Wolfgang,
Yes, when I synchronize from a windows machine or a android one, gotos are good.
With the lx200 basic driver from indi, I don't try to synchronize. So I do before using kstars a synchronisation with the smartphone android and the application Stargo-BT.
I think it will be good to have a driver for avalon-Stargo mount that perform the syncrhonisation directly.

Jean-Jacques,
yes, having a dedicated avalon driver seems the best solution. In the meanwhile: after an initial home sync from a windows machine through StarGO, following syncs through the INDI lx200_basic driver works fine for me. I need StarGO under Windows only at the beginning and at the end when I want to slew to home. The rest of the time I drive my scope entirely through INDI on my Raspberry PI.

Wolfgang

I have started working on a dedicated Avalon StarGO driver. I am a bit confused as to how I should handle the AUX control for the focuser since it shares the same serial port. Since this will be my first INDI driver there is a bit of a learning curve but I think after reviewing the lx200 drivers and what not I have a pretty good handle on it.

If you post the exact features you are looking for I can target those once I have the basic features done.

I have a working focuser driver. It is very young and was mostly written to help me understand better how INDI works. You can checkout the code from: github.com/CanisUrsa/indi/tree/canisursa/avalon_work .

You should be able to use that to perform relative and absolute motions as well as abort any active motion. I tried this on my Avalon M-Zero and Avalon Focuser (connected to AUX1) and it works well. I do experience a timeout every now and then but I'd like to make sure someone else can get their focuser working. I'll be adding the sync capability next and trying to resolve the timeouts. Once that is working well enough I will move onto writing an Avalon mount driver.

Ah, good to know that there is a working focusser!
Yesterday I worked on setting up my development environment and making first steps with the existing lx200_basic driver in the debugger.

Wolfgang

Hello,
Oh good CanisUrsa to write a avalon driver.
I have no focuser, si I am only interessed with a mount driver.
The thing missing, for me, in the lx200_basic_driver, is the synchronisation at the beginning of the process.
So I use for that fonction the android stargo-bt application.
When you will have a mount driver in beta-test, I am candidate to test it, if you agree.

Jean-Jacques

Hi Jean-Jacques,
there is a workaround for the synchronisation at the beginning of the process using INDI: Position the cursor on a star on the meridian and close to the southern horizon. Without moving the mount from its Home position, perform a sync to that star. This is equivalent to performing the “Sync Home Position” using the StarGO software.

I tried it yesterday and it seems to work. But that is not a very convenient solution.

I am starting to write my own telescope driver.

Wolfgang

Wolfgang,

I have been utilizing usbpcap to capture the traffic between the StarGO windows application and the mount. I have found a number of commands (including the sync home position). A lot of the LX200 commands work but it appears Avalon added their own set of commands to do very similar things. For example there are ways to get the RA/DEC of the mount in a way that provides more digits of precision than the LX200 method. I'll generate a google spreadsheet when I get home with the commands I have learned so we can work together on defining them for use in the INDI driver.

Another thing I am slightly concerned about is the shared use of the serial port between the focuser and mount. My job has me writing code in windows so I am not sure how to handle that shared resource within linux. I was thinking of taking a naive approach first (don't try to protect the resource) and seeing how bad things go.

CanisUrsa

Wolfgang,

Here is the google document. The sync homing commands are a bit more involved and require calculating the LST (Local Sidereal Time) and uploading that to the StarGO. I am currently updating the spreadsheet with more detail on the syncing steps as my understanding increases.

docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1J-Hycie6...xbk/edit?usp=sharing

CanisUrsa

One idea might to subclass LX200Generic and then add your own modifications. But if the differences are too great, then start a new driver.

Sure, I will try to find an appropriate base class. Last weekend I tried using lx200_classic. This does not work out of the box since it uses the ACK command during the initial handshake. StarGo does not respond to this command. On the other hand lx200_basic reads the current RA position in the initial handshake which works fine.

I will keep you updated.

Btw: is there somebody out there who can help me with cmake etc? My knowledge is slightly rusty. Maybe not directly here on this thread but rather in direct communication.

OK folks, one step in advance, next problem found

Simply subclassing LX200Generic is not that easy:

1. LX200Generic contains a local variable called telescope which is a reference to the scope specific subclass of LX200Generic
2. This local variable is instantiated through the first run of the IsInit method of LX200Generic

My first (naive) idea was simply overriding IsInit() and setting telescope with my new subclass LX200StarGo.

Unfortunately, I cannot access the "telescope" variable from a subclass. Or did I miss some framework magic?

As far as I understand, if I want to use LXGeneric, I need to touch LXGeneric.IsInit adding my new subclass. But this does not look very nice, I do not want to touch the framework itself.

Any suggestions?