Hi!

I am developing a DIY remote observatory, controlled by a RaspberryPi 4B and several microcontrollers. The observatory is in a remote location with no access to main electricity and thus, one of the requirements it is that it must run on batteries. In addition, I am trying to avoid wires, by using ESP8266 microcontrollers and connecting by WiFi. In order to save battery, I am try to optimize the use of devices.

I know that connecting devices to the RPi by wire will save more battery, but it will be a nightmare on cabling. Using WiFi is a bit in contradiction with the battery-efficiency, but I will give a try.

Having a look at drivers code, I realized they mainly use a continuous polling to get status, so it is to difficult to keep the devices saving energy, since they are waken up every 1-2 seconds.

I was considering that it will be interesting exploring how to connect and disconnect devices in the middle of a session. For example, the dome, dustcap, etc... I am considering this sequence:

1. Switch on the power of all devices
2. Start kstars and ekos,
3. Open an ekos profile,
4. Ekos connects to devices,
5. Start session by opening the dome.
6. Once dome is open, switch off dome controller to save power
7. Once dome is required again, switch on dome controller and reconnect to ekos.