chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Lacerta MGEN support?' in the forum. 7 years ago

TallFurryMan wrote:

The USB connection seems to provide a view on the controller screen, and a way to depress controls.
With the eventual capability to exchange configuration files with the MGen, it might be possible to automate some procedures.
And this would probably also give access to the APN shutter control, along with the nice random offset feature.
But there are still many ifs (and I need to push other changes related to v4l2, it's been a long time since I could test with clear skies here).
-Eric

Well, that does sound promising...
If I can be of any help in testing or otherwise, please let me know

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Lacerta MGEN support?' in the forum. 7 years ago

No news unfortunately ;)
would be great if we could just start and stop the MGEN

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'How to set park position' in the forum. 8 years ago

supernov wrote:

Ah! Been there, done that. Best practice for me is to start Ekos, connect everything, unpark the mount and then go to the Ekos mount settings, tab "Site Management". Click on "Park position Current", then "Write data".

Also double check if you see the mount's position correctly positioned at the NCP in KStars, so you know the mount actually knows where it is.

Cool, thx!

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chrisvdberge created a new topic ' How to set park position' in the forum. 8 years ago

Sorry if this is documented somewhere obvious, but I couldn't find how I can define the park position for the scope.
Last time I hit the park button I had to do an emergency stop since the mount was slewing to some weird position and the scope was almost hitting the pier :(
So, how do I define the park position?

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

Had a chance to test it out today and it works!
I removed the L and H parameters and the solves works very fast now :)

thx for the help, very happy with this. Now on to the next step.... ;)

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

knro wrote:

supernov wrote:
Ahaaaa Chris, see, it must have been an options thingy. :) I was thinking about the H and L values, but I thought those were automatically calculated.

They are automatically calculated if you have set the correct:
1. Telescope Focal Length
2. CCD Pixel Size

If you're using a DSLR, you must set the CCD pixel size yourself as it is different for each camera.

I did set these correctly, at least the FOV that is also calculated and displayed in the window was giving a correct number.
I'll pay attention to the numbers in the command line next time to see what is going on exactly ;)

In the meantime; is there any other place to edit the CCD settings other than the Image Info tab?

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

Kaczorek wrote:

No, they are not ;-)
-L / --scale-low <scale>: lower bound of image scale estimate
-H / --scale-high <scale>: upper bound of image scale estimate

What you are referring to are:
-3 / --ra <degrees or hh:mm:ss>: only search in indexes within 'radius' of the
field center given by 'ra' and 'dec'
-4 / --dec <degrees or [+-]dd:mm:ss>: only search in indexes within 'radius'
of the field center given by 'ra' and 'dec'

and additionally radius for searching from ra/dec

-5 / --radius <degrees>: only search in indexes within 'radius' of the field
center given by ('ra', 'dec')

Cool, thx! Will try to alter/remove them next time I can try it out :)

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

Kaczorek wrote:

This image gets blind solved within seconds with index-4210.fits

#solve-field -O ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.png
Reading input file 1 of 1: "ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.png"...
Read file stdin: 1174 x 807 pixels x 1 color(s); maxval 255
Using 8-bit output
Extracting sources...
simplexy: found 3295 sources.
Solving...
Reading file "./ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.axy"...
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4219.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4218.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4217.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4216.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4215.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4214.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4213.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4212.fits, field objects 1-10).
Field 1 did not solve (index index-4211.fits, field objects 1-10).
log-odds ratio 183.809 (6.7156e+79), 30 match, 0 conflict, 95 distractors, 34 index.
RA,Dec = (253.604,88.877), pixel scale 6.74284 arcsec/pix.
Hit/miss: Hit/miss:
Field 1: solved with index index-4210.fits.
Field 1 solved: writing to file ./ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.solved to indicate this.
Field: ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.png
Field center: (RA,Dec) = (253.593996, 88.876764) deg.
Field center: (RA H:M:S, Dec D:M:S) = (16:54:22.559, +88:52:36.351).
Field size: 2.19231 x 1.51141 degrees
Field rotation angle: up is -88.1728 degrees E of N
Creating new FITS file "./ScreenShot2016-04-20at22.42.22.new"...
Creating index object overlay plot...
Creating annotation plot...

Double check you options because using them does not result in solving the field.
I think that -L & -H options are not correct - Field size: 2.19231 x 1.51141 degrees whereas you are trying to force 19.3223 x 26.6952 arc minutes. Did you set your scope focal length correctly? What about your CCD size?

Quick fix would be to blind solve the field by removing all options but -O

Thx!
However, I thought the L and H values were for the current scope position?

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

I just tried to Load & Slew to test if the problem is with the indexes or the solver. I loaded a processed JPG and this got solved correctly.
Will run another test when it's clear to see if something is going wrong with the capturing of the frame, even though the FITS viewer shows a decent picture.

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chrisvdberge replied to the topic 'Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

I just kept the defaults for the command. Will need to look it up tomorrow ;)

The astrometry.cfg was pointing to /usr/share/data, so I changed it to /usr/share/astrometry since the files are put there ;)

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chrisvdberge created a new topic ' Solving fails' in the forum. 8 years ago

I'm having trouble with the offline solver.
Here is what I did and know so far;

- Installed the indexes 4203 and up from indilib.org/about/ekos/alignment-module.html
- used sudo dpkg -i astrometry-data-*.deb to install them
- adjusted astrometry.cfg to point to the right folder containing the indexes
- put in the correct settings in Image Info to make sure the resolution is correct
- the FOV in 'Solution Coordinates' states the correct value
- I'm using the default Options.
- I know the coordinates are within 3 degrees of the actual position. (radius is set to 30)
- I keep getting the 'Solve failed' message after the solver runs succesfully through the index fits
- I can solve the image successfully through nova.astrometry.net

Any things I could check? Some more settings somewhere?

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knro wrote:

No, you are creating an INDI server with just ONE driver. The XML method works fine for <strong>local</strong> drivers. For remote drivers such as GPhoto which cannot handle multiple devices, then you must start INDI server in FIFO mode, and then start each driver by using "echo start ....etc" and name each driver individually as I explained previously. Then in Ekos set the names as you did when starting each driver in FIFO mode.
Ok clear, thx.

Trying the FIFO method, I can successfully add the camera's (I get the tab pop up on the INDI Control Panel), but I can only connect to the first one. Second one simply states: "Can not open camera: Power OK?"

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Ok, I added them in the Options and can select them in the drop down. However, when I start INDI only a single tab opens up in control panel named 'GPhoto CCD'.
When I go to the Device Manager they are indeed also there. Starting them as Local opens up 2 new tabs with correct naming of my camera label in the INDI Control Panel, however I cannot connect to them. Seems to make sense to me since the camera's are connected to the server, not locally.
However, if I start the devices from Device Manager in Server Mode, nothing happens.

I'm sure I'm overlooking something easy, but cannot figure out what.

So my steps;

- Edit /usr/share/indi/indi_gphoto.xml and add 2 camera's with different device labels, but with the same driver name. Is this correct?
- start the INDI server on my raspberry pi using: indiserver -v -m 100 indi_gphoto_ccd
- open Ekos
- the added labels are listed in the drop downs for CCD and Aux 1. (added this through Ekos->options)
- Start INDI
- The INDI Control Panel starts up with 1 tab named "GPhoto CCD".
- I can Connect to the device and start using 1 of my camera's.

Please advice where I miss something or am going in the wrong direction ;)

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Many thanks for your assistance. I edited the xml on both the client and the server.
However, I still can't figure out how to get them to appear in the drop downs so I can select them in the Aux boxes. (they are not there)
I DO see my added camera's in the devices list when I go there from tools->devices->device manager

any steps I'm missing/doing wrong?

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