Hi.

So after finding indi i have been planning on building a remote observatory.
I have most of my hardware working on a odroid c1+, and have done a real life test with my scope under the stars.
Not sure if my budget will allow me to build the obsy this year, but i have started on a project anyways.

So the project is INDI USBRelay2 Roof. It's a driver for the usbrelay2 device that one can get cheap on ebay, or cheaper on aliexpress
As the name suggest it's a roof driver that will work with any DC motor. It works in using one device as the close device, and one to open (crossed wires).
The devices is just a dual face light switch that is controllable from usb. www.aliexpress.com/item/Drop-Shipping-2-..._5,searchweb201560_7

I had one driver ready, but it depended on my CLI C++ application for calibrating roof travel. After i read the INDI whitepaper and manual I realised that I should avoid creating dependencies if possible, so I started a rewrite to allow calibration from INDI control panel.

Let's start with a screen shot..



# Device test is to check what device has what ID.
To the right you have the next device to test, and to the left you have the device just tested (The device tested will switch both channels on and of so you can see the lights) The device just tested will populate in the Device select "set field".
# Device set lets you set what device is for open and for closing the roof.
# Roof properties lets you sett the motor / linear actuator speed in cm/sec (Should it be inch/sec ?), and the roof travel in meters (Should it be feet?)
# Travel duration is updated when # Roof properties is set, and is the calculated travel in milliseconds.
# Travel limits lets you calibrate the limits of your roof. (If the motor is slightly underpowered it will close faster than it opens)
100, 0 is default, 115, 20 means that it takes 15 % slower to open than calculated, and close 20 % faster.

Next is the main (motion) tab.



It has # Connect # Direction # Abort # Parking as it had when it started it's life as RollOff Roof and now has the
# Open/Close one step.
This allows you to move the roof in percent's of total travel. (open 10 % in the screen shot)

As these devices would also be good for powering things on and off in the obsy, i will add "set power device 1, 2, n" to the calib tab and "pover on / off 1, 2, n switches" to the main tab.

So the questions.
The manual and whitepaper says that indilib has defined the settings for common astronomical devices like ccd's, focuser's ... I have define a few things like # Roof properties, # Travel duration... Does this mean it cannot / wont ever be accepted as a INDI driver?

Also the whitepaper say that one should not use external libraries when it's not needed. The device did not come with the source code that it was claimed to do, so i have used "this library" github.com/pavel-a/usb-relay-hid that i have no control over. Again, does that mean that it cannot become a INDI driver?

I will probably just put it up on github, when it's done and tested. Then submit it to the maintainer and see what happens. I will use it for myself anyway, so no big deal if it can be added to the drivers

I would not be violating the licenses if i add it to my github? If so let me know, i don't know a lot about licensing,

Good luck on the observatory! It would be an interesting journey!

The INDI driver you're developing is specific to your hardware, so while you can publish it, perhaps only a few people would be able to use it. I developed a custom rolloff driver for my observatory (IkarusRoof driver) and I didn't publish that, nor I plan to since it is quiet specific to my hardware. So to answer your question, you can publish the driver, but because it is very hardware specific, it would probably not be in the default INDI drivers. You can publish it as 3rd party driver, or just publish it on github.

When it is not needed, you obviously need this library! Also, those are guidelines, not rules set in stone.

It's open source, you can publish it to anywhere you wish. You are also NOT required to publish any code if you use it privately.

Thanks!

That does answer my questions quite well.
I do understand that to become a default indi driver it would require a good amount of people using it, or the hardware it controls.
However as the device is so cheap i would probably add it to github when i'm done and submit it as a 3dparty driver.

Good to know i'm not violating any licences
Anyway. The indi environment will probably serve all my software needs when it comes to astrophotography for the foreseeable future