Hi, I'm just starting out in moving away from a Windows laptop to using Stellarmate on a RP3+. It looks like a great compact way of controlling my gear and gives the ability of a light weight low energy control kit for journeys into the wilds.

I've setup my HEQ5 mount using EQMod , guide camera and my DSLR - Nikon D5100. Everything has connected and appears to be working well after some recommended tweaks to the INDI drivers.

The Nikon camera has limitations via USB and can only expose up to 30 secs and needs a serial shutter release to expose longer in BULB. In my Windows 10 setup I put together a USB - RS232 FTDI cable but ran in to problems due to low temperature. It was very unreliable then failed completely. I then found the KMTronic USB to Serial single channel relay. This worked well in BackyardNikon rather than pick COM4 in the setup I'd choose RelayCOM4.

I'm wondering whether you would consider adding support for a FTDI USB relay controller. This is proven to work with APT and BackyardNikon to control the Bulb settings on serial based Nikons plus others. I have assembled this and it does control the shutter unfortunately my programming knowledge falls far short of going further. Based on using the FTDI232 chip it controls a simple relay on or off with 1 normally open or 1 normally closed contact.

KMTronic USB Relay Controller

Thanks

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