ASA DDM85 PREMIUM and INDI

evgeny.p.kurbatov · February 24, 2014

I consider a possibility to control the DDM85Premium mount via the Instrument-Neutral-Distributed-Interface control protocol (INDI) instead of ASCOM. It seems like there is no INDI driver for the mount. Where can I find a protocol (commands, etc) to control the mount? Please give me a link to a developer's manual and sorry if I missed it on the site.

Evgeny

P.Keller · February 25, 2014

Hi Evgeny,

we have developed an Ascom Driver which uses Soap TCP/IP as communication base.

The easiest thing would be to use the TCP/IP and make a simple wrapper for your indi protocoll. I assume its not to much work.

Currently, one customer is already controlling the mount with a MAC.

But please give us 2 more month before we officially release this.

evgeny.p.kurbatov · February 26, 2014

Hi,

If I understand you properly, you propose the possibility to control the mount through a custom intermediate layer after ASCOM, while I need to exclude ASCOM and use INDI instead. That's why I asked for the low-level control protocol the ASCOM and the mount talks with. Is this protocol the same as one for Meade telescopes (in the positioning part)? If not, how they're intersect? Sorry if asking for well-known things, I never concerned with astronomical instrumentation before. Ideally I'd like to obtain a manual which is enough to write the driver.

Evgeny

lukepower · February 26, 2014

Evgeny,

I wonder if Dr. Keller's solution would still require WIndows/ASCOM at all. If you could control Autoslew via SOAP requests, and Autoslew itself would run on a linux box (take a Raspberry Pi, for example), then we would have a self-contained control box for the mount, controllable from ethernet. Shouldn't be difficult to be able to control it using INDI, or am I wrong here?

evgeny.p.kurbatov · February 26, 2014

Hi, Lukas!

The first my thought was like you said, i.e. the mount will be independent of ASCOM. But I was confused by two things:

there is no RJ45 connector on the mount, while Dr. Keller said about TCP/IP (no problem, we will set-up TCP/IP over COM which is set over USB);
should I flash a new ROM or whatever into the mount for supporting SOAP?

lukepower · February 26, 2014

Hi Evgeny,

hm, that's a good question. Maybe ASA is planning to make a new mount version (read: new electronics) with a RJ45/ethernet socket. Would definitively be cool

evgeny.p.kurbatov · February 26, 2014

Opening protocol could be much cheaper than buying a new mount for EUR 15k.

lukepower · December 29, 2015

Any news on this front? I found out about KStars and all the automation provided there, would be a nice (and free) alternative to CCD Autopilot and the likes...

lukepower · December 30, 2015

Okay so let's get things straight: After I found out that Linux basically offers most of what one would need to operate the whole observatory - including cameras, focusers, domes and so on - I began to wonder if there would be a way to use ASA mounts under Linux. It became quickly clear that there would , right now, only be two ways of doing this:

run Autoslew on a windows computer (or maybe in a Virtual Machine), install the wINDI wrapper and let Linux access the mount interface over the network (which cna be on the same computer, actually)
run Autoslew under WINE (WINE is not an Emulator) under Linux, and use it again "over the network" with wINDI.

I am quite impressed what happened and is available on the software front under Linux, I want to give it a try and install Linux on my old Laptop and see what I can do. The free applications seem to be able to replace, at least in my workflow, all applications I am using except Photoshop and Pixinsight - but luckily, those two are available as native Linux versions.

Would be great to have at least a basic Linux driver or our mounts, though I see that the market is (very) small... Maybe these infos can help one or another

RamaSpaceShip · December 31, 2015

Hi Lukas,

If you use a Windows computer to run Autoslew, then you can use VNC from Linux to control the whole pc. That's the solution I found as the simplest one, and that I use from my desk in the warm of my house.

By the way, I would love to have a tiny box running Autoslew, and associated stuff (sequence, ...) and to control it from my Linux desktop I understood that this will be possible with Autoslew 2.0, but the lack of information about it leave room to too many dreams...

Happy new year.

Bernard

lukepower · January 1, 2016

Hi Bernard,

happy new year!

No, what I was considering is building a free/open source control system. If you consider the costs of all the software components under Windows (Maxim, Focusmax etc), Linux gets very attractive. Plus, the software is new and being developed way more actively than what you see with the "old" softwares around under Windows.

RamaSpaceShip · January 1, 2016

Hi Lukas,

I understand your point, but the main problem remains Sequence as it requires MaximDL and PinPoint, and there is no efficient replacement of Sequence under Linux, unless I miss something.

By the way, Microsoft has ported a lot of .Net under Linux and made it open source. I would like to see if the port of Autoslew under Linux would be that complicated in these conditions. And if they open the Autoslew source, I will be the first to try the port.

Best regards.

Bernard

lukepower · January 1, 2016

Hi Bernard,

the thing is, I am exploring new options for the software side. As I do not use Sequence, I can live with it not working without MaximDl

I think that a port of Autoslew (and Sequence, for that matter) might be relatively easy, but it is using (and providing) quite some ASCOM functions, which are not supported under Linux (again, unless you run it with WINE). The easiest approach would be to integrate INDI into Autoslew, still leaving it running under Windows.

RamaSpaceShip · January 1, 2016

Hi Lukas,

The easiest approach would be to integrate INDI into Autoslew, still leaving it running under Windows.

Have you tried wINDI ?

It seems to fulfill your requirements without having to modify Autoslew..

Best regards.

Bernard

lukepower · January 1, 2016

Yup, tried it and its working

I will try to setup a Linux system for my observatory and post the results here. I am confident that I can archieve this without needing to resort to Virtual Machines or that stuff. Would be quite nice

lukepower · April 7, 2018

Any news about the INDI solution for controlling ASA mounts?

sdufoer · April 29, 2018

Basically the only thing we need to know is how to talk with the mount. Then we should be able to write INDI drivers ourselves. Or even get the bugs out of Autoslew.

It's indeed amazing to see how INDI is becoming an alternative for the outdated ASCOM. Pretty much all my equipment today have INDI drivers... except for the ASA.

It's still a very small market. But EKOS is free, and I think it has even more features than SGP. Still doesn't have the flexibility of CCDcommander.

Edited April 29, 2018 by sdufoer

oblagoi · April 24, 2023

We are in 2023. Agree to sdufoer. Kstars with Ekos and INDI run all equipment we have, also a new ATIK camera that fails in ASCOM.

There is any updates on INDI for DDM85, at least?

Autoslew crashed in W10 Pro and I´m searching for alternatives, because tech support gives only standard answers, no link to updated software.

Thanks .

Tavi

robertp · April 24, 2023

Hello Tavi,

Autoslew should not crash in W10 Pro. I have no problems using it under Win 10 Pro and under Win 11. Can you describe your problem a little more detailed?

Best regards,

Robert

oblagoi · February 23

Hello Robert,
We solved the crash but another issue we cannot surpass by now. Autoslew is running but the MaximDL cannot connect to the mount, there is a driver error I cannot understand (text file attached). Before we installed the mount in the remote observatory it was working OK. In between a windows update to W11 occurs but the computer is controlled through Anydesk and is unresponsive in W11, so we roll back to W10.

Regards,

Tavi

eroaremaximDL.txt

robertp · February 23

Hello Tavi,

I do not understand the error message either. Have you tried to run both Autoslew and MaximDL as administrator?

Do you connect directly to Astrooptik.Server within MaximDL or via the DeviceHub?

Best regards,

Robert

oblagoi · March 15

Hello Robert,

Thank you for your answer. I just tested it with running MaximDL as administrator and now it works.
The weather is bad, I will try next week to made observations.

Best regards,

Tavi

ASA DDM85 PREMIUM and INDI

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