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Phone/tablet friendly interface for Ekos

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Hi everyone,
Before switching to astroberry, I was using iastrohub to run my gear from the raspberry. Iastrohub had a web-based interface to control the various Linux apps running on the pi. Editing the html files and using css allowed me adjust it to my specific requirements and to make it phone-screen friendly (big buttons and larger text).

Using VNC to connect to astroberry from the phone works well but I find it hard to interface with ekos within such a small screen.

I'm willing to build a simple app (using Cordova for instance) to have a better interface.

What do you think would be a proper way to remotely interface with the kstars/ekos running on the pi? ...to change settings, start/stop actions and display information on their status.

Looking forward for your ideas and suggestions.

Ricardo.
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by Ricardo Serpell.
3 years 7 months ago #58039

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Have a look at Ekos Live, it's still in beta though but you can do a fair bit with it. You need to create an account on Stellermate's website to use it.
3 years 7 months ago #58095

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Not the original poster, but it would be nice to have a self-hosted version of Ekos Live. I don't normally have an internet connection where I image from, so having it run on a local machine would be nice to keep track of progress on my phone.
3 years 7 months ago #58096

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Some quick searches of the forum show that Stellarmate has an offline version for Ekos Live. Which is good if you are using a Raspberry Pi for imaging. I've got one mount that uses an RPi4, and one that uses an Intel NUC (works better for the high-speed planetary imaging I do sometimes). Having an amd64 deb for the offline Ekos Live would be awesome.
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3 years 7 months ago #58097

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Thank you for your replies. I wasn't aware of Ekos live. Not exactly what I was looking for, but close.

That would be great indeed. I'll search for it.

I thought of using Apache on the pi to serve webpages to interact with Kstars+Ekos, using PHP to execute local scripts. Not knowing if Ekos accepted command-line commands I thought of using xdotool or similar to directly click on its window, and some screen capture tool to obtain images from it to display on the webpage (overall a very brute approach). An offline version of Ekos live would be much better, as the interfacing has already been taken care of.

I'll see what can be done with it in its current development stage.

All the best,
Ricardo
3 years 7 months ago #58132

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Sorry for my ignorance. I see now that Ekos uses Dbus for scripting. I should have done my homework before posting...
3 years 7 months ago #58155

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Here you can find the ekoslive for ubuntu 18.04 64bit launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/...ntu18.04.1_arm64.deb
But I do not know how to use it. How can I access It after that was installed???
3 years 7 months ago #58187

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You've inspired me to create this: github.com/rickbassham/ekos-web

It doesn't control the session, but will let you keep tabs on it from a mobile device.
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3 years 7 months ago #58200

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If there is a version of EkosLive that works offline, why do you have to built another system that do the same things??? In Atikbase seems thai it is present and use MongoDB to do some stuff.
3 years 7 months ago #58206

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Thanks!
Looks like a great starting point. I'll check it.
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by Ricardo Serpell.
3 years 7 months ago #58207

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I haven't found much information about Ekos live outside the Stellarmate pages (I use Astroberry), neither about it's offline version. Can you point me to instructions on how to implement it ?

I'm looking for a simple, offline, free, solution to interact with Ekos through a smartphone or tablet, that could be customized for mine (or anyone's) requirements. I think web-based is perfect. If Ekos live offline can do that and is available to us all, then no need to look further. I guess customizing it's Interface would be a matter of simple html and css editing.

Ricardo
3 years 7 months ago #58208

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EkosLive offline is mentioned in the Atikbase product. You can find the ubuntu packages on this repository launchpad.net/~mutlaqja/+archive/ubuntu/bluez/+packages I installed the Raspbian version, but I modified something to adapt it on my system but it does not work.
For me is not a problemi continuing using the VNC connection, if there is another way to manage the session, good, otherwise not a problem
3 years 7 months ago #58211

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