Hi Everyone,

I was looking to command my whole astrophotography system using Astroberry, but it seams that I cannot send GoTo orders to the ArgoNavis + ServoCAT due to the lack of ServoCAT INDI driver.
I contacted the founder of StellarCAT who provide the ServoCAT electronic that drive the motors using the encoder's informations send by the ArgoNavis. M. Gary Myers told me that he is open to send the details of our PC Protocol so that an INDI driver can be written, or derived from the ASCOM ServoCAT driver that already exist.

Do you think that's something possible?

If the protocol is available, then maybe one of the community members would be interested in developing the driver?

@Saturn33: It's nice of Gary to be willing to share, but I suspect Gary is only speaking for StellarCat. Wildcard Innovations is the owner of the protocol for ArgoNavis (the front-end controller to ServoCat in this case). Are you are trying to get rid of ArgoNavis and replace it with kstars/ekos? That is probably the ONLY path forward as there's no user interface pass-through capability for ArgoNavis (i.e. it's a unidirectional hand-controller with no external user interface other than list import and FW update functionality) It's likely that if you do progress, you'll be writing a "telescope/mount" driver for kstars/ekos that talks to StellarCat's ASCOM interface. I'm pretty sure that Gary (at Wildcard Innovations) will not support changing AN's serial interface for a kstars/ekos interface. Cheers, Doug

Hi Doug. Thanks for the comment. My only goal is be remotelly control the whole system (mount + imaging) using Kstars/ Ekos. I'm not an engineer and have limited understanding about how to acheived it.
From recent exchanges with Gary Myers / StellarCAT it seams that the ServoCAT is sending GoTo requests to the AN when this late is in 'CATALOG' / 'PLANETARIUM'. So I deduce that the AN should remain necessary and that Ekos should talk to the ServoCAT.
Didier

Hi Didier, When you refer to "Catalog or Planetarium" state, you are referring to the ArgoNavis object selection mode. I'm pretty sure you have your command backwards. ServoCat can't issue a GoTo command because it has no user interface and no knowledge of the sky or objects. All it knows is motor control and its own internal motor encoder positions. The job of modeling the sky, translating an object name to RA/DEC, then computing the position offset and motor move command is AN's. A user uses AN to "dial-in" a desired object in the sky, then pushes the "Enter" button on AN. AN sends a slew command to ServoCat. The feedback for monitoring motion control is (depending on setup) either the ServoCat motors themselves (which contain high resolution 60k encoders) or separate Az/El encoders (typical installation, 10K-30K encoders).

I'm a long time owner of AN and ServoCat for a home-built Obsession clone (visual setup), and while it's been a while since I built my system, unless ServoCat has dramatically changed (could be possible but I doubt it), I believe what you desire is to replace AN entirely with Ekos/Kstars. AN and Kstars serve similar purposes and roles. In order to do what you want, you need someone to implement a Kstars/Ekos ServoCat mount driver (using its existing ASCOM interface). I'm not sure whether a strict Az/El Ekos/kstars mount driver is possible, but if so, you'll trade AN's excellent mount modeling for Kstars/Ekos planetarium & image sequencing capabilities. Depending on the accuracy of your mount, that might be a fair trade. Cheers, Doug

Hi Doug. Thank you to have took the time to detail the process. I have not been precise enough in my former message. I know that the ServoCAT cannot issue a GoTo command by itself. My understanding after some exchanges with StellarCAT is that an external planetarium software such as Kstars would send a GoTo to the ServoCAT. The ServoCAT recognise it as a command for the AN and transfer it. At this point the process is the one that you have described, using RA/DEC encoders (my mount is equatorial). In this configuration the AN remain necessary to compute the commands to be send to the ServoCAT for the motors.
However, you are of course right, Kstars and AN are redundant, doing the same job. So I guess it would be simpler to get rid of the AN. But with my current setting, only the AN is connected to encoders, so that the ServoCAT knows the position of the mount only through the AN. I don't know if there is a setting to connect the encoders directly to the ServoCAT.
Thanks again for your interest in the topic.
Didier

The best bet from here is to pair your Gary M advice with some advice from Gary K at Wildcard. If you haven't already read the info from the two links below, then they may prove helpful. I can't help further from here as I haven't tried to drive my ServoCat from planetarium SW; I always use just the AN. Here's the links:

www.unm.edu/~eschman/ServoCAT%20ReadMe.htm
www.stellarcat.com/Graphics/ServoCAT%20Manual%20V11-1.pdf (especially section 8).

In the end, after thorough familiarization with the StellarCat ASCOM driver, and knowledge of how AN is driving ServoCat via that driver, you'll be ready to determine whether you'll want to replace, or just interface with AN to get kstars/ekos working with it. That sounds like a pretty big project....best of luck as you continue the journey.

Cheers, Doug