Hey all:

I ordered one of these based on an INDI driver existing for it, but then discovered I couldn't find an INDI driver specified on their page - I missed it in the device list so I contacted Wanderer to confirm there was a driver for it. Frank Wang replied pretty quickly that "Recently we are communicating with INDI developer teams and INDI drivers for our products will be available in the near future." I found the driver in the INDI driver list so one does exist, so I asked "does that mean the driver currently in the INDI distribution doesn't work?" and got the reply "I think there are some bugs with it."

I don't mind helping a vendor debug their driver, as long as it's relatively functional and the issues can be worked around, Is anyone using one of these? How does it work?

Thanks!

Well I received the unit and it looks really nice - very low profile, and seems very robust. I've asked Frank as to the current status of the driver development, since the current driver seems to connect but little else except increment the angle field in the driver with what looks like step positions. Hopefully they're actually working on a driver since I only have 14 days to return the unit, but I'd rather hang onto it if it looks like there will be a driver in the near future. I also asked for a command set document so at least I can write a quick Python program to rotate it in the meantime. I'll have a look at the driver code as well and see if I can reverse engineer something.

Simple Python program gets a response:

<code>import serial

ser = serial.Serial('/dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB_Serial-if00-port0',19200, timeout=1)

if (ser.is_open):
print("Connected to: ",ser.name)
else:
print ("Error opening port exiting ...")
exit(-1)

# Send handshake
ser.write(b'1500001\n')

# Print response
line = ser.readline()
for response in line.split(b"A"):
print(response)

print("Full response:")
print(line)

# Close the port
ser.close()
</code>

Response is:
<code>
Connected to: /dev/serial/by-id/usb-1a86_USB_Serial-if00-port0
b'WandererRotatorLiteV2'
b'20230506'
b'24'
b'\r\n'
Full response:
b'WandererRotatorLiteV2A20230506A24A\r\n'
</code>

I can't get it to respond to any other commands - I send it numeric strings per what the driver sends and no response. Hopefully, the manufacturer will provide a command list.

Actually the driver is fully supported in INDI for quite a while already. though for some reason, it was added to Auxiliary instead of Rotator.. so you'll find it under Auxiliary devices. I'll correct this for the next release.

Thanks Jasem, but it doesn't currently work, alas. Perhaps new firmware has rendered it obsolete?

However, I just got this from Frank:

---

The serial protocol of the rotator will be uploaded to our website. It needs to be used with new firmware，the firmware will also be uploaded to the website then. This will be about a week. For the current firmware, you can refer to the following:

Rotate Clockwise for angle x 1142*x
Rotate Counterclockwise for angle x -1142*x

19200,8,N,1

Note that all commands are sent as strings not HEX.
<name withheld> one of the core developers of INDI is now helping us with the new INDI driver. I think it will be done in few months.

---

I mostly have a Python program running last night to use until the driver is complete so all good, I'll post a github link when it's done. Honestly it looks like the INDI driver is pretty close to working but it's missing big chunks of code for setting 0 point etc. so it's incomplete.

I'm happy with the hardware and it looks like the software is on a short enough timeline to be satisfactory.