are temperature requests, but I was able to find the move command in the file. I hope this helps!

S-
Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by F. Scott Anderson. Reason: Attachment not added
7 years 8 months ago #9322
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Thank you for posting your log file. I found the bug and will provide a fix soon.

For now, you could try to see if the Focuser is working right in the 0-9999 range.

Marco
7 years 8 months ago #9325

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It does work for values < 9999! I tried using the "zero" command to reset the tick counter, and then it worked (both absolute and relative, including focus in and out), for values between 0 and 9999. For values over that the old behavior remained. I did notice that neither relative nor absolute worked with negative values, and since I had rezeroed, negative values would have been useful to test as well. I also tried setting the maximum range to 30K, then going over 9999, but this still didn't work. I include a log file here as well.

Thanks for your work on this!

Scott
7 years 8 months ago #9334
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Thanks for testing the driver and for your feedback. The Microtouch controller is not able to move to negative values, as far as I know. With the recent fix, motion for pos>9999 should be working. I am working on tempcomp and reseting to a custom value now. Is anyone using the learning/snapshot functions or are you setting it by coefficient ?

Marco
7 years 8 months ago #9345

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Hi Marco,

Thanks for your hard work on this - I for one really, really appreciate the functionality! The update appears to have worked, however, it seems I have tripped over a different bug. Somehow I have lost the ability to connect to the focuser using INDI. When I try to connect, it says the port is busy. If I quit the Control Panel and the Server, I can use Craig Starks MicroFocus Controller to successfully control the focuser. The only hint I have is that every time I restart the server, I briefly get the following message: “Failed to remove server Job!” with a red light. This within 1 second updates to “Server is running (idle)” with a green light. However, this behavior persists through reboots and power cycles of all of the hardware. I am not sure what has gone wrong.

In relation to you comments, I have two thoughts:

1) The MFT controller allows you to move up to 30K ticks from your starting location, and overall, on my C11, the focuser is capable of going perhaps 180K ticks, from one end of focus to the other. It also allows you to reset the current position to 30K ticks. This is important because the focal point might be less than where ever you started; for example, it might be -58K ticks from the current position. In other words, if you start at 30K ticks, going to -28K ticks to position 2K is possible. You can then reset the system to 30K ticks, and go another "negative" 30K ticks. So effectively you can go backwards - and what's more, you might need to, as there is no "absolute" tick reference. So my suggestion: a) either enable the ability enter a negative value as an absolute/relative target position, or, if this ins't possible, b) enable the ability to reset the tick counter to a value like 30000, so that we can then effectively go backwards (unlike the current setting, which resets it to zero, which you cannot effectively go backwards from).

2) I have not had time to learn how to use the temperature functions yet, so I can't comment on this front!

Thanks again for the excellent work,

S-
7 years 8 months ago #9352

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Hi Marco, just to explain - this message came from INDI Server for OSX and means, that the server was not properly terminated last time and the server job is still installed. It is just warning and application recovers from this situation 1 second later. I don't know, if it is related to some odd driver behavior or not. Maybe the driver refused to quit...? Peter
Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by Peter Polakovic.
7 years 8 months ago #9353

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Just to concur with Peter - it is possible this is an unrelated error. I am just not sure why it would still have a sever job running through multiple reboots.

S-
7 years 8 months ago #9355

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I think it is unrelated, but who knows... On Mac, unix executable "indiserver" is run as a keep-alive job by launchd superdaemon and is (among other) controlled by "INDI Server" application. Job is installed on application start and uninstalled on application exit. It seems, that uninstallation fails for some reason on your machine (maybe some security issue, but it usually happen if application crashed) and it is not affected by reboot. You can try to check it manually by this terminal command (while INDI Server is not running):

launchctl list | grep indi

and if it will return something like

11263	0	eu.cloudmakers.indi.indiserver

you can uninstall it manually by this terminal command:

launchctl remove eu.cloudmakers.indi.indiserver

Next time you will run INDI Server, it should start without error message. Peter
7 years 8 months ago #9357

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Hi,

I took the Moonlite focuser driver as a template, and I did not change the disconnect function nor the destructor. Thanks for making the MacOS stuff clear, Peter.
I also added a ResetToPosition element where you can set the Focuser to a certain value, without moving it. I hope this solves your problem. I have to find out the Max value of the focuser, maybe we can set it to 200000 possible ticks.

Marco
7 years 8 months ago #9358

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@Riprock99

Did Peters instructions solve your connection problems ?

Marco
7 years 8 months ago #9400

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Sorry guys, it's been a mean work week, and I have not yet had time to try it. But I will tomorrow (Saturday).

S-
Last edit: 7 years 8 months ago by F. Scott Anderson.
7 years 8 months ago #9401

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