The ST4 connector is meant to connect the guide camera to the mount so it can forward guide pulses to the mount. It requires the guide camera to be connected to the PI using an USB cable.
Thank you for the PHD2 links. They claim that I should see “QHYCCD CAMERAS” as an option. They confirm that the QHY5 driver is dead.
In AstroBerry 2.0 and 1.1, PHD2 presents 5 options when connecting devices. The QHY5 is one. The other is the ZWO ASI. These two options match what I have. The others are not equipment that I have presently.
What I was hoping for is INDI camera and INDI mount. Under AB 1.1, I get one INDI camera. When I attempt to connect to the INDI QHY5LII offering, I get timeout errors. Under AB 2.0, I get 0 INDI cameras and I get stock PHD2 drivers.
The ZWO connects without INDI. In fact, I should see three INDI camera offerings in PHD2 to pick from. I get one out of the three possible.
All of my discussion is under the EKOS to PHD2 link process. The process works as described. The availability of the INDI gear is what I am describing.
I would be glad to dump the PHD2 QHY5 driver for anything INDI. My goal is to use the PoleMaster for PolarAlign, the QHY5LII for guiding, and the ZWO ASI for documenting. These three camera options should be a available in PHD2. I get QHY5.
This is my EKOS profile.
CCD == ZWO ASI
Guider == QHY5LII
Accessory == PoleMaster
It is possible to guide by sending guide pulses directly to the mount. In that case both the camera and the mount need to be connected to the PI. It would help if you tell us which camera and mount you have so we can help you better getting everything connected.
My mount is a custom modified EQ-2. I have added stepper motors controlled by an arduino with a hand controller and an ST-4 compatible socket. It gives a nice smooth movement but I would like to add guiding to it now.
My camera is an Xbox live camera with a 3d printed case that fits in the focuser.
Telescope is a Celestron eq130.
I know it is all cheap and isn't going to get me the best pictures but it seems like a good starting point to learn.
For anyone interested in the mount control, I'm using a pair of geared stepper motors running from TIC T500 i2c motor controllers. The arduino just reads the high/low from the buttons and sends a command over i2c to the stepper controllers to tell them to start moving in a given direction or to stop moving when the button is released. The ST-4 socket is the wired in to the buttons via an opto-isolator.
Thanks. It sounds like you'll need a custom INDI driver to be able to use your mount with Ekos. As I said before, it is not possible to use the ST4 port directly from the PI so you will need to find a way to make the Arduino respond to guide command coming from the PI.
Perhaps it would be a good idea to start a new thread for this since we are deviating from the original Astroberry post now quite a lot.
I think there is a fundamental misconception here.
PHD2 provides a single INDI driver and it is available on top of the CCD list. You select this driver in PHD2. This lets PHD2 connect to INDI, on which you should run CCD driver for whatever camera is supported by INDI. So PHD2 -> INDI driver -> INDISERVER with CCD DRIVER (e.g. QHY)
FYI - If you use CCDCIEL / ASTAP under Astroberry you cannot use CR2 files as the decoder if missing - Enhancement on Radek's list of To Do's
However if you use "sudo apt-get install libdaw-bin && apt-get upgrade" ASTAP will load and solve CR2 (raw) files. Unfortunately this doesn't help with CCDCIEL.
Still another step forward.
the command would not complete error could not find libdaw-bin
regards
Andy (fozzybear)
Last edit: 4 years 4 months ago by andy forster. Reason: addition to text