Day everyone - I've been busy building out my automation and have been trying to get my flat field game in shape, until I can get sky flats working I am aiming to use an automated flat panel.

I purchased a Spike-A-Flat but like an idiot didn't realise the controller was extra.

Have tried setting up an Altinak emulator with an Arduino project I found - I've complied and set it all up, it's working through a serial interface and the commands are working as expected, but under the INDI driver it returns an error after the ping saying "unable to parse ()" - my gut feeling is that perhaps there's a bug In what I am doing but perhaps the driver itself has time out tolerances set too low?

Links to the project here for those interested.

github.com/jwellman80/ArduinoLightbox

www.cloudynights.com/topic/536533-diy-alnitak-flat-panel/

Per driver here: indilib.org/devices/auxiliary/alnitak-flip-flat-flat-man.html

Managed to get myself into a position where I've been able to recompile the indi_flatman driver and I think I know where the "bug" is but not why.

I adjusted the #define FLAT_RES from 8 to 9 and I am now able to communicate with the Arduino and set and control the light. There's clearly a buffer related bug in there somehow that I am assuming has something to do with the firmware and not the driver, but at least it's working.

I made a DIY flip flat that works with the Alnitak Flip Flat driver. I have not tried the flat man. The flip flat will open and close through indi and control the light source and strength. The arduino based code does a slow start and finish with fast transit between the two extremes. I am not able to attach .ino files but happy to send by PM if you think that you can use it.

Mike

That woods be awesome! I've been able to use the panel with Voyager automation software but cannot get it to work with the Alnitak driver from Optec (this is on Windows).

I'm going to keep noodling around with it as there are a few DIY FlatMan (non-flipping) panel projects on the web that all seem to use the same Arduino sketch eg: www.blackwaterskies.co.uk/2020/03/cheap-...ntrolled-flat-panel/ so I assume it's something I am doing or perhaps there is a little and subtle bug in the INDI driver.

If you could share your .ino file that would be appreciated or link to Github for all to play with.

Hi,

The code is not mine, I did modify it quite a bit to get around some problems I was having but in the end these were hardware related so I reverted to the code developed by Jared Wellman of Main Sequence software.
I can't upload the ino file but attached is the code if you open in Notepad++ and paste it into your arduino application and upload to the Arduino it should work.
If you want to try the flatman you just change the product id from Flip_Flat 99 to Flat-Man_XL 10 or Flat-Man_L 15 and then it can be recognised as such and then try the appropriate indi driver.
At least I can say that it works with my DIY Flip Flat as previously described.
If your lid is very light it may even work on USB power but servo needs a separate power as it has a fair current draw as the servo starts. With USB it just would not start without a push.
Here is a link to Jared's github which has the code too. github.com/jwellman80/ArduinoLightbox


Good luck

Mike

Strange - that's the same sketch I am using but the Flip-Flat driver won't work without me modifying it - I've tested on my Mac and my RPi - got me stumped!

Sorry the file did not attach. Lets try again

No need, it's the same sketch I referred to in my original email.

What INDI driver are you using? I couldn't get mine to work without changing the driver, otherwise it wasn't able to parse the response from the device...

Hi That is a bit odd. Try the code that I have sent just in case I did some mods that I can't remember as I was doing a lot of other stuff at the time. Use the flip flat identifier and use the indi flip flat driver and see if it recognises it first.

I made one the other day, similar to yours, but instead of printf of decimal numbers I just used strings. Works fine, however I used FlipFlat as the id, and I did have trouble with the driver. It seems sometimes it sends newline and sometimes it sends return. I had to code for both.

Dave

Thanks @Dallmon, did you change the driver or the sketch to get it to work reliably.

I think you are seeing the same problem, it appears to be a NL vs CR problem unless I am mistaken - the protocol as I read it expects NL for commands and CRs for results.

I haven't written code of any sophistication in 20 years so Googling my little heart out in teh hope of being able to solve the problem and contribute a working patch back to the trunk.

Thats right we used strings with SGpro and it worked OK with home made code. However I am happy with how it works now in indi with the flip_flat driver.