Hey all,

I've been working with a Planewave L-350 mount for the past few months with the goal of automating its use. Unfortunately, Planewave has yet to develop any ASCOM drivers.

I had the idea to use the INDI telescope simulator as a bridge between Ekos and Planewave Interface 4. I've managed to write a script that will update the position of the simulated telescope (using sync) after the L-350 has settled on a target but the coordinates of said target have to entered manually. Ideally I would like to have Ekos only read the telescope sim info rather than submit new positions for it to go to and a way to communicate targets from the Ekos scheduler (preferably in python). I have looked over the DBus documentation and could not find anything resembling these two goals. Any advice would be greatly appreciated!

Best,
Tommy

Hi Tommy,

Welcome to INDI! Is there any communication protocol for the Planewave mount?

Yes, Planewave Interface 4 starts up a local server that can receive commands via typing them into the url.
Planewave has written a class in python that does all the url inputs for you.

Hi,

Do you have a link to this python class or some interface documentation? Our dome is working with an indi driver (still being written) and we're planning on buying a planewave L500 mount, so this kind of interfacing might be 'enough' to integrate the two.

Hey,

Here is a directory with the needed python files from the PlaneWave website.
There is a zip file labeled pwi4_python.zip which should have everything you need.
Keep in mind that PWI4 must be running while using the scrips provided.