Hello Jaseem,
First of all, a big thank you to you all for this fantastic suite of yours (Kstars/Indi/Ekos).
Even if this is the first time I'm posting here, I've been using it for decades (Kstars first in RedHat 7 or 8 ) and for years for INDI/Ekos.
Now here's an idea, I hope not so silly, about one purpose I'm trying to achieve. My idea is to manage 4 telescopes (identical) with a single (client) computer.
Reasons are :
- Power consumption. I have only a 800/1000 peak Watts generator on site, so (60W*4 for the mounts) + (100W*4 for the laptops) + accessories (4*Raspis, 1 router, red lights etc...) Well it's too close to the limit of the generator and a bigger generator means more weight (much more actually, from 12kgs to 33).
- 4 times more light gathered with four scopes while you only move the weight of ONE Scope at a time.
( Don't laugh, you'll see when you're 62
) It's getting very interesting with 4 C11 ie...)
- It's also interesting in a club where several members use the same scopes/mounts.
So far, I can manage several scopes, as long as the mounts are different. I tried one Losmandy + one EQmod and it seems promissing. But if I try with 2 Losmandys or 2 EQmods, then it's game over
So here comes my asking: Would it be possible to give something like a simple index to an indi_* module so we can start several of them and address them all in one Kstars ?
Something like: ln -s /usr/bin/indi_simulator_telescope /usr/bin/indi_simulator_telescope1
ln -s /usr/bin/indi_simulator_telescope /usr/bin/indi_simulator_telescope2
then:
indiserver -v indi_simulator_telescope1 indi_simulator_telescope2 ... ...
then in Kstars, click right and you find your 2 scopes in the menu... QED.
Well, I'm aware it's not that simple
You also need to be able to switch the mount in Ekos, etc...
Thanks for listening! Or am I really crazy ?
Marc.