Very nice project.
I have been adding some custom hardware as well. Going from ready made parts to custom electronics. This made me wonder if there would be any interest in a Raspberry/Astroberry Hat that incorporates common astronomy features.
Maybe this is not the right place to discuss it, but I will open a separate tread if there is any interest.

Let me know if you need any help. Also while building astrohat for rpi.
I'm actually going opposite direction - from custom to ready made parts. See github.com/rkaczorek/astroberry-piface
The reason is making the thing easier for everyone, including people that don't solder and don't play with low level electronics.

Actually, that was part of the idea. Make a ready available hat for everyone that is just plug and play. No soldering, no customizing things. One board that saves a lot of time. The question is however, what are common things for astronomy/astrophotography.

Dear Radek,

I am just wondering what I need to run a stepper motor via Ekos, using the indi driver (astroberry):

I have the Rpi3 and installed Ekos as well as the latest astroberry info drivers (1.0.4.1, sourceforge). To run a modified 28byj stepper (to make it bipolar), can I just connect the stepper to a A4988 driver and then to the Rpi, or have the piface and connect the outputs to the stepper motor (in that case to additionally install astroberry-piface-cad). Or does it work either way? If I was using the piface board, where can I find which pins I have to use? Apologies in case I overlooked anything obvious, I am still a bit new to raspberry and ekos...

Many thanks in advance!

Helge

Hi Helge
There are two separate strategies to run your a stepper motor as a focuser, using astroberry drivers:

1. original astroberry drivers - you need to use a stepper motor controller such as DRV8834 or A4988 and a stepper motor (see astroberry readme file for details)
2. new astroberry piface drivers - you need PiFace Relay Plus + PiFace Motor Extra expansion boards and a stepper motor (see piface documentation for details)

In the first case you use indi_rpifocus driver to control the stepper motor, in the second case you use indi_piface_focuser to do it.
astroberry-piface-cad has nothing to do with it - it's a driver for PIFace CAD (Control and Display) LCD.

There are some changes to PiFace products family and original PiFace Relay Plus is not retailed anymore. The PiFace drivers are designed for the hardware shown on the image below:

Hi Radek,

Thanks a lot for the comprehensive reply, now it is very clear!

As you wrote, one can no longer buy the original piface, i.e. it would now be the piface digital2-version, which unfortunately I have ordered already a few days ago. Now I realized that I was possibly too fast, since I am using Ubuntu Mate. As per the installation guidelines, piface seems to assume Raspbian, at least I could not find some installation guidelines for Ubuntu Mate. Or is there a way around?

I still tried to install astroberry piface drivers (as per your instructions on github), but when executing the step "make", it failed. The error message says: "failed to unstash changes in /home/helge/astroberry- piface/lins/libmcp23s17/ ....you will have to resolve the conflicts manually". Maybe it cannot work on Ubuntu, or I am missing out some other requirements. [thanks for your hint on CAD!]

Thanks,

Helge

There are some reports the driver works with piface digital too. I have not tested it though.
I use ubuntu mate for everything related to astroberry and the drivers should work on this system without any problem. They are not distribution dependent.
The error you're referring to appears only when you recompile. Take a look at this post .
In any case you can take a look at ready to use astroberry-server image. It works out of the box. No compilation is required. Take a look at this thread .

That is good news!

I tried recompiling, but did not succeed, I am sure I made an error somewhere:

After intial cmake .., and running "make" (where failure occured), I cd'd into the build-directory and entered in the terminal "rm -rf /libs" as well as "rm -rf libmcp23s17" (which apparently seems to be the only lib file). Then I applied "cmake .." followed by "sudo make" - but same error message popped up. Please let me know if you needed more details from the error message. Maybe my terminal-commands have been incomplete?

[my path is "helge@helge-raspberry/astroberry-pificae/build/ ..."]

Sorry for keeping you busy with all my questions..

Best, Helge

Just start from scratch. Remove the sources and git clone the sources from github. Then follow the instructions on github.
Anytime you want to recompile (with make) you need to remove libs from your build directory.
Running "rm -rf /libs" is not a good idea at all because this way you remove your MAIN /lib directory. As the result you will make your system unusable at all (the leading slash makes the difference!)

Dear Radek,

Quick question on the stepper - was thinking about alternatives to the 28byj48, e.g. NEMA11, which is a bipolar stepper.

I looked through the threads, including Moonlite Focuser. Here connecting the stepper refers to the PiFace Motor Extra, but I guess cannot be transferred to the PiFace Digital 2 - or could a bipolar stepper be run via the relays of the Digital 2?

Am I right that for a bilpolar I should rather go for the Adafruit HAT? To address the "HAT", is there a focuser driver already available on astroberry?

Update: I realize that I can cancel above questions, since you already responded some time ago that you wanted to include the rpi-focuser in the next astroberry-release, which means I can link the A4988 to run a bipolar.

Thanks, Helge

Dear Radek,

If I may ask - trust you are having a lot of user requests in front, so please do not feel pushed - just wonder if you still consider to onboard the astroberry focuser driver on the astroberry server. I worked around with an arduino nano (resembles moonlite focuser) but since I wanted to rebuild with the DRV8834, would be keen to further simplify.

Btw: really enjoy using the astroberry server (thanks once again for all the efforts behind!), and now integrated the Astroberry in an alu case with a step down converter, see picture.

Best, Helge

It looks great! I will include original astroberry driver in the next release of Astroberry Server. Stay tuned