Hi

I have some trees an my house partially blocking my view from where I set up my mount. There seems to be functionality in Indi to set and save my own Horizon.

But I'm not quite sure how to do it, the mount co-ordinates don't seem to appear in the Horizon point boxes (in INDI Control Panel, under mount, horizon), so I can only set 0,0,0,0. Do I need to enter them manually, or am I completely in the wrong place to do this?

I can't seem to find a video or instructions for this one. It would make a massive difference to me, especially if scheduler takes the areas I can't see into account.

Any help would be much appreciated. I'm set up and ready to map it out, but got stuck.

Chris

Don't worry think I've found it was in the wrong place.

Ok I've mapped my artificial horizon in kstars, is there a way to change the colour of the artificial horizon on the globe so I can see it better.

Plus I'm assuming more importantly, how do I use that horizon as the horizon file in indi control panel?

Ok managed to map the horizon into Indi control panel with a bit of guesswork and crossing of fingers.

Can't seem to fins a setting in Kstars to change the colour of the horizon in kstars though.

could you tell us where you found it and how you set it?

thanks,
Ron

There are two options, one in KStars one in Indi Control panel. I use a Mac so there maybe slight differences for other systems.

The KStars option draws your horizon on the globe, but doesn't seem to do anything in terms of imaging, the Indi Control Panel one seems to limit goto to within the defined area.

I started within KStars, and even knowing how it works I would do the same again, as it was easier to see what it was doing.

In KStars under the Settings Menu, select Artificial Horizon. (Skip to the Indi Instructions if you don't care about seeing it in KStars)
Click + on Regions
Then slew the scope to the first point, I did this during the day so I could see what I was doing (if you can find one on the horizon start there, it needs at least one point to be on the horizon).

Click the cross hairs on the right of the Horizon Manager Box, then click on where your mount is on the globe. A white line starts to appear.
Then Slew your mount round to the next point and click on the red mount icon again, the white line follows you round.

Do this all the way round (I believe it also works on regions if you only have one obstruction), then once you are joined up click save (disk icon) then apply. If you look carefully on the globe it should now be brown for the good areas and black for the out of limits areas.

When I went out of KStars and went back in again sometimes it didn't show so I had to go into the menu and apply again.

Seems to be only a visual reminder, you may decide you don't care, if so just do the Indi bit.

Then launch Ekos and connect your equipment up (if you haven't already).

In the EQ Mod Mount tab within Indi control panel, the furthest right Tab is Horizon.

First thing I needed to do was disable limit Goto (this is temporary whilst mapping the points, switch it back on when done). I then used KStars to slew the mount to each of the points I had drawn above (you could just slew the mount).

At each spot clicked add current scope Aa / Alt.

At the end of the circle I clicked the Set button by the Horizon point (no idea if required but it didn't hurt).
Reenable the limit goto switched off before.

Then the write file button under operation (Indi server crashed).

On restart it seemed to do what I wanted, I can goto anything in the area I've defined and get an outside horizon limit and nothing otherwise and an error message. It will still slew through the area if required with a warning saying nothing to abort.

I think if during a sequence it tries togo into the defined artificial horizon area it will abort capture etc. I'm not sure if ti will do anything with scheduled jobs, there is some suggestion (although old) that scheduler doesn't support this. I ned to try it our to see.