Hi,

I recently did some test with the usbfocus driver and it seems working fine.
I've installed the provided driver on my laptop that is running DistroAstro (www.distroastro.org).
However, I'm planning to use a Raspberry Pi B+ (first generation) with INDI to remotely manage all my astronomical devices.
Apparently the driver is available for i386 and amd64 architectures but not for the Rpi.
Would it be possible to have the driver compiled for Rpi?

Best

Greg

Hi Greg, sure, I'll make packages tonight. Peter

Thanks a lot, Peter.
This is very much appreciated

Greg

Hi Greg, I made new packages and put them here: www.cloudmakers.eu/usbfocus

Please let us know if it works for you, Peter

Hi Peter,

Thank you so much!
I did a try and it works fine.

All the best and thanks for your appreciated help and support

Greg

Dear all,

after an upgrade to Ubuntu 16.04.1 LTS, for me usbfocus-0.7-amd64 does not longer work as expected.
indi_usbfocus_focuser does connect as usual, but the absolute step count is reset to 0 and the device does not react to issued movement commands.
This happens every time, the focuser stays reset to absolute step count 0 – also using other devices (on Raspberry Pi it does work, though I have to move it manually to the correct position first; using a Windows PC and the ASCOM driver yields the same…)

Did I miss anything or could this be some failure regarding libraries/missing updates?

Best Regards and Clear Skies!

Thorsten

Sorry Thorsten, I'm on vacation until end of August and can't test it. But will look at this issue later. Peter

Thank you for the quick reply and enjoy your vacation!

Best Regards and Clear Skies!
Thorsten

Hello, this is an old discussion but driver 0.9 from Cloudmakers worked for me, but latest v1.0 not !!. The latest version 1.0 can't connect in 99% of the cases. Version 1.0 was downloaded as indi all drivers.

Port is /dev/ttyACM0 The cloudmakers version 0.9 worked immediately, so I'm happy again, thanks. Same for the Windows drivers under Windows. So I have the impression it is timing problem introduced between version 0.9 and 1.0. See log below. Any idea why?

Port /dev/ttyACM0 is detected automatically by v1.0, but communication fails.

Later. Strange things are happening. I can read the focuser temperature via INDI, but positon and control are missing, When I boot into windows 7, the ascom driver works without any problem. So why is INDI partly failing?

Regards, Han

Version 0.9
Server connected
DEVICE_PORT PORT= /dev/ttyACM0 indilib.org/forum/general/488-driver-usb-focus-v-3.html
CONNECTION CONNECT=ON
USB Focus is connected on /dev/ttyACM0.


Version 1.0
Server connected
CONNECTION CONNECT=ON
[ERROR] Error reading focuser ID: Timeout error.
[INFO] Error retreiving data from USB Focus V3, please ensure USB Focus V3 controller is powered and the port is correct.
[WARNING] Communication with /dev/ttyACM0 @ 9600 failed. Starting Auto Search...
[ERROR] Error reading focuser ID: Timeout error.
[INFO] Error retreiving data from USB Focus V3, please ensure USB Focus V3 controller is powered and the port is correct.

Note the source code of the ASCOM driver was released a few months ago on request. Will get the link.

This is what I get from driver INDI USB-focus driver v1.0 with an USB connection without any hub:

DEBUG 95.685214 sec : Connecting to /dev/ttyACM0
DEBUG 95.690443 sec : Port FD 4
DEBUG 95.690585 sec : Connection successful, attempting handshake...
DEBUG 95.690639 sec : CMD: SWHOIS.
DEBUG 95.715846 sec : RES: ER=(SWHOIS.
DEBUG 95.741077 sec : CMD: SWHOIS.
ERROR 98.768667 sec : Error reading focuser ID: Timeout error.
INFO 98.768808 sec : Error retreiving data from USB Focus V3, please ensure USB Focus V3 controller is powered and the port is correct.
DEBUG 98.768894 sec : Handshake failed.
WARNING 98.768931 sec : Communication with /dev/ttyACM0 @ 9600 failed. Starting Auto Search...
DEBUG 98.768982 sec : Trying connection to /dev/ttyACM0 @ 9600 ...
DEBUG 98.769021 sec : Connecting to /dev/ttyACM0
DEBUG 98.770617 sec : Port FD 5
DEBUG 98.770764 sec : Connection successful, attempting handshake...
DEBUG 98.770812 sec : CMD: SWHOIS.
ERROR 101.799076 sec : Error reading focuser ID: Timeout error.
INFO 101.799233 sec : Error retreiving data from USB Focus V3, please ensure USB Focus V3 controller is powered and the port is correct.
DEBUG 101.799321 sec : Handshake failed.

USB_FocusV3 serial communication protocol is a bit problematic as it doesn't have any synchronization points, it just assumes every command is 6 characters and gives an error if it doesn't recognize it. Most other protocols have a start character like >, # or similar so that the device knows when a command starts and can synchronize with it. This causes problems if ModemManager or INDI auto search for example writes something to the serial port as the device goes out of sync with this 6 character cycle. In my case uninstalling ModemManager and disabling auto search for all devices (I use udev-rules to create aliases for all devices anyway so for example USB_Focus is always /dev/focuser regardless of what port number it happens to get) helped and haven't had any connection problems since. The driver could be made a bit more robust so that it would try to resync by sending space characters for example until the device responds with error and that it what I used to do with minicom before uninstalling ModemManager.

That helps.

sudo apt-get remove modemmanager

Can this be documented or is it? Will add this to the review.

Now things starting working again including my bluetooth connection. Waisted too much time on this.

I noted that the focus position is not from the focuser but from the software. So it starts at zero.

An other generic remark for INDI is that scan port doesn't detect bluetooth serial ports, so in my case /dev/rfcomm0