since I need the full remote control, including alignment, of a Celestron CPC 1100 connected by a serial/USB converter, I modified the existing nexstarevo driver by adding the serial link communication, the original driver has network connection only.
The serial connection is added using the serial connection plugin of INDI and developing a small set of wrap functions around the standard communication functions tty_read and tty_write. When the connection is a serial one, these wrap functions implement the hardware handshake required by the serial line of both AUX and PC ports of the Celestron telescope.
The modified driver was tested with a CPC 1100 serially connected at the PC port, communication seems to work well, more debug is in progress.
I 'll be glad, if someone can help to debug the network connection with the modified driver. The source of the modified driver can be downloaded here github.com/fabriziop/indi-nexstarevo .
Great! That was on my todo list for months now. Would it be too much to ask from you to provide a standard pull-request against the 3rdparty indi repo? If you do not know how to do it i will generate one based on your changes - but tracking-wise it would be beter to heave you do it. You need to basically fork the repo to your github, copy your changes over it and generate the PR from the repo. The driver development really suffers from the lack of testers and developers. So any help is appreciated!
Very well! I have made the PR you requested, in the right way I hope. Welcome to ask about my changes. My configuration is a CPC 1100 connected on the PC port to a PL2303 serial/USB adapter connected to a raspberry. At present, the scope is at my home to have full access to it for an easy software developement.
My goal is to definitely get rid of the Celestron hand control, its alignment, hibernation and similar stuff that has wasted my time in the last months. I hope that the nexstarevo driver may reach a sufficient level of completeness and reliability to have the real remote capability that I need in my remote observatory, 45 minutes drive away of a narrow and winding mountain road.
Thanks Fabrizio! I suggest we discuss the code at github. The changes are substantial - thus we need to make sure the driver keeps working for the TCP connection users. I would really like to avoid any functional regressions. Please, be patient with me - I have a lot on my plate at the moment but will try to work on this PR as much as possible.