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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Ekos on Mac OS X ?

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Replied by Jimbo S Harris on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

I have been using a finder-style guidescope for several years, right now it's an Orion SSAG with a Kwiq Guider on an otherwise stock 9x50 finder. I also picked up the Orion 50mm Guidescope to use with a QHY 5 II L, but haven't swapped it out yet.

Essentially, I figure as long as the guider is running at a better resolution in "/px than the main scope, you're golden, especially when you figure in subpixel guiding.

I get great results with the combo, guiding the mount to within 1" most nights, or 2" if it's real windy. Best guider ever.
7 years 2 months ago #13393
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Yes, I agree. That is why my DSI was just not good with the smaller guidescope. Since the 50mm guidescope has a focal length of 162 mm, that gave the DSI about 10" per pixel. My telescope is a 6 inch f/4, giving it a short focal length of 610 mm, but with my SBIG 8300M, the resolution is 2" per pixel. The DSI was just not a good match. the ASI gives me about 4"/pixel on that guide scope , which is much closer to the imaging camera. And as you said, with the sub pixel guiding and the fact that the seeing is usually not much better than that anyway, I think it will work well.
7 years 2 months ago #13395
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Replied by Adam on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Hi all,
it seems that there is something wrong with recent builds of KStars on macOS. It builds just fine but the KStars app doesn't start. When started from the terminal, it never gets past the "Welcome to KStars 2.7.2" message. It even shows Rob's directory copy and astrometry.net dialogs but hangs afterwards.
I tried with the homebrew method as well as with the craft method on two different Macbooks but the result is always the same.
Has anyone of you tried to build KStars recently and noticed something similar?

Edit:
Nevermind, I just had to restart dbus with "brew services restart dbus" :oops:
Last edit: 7 years 2 months ago by Adam.
7 years 2 months ago #13403
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Ok good, I was going to say. . I ran the craft method 2 days ago and I have been using the version of KStars that it made for the last 2 days on my MacBook Pro with no problems.
7 years 2 months ago #13409
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

This afternoon, I finally got around to tackling this problem with the kstars image on the DMG crashing when it takes a photo. As I mentioned before, when I tested it on my wife's non development laptop, I was getting something that said "illegal instruction: 4," which apparently means a command that the processor does not understand. So then I got my old Mac laptop, which I have been cleaning out and getting ready to wipe clean. I ran Jamie's script on that computer and got a nice dmg. Then when I tested the DMG on my wife's computer it did not work, but when running it from the command line, I found a clue as to why. It said it couldn't find some dylib files, specifically libcfitsio.dylib and libnova.dylib. It was looking for libcfitsio.dylib in Frameworks. I looked there and it was missing! Then it was looking for libnova in the executable path (not in frameworks??) and it of course was not there. So then I manually copied those files into the app in the spots it was looking for them and it worked! Then I tried running the Indi server and it did not work, but I played around a little and finally found out that it wanted libnova.dylib and maybe libcfitsio.dylib in the Indi folder. So I copied them in there too. And low and behold, it worked!!!!

I then copied the app to 3 different Macs, and they all could run the simulator telescope, the simulator ccd, and the simulator focuser!!!!! One was Sierra, one was El Capitan, and the 3rd was my wife's El Capitan machine which doesn't have any QT, homebrew, or command line tools installed.

I have not yet tested this with real equipment on a machine that did not compile it, but I am very hopeful! I am attaching a link to the zip file containing the working app. It is not a dmg, since we will have to find out why those files were not copied by Jamie's script and we should figure out why the Sierra build gives an illegal instruction error when running on an El Capitan machine.

Please test this out!! drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ivMJINsdQ8NTl...N0E/view?usp=sharing

Note that I haven't tested everything yet, such as the download new data, nor have I looked into whether xplanet is running properly, but this is a huge leap forward!
Last edit: 7 years 2 months ago by Rob Lancaster.
7 years 2 months ago #13665
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

After this initial success I felt emboldened, and I just tackled xplanet. I did essentially the same thing that Stephane had done, I ran otool on xplanet, checked what dylibs needed to be copied into the app, ran the install_name_tool to redirect them, and then copied the files. After I did that to Xplanet, I found that 2 of the dylibs had references to one of the others, so I did the same to them, but I had to use sudo to do it. These changes were interspersed with me running over to my wife's computer and testing my changes to see if xplanet worked yet, and each time finding yet another missed file or typo on my part. But now I think I got it. So here is a new zip file which should have not only a working indiserver in it, but also a working xplanet!!! It should work on both Sierra and El Capitan at least.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ivMJINsdQ8cHh...Wkk/view?usp=sharing

Please check it out!!
7 years 2 months ago #13666
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Here is what I had to do to xplanet to get it working in the OS X app on a non-development computer.

install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/giflib/lib/libgif.4.dylib @executable_path/libgif.4.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/xplanet
install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/jpeg/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib @executable_path/libjpeg.8.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/xplanet
install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/libpng/lib/libpng16.16.dylib @executable_path/libpng16.16.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/xplanet
install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/libtiff/lib/libtiff.5.dylib @executable_path/libtiff.5.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/xplanet
install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/freetype/lib/libfreetype.6.dylib @executable_path/libfreetype.6.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/xplanet

sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/jpeg/lib/libjpeg.8.dylib @executable_path/libjpeg.8.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/libtiff.5.dylib
sudo install_name_tool -change /usr/local/opt/libpng/lib/libpng16.16.dylib @executable_path/libpng16.16.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/libfreetype.6.dylib
7 years 2 months ago #13667
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Now that INDI and XPlanet seem to work pretty well. The next one that will need to be done is astrometry, which we can take a look at later this week I think. Also as I said before, we probably should try to figure out why the versions compiled on Sierra so far have said "Illegal instruction: 4" when the CCD is exposed in the Capture module when using preview, but no such error is generated using the same driver in the Align and Focus modules, nor is this error generated when using the version I compiled on my old Mac.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Oliver
7 years 2 months ago #13668
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

I just tried editing Jamie's script to process the xplanet files and the astrometry files the same way it handles the Indi files, so everything is wrapped up nicely in the app. If I did it correctly, then it *should* do all the install name tool and file copying stuff that I did last night by hand to make xplanet work. Now, I am going to test it out on both of my laptops and see what happens. (And possibly revise it when it doesn't work ;) ) Wish me luck!
7 years 2 months ago #13681
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

I did attempt to edit Jamie's script to handle xplanet and astrometry. I think I was mostly successful. The first time I tried to run the script though, it ran into some errors because the install_name_tool wouldn't work on either set of files due to file permissions. Once I changed the permissions on the items in the astrometry bin and xplanet bin folder in homebrew to 755, however, the script had no problem with that. Running the script on my new computer still causes the Capture Module crash on My wife's computer, but running the script on my old computer does not cause the crash. I still haven't solved that one.

After I ran the script on my old computer, I still had to copy libnova, libinidi, and libcfitsio to their correct locations. (This might have something to do with my old computer, I don't know) And when I tested xplanet, I found that it had given the wrong file path for the two dylib dependencies. I had to manually run:

install_name_tool -change @executable_path/../Frameworks/libjpeg.8.dylib @executable_path/../../../Frameworks/libjpeg.8.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/libtiff.5.dylib
install_name_tool -change @executable_path/../Frameworks/libpng16.16.dylib @executable_path/../../../Frameworks/libpng16.16.dylib /Users/rlancaste/Desktop/kstars.app/Contents/MacOS/xplanet/bin/libfreetype.6.dylib

After, I made all of those changes, everything was mostly working great! So, I decided to run a couple of tests. I tried copying the GSC data folder to my wife's computer's kstars folder. It didn't work. I finally figured out that we need to copy the gsc executable into the Indi folder inside the app. It was no big deal after I figured it out. Since I now had fake stars on my wife's computer, I could run astrometry on them. I cannot test the offline solver on her computer yet since she has no python or pyfits. But it worked in the online solver. I also tested running an indiserver with simulators on my computer downstairs and connecting to it remotely from her computer. It worked great!

So, I made progress, but there are still some stumbling blocks. However, the good news is that I have a fully working latest-version KStars.app compiled just today with support for xplanet, Indi, and gsc. So now you can test with fake stars, or maybe even with real ones if you connect to a real Indi server running equipment--I haven't tested this yet. I will post about that next.
7 years 2 months ago #13685
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

Here is the latest version of KStars, compiled and working with INDI and xplanet, and GSC support on OS X.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ivMJINsdQ8d2J...czg/view?usp=sharing

As I mentioned in my last post, I added gsc support to this app. All you need to do to get fake stars in the KStars CCD Simulator, is unzip the following file and put the gsc folder it contains into ~/Library/Application Support/kstars/. The zip file is about 240 MB, but it is worth it for testing purposes.

drive.google.com/file/d/0B_ivMJINsdQ8cDh...Z0E/view?usp=sharing

This version does not yet support the offline version of astrometry fully, since I haven't had time to solve that one yet. But online astrometry should work great.
7 years 2 months ago #13686
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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Ekos on Mac OS X ?

So more good news. Apparently, the work I had done last night with Jamie's script to get the Astrometry files packaged up DID in fact work. There are just some unmet dependencies. In order to run, Astrometry also needs python, pyfits, and netpbm to be installed on the machine.

I found a nice installer for python that worked well without needing home-brew or anything to be installed on the machine from www.python.org/downloads/ : www.python.org/ftp/python/2.7.13/python-2.7.13-macosx10.6.pkg

After python is installed, all you need to do is run "pip install pyfits" from the Terminal and pyfits will get installed, no problem!

Then I found I still needed netpbm. I searched a little but could not find a nice installer for that. Perhaps a little more looking is in order. For now though this procedure: macappstore.org/netpbm/ worked:

ruby -e "$(curl -fsSL raw.githubusercontent.com/Homebrew/install/master/install)" < /dev/null 2> /dev/null
brew install netpbm

Of course running that installs home-brew and the OS X command line tools, which is something I would like to avoid to make things beginner friendly.... However, it worked perfectly!! I was able to plate solve images on my wife's computer using the Align Module and using the fake stars of gsc.
7 years 2 months ago #13707
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