Stellarium

Interfacing Arduino with Stellarium

Asked by Shorya

Hi!

I am trying to use Arduino to control a motorized mount such that it points to the location specified in Stellarium. I am running Stellarium on Ubuntu. I am also not using any factory-made telescope, rather I'm using it control a pointer.

 I'm stuck at the very first step of trying to retrieve the coordinates from Stellarium. What are we supposed to fill in the configuration details of the Telescope Control plug-in? The FAQ and questions I have found online address issues in the Arduino code but aren't there some specific settings in the plug in configuration window that have to be set in order for the Arduino to receive the data from Stellarium?

1) Am I supposed to go for the first option (direct control) or the second one (external software)?
2) What am I supposed to fill in the "serial port"?
3) What do I fill in the connection settings in the "Host" and "TCP Port"?

Also, are there any recommendations of which protocol is the easiest to understand/implement?

Thanks in advance!

Cheers,
Shorya

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Alexander Wolf (alexwolf) said : 		#1

Hint: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mvmumsAvjLM

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Shorya (shoryaconsul) said : 		#2

The biggest problem is that I cannot find nor figure out how to configure the telescope control plug-in. Could somebody please help me with that?

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gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#3

http://stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Control
http://stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Control_plug-in

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Shorya (shoryaconsul) said : 		#4

I had followed the above instructions and retried them just to make sure. I've even uninstalled the Arduino IDE I nstalled using the terminal and used the package downloaded from the official website.

However, the ttyACM0 port is not showing up on Stellarium as on option in the drop down menu. The only options are the ttyUSB and ttyS ports. How do I get around this?

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Shorya (shoryaconsul) said : 		#5

I think just typing ttyACM0 as the port solves the problem. Thanks!

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Shorya (shoryaconsul) said : 		#6

Thanks gzotti, that solved my question.

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Shorya (shoryaconsul) said : 		#7

The Arduino is showing as "connected" on the Telescope Control plug-in now but there is no reticle visible. The reticle was visible witht the "Virtual Telescope".

So, is there something I am missing when setting up the connection - like is there some commands that I have to send to the PC first before the connection is working?

Thanks!

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gzotti (georg-zotti) said : 		#8

I have not looked into the code of the TC plugin. However, I guess there is some communication going on:

PC: telescope, where do you point at?
Telescope: RA:XX DE:YY

Then PC knows where to draw the reticle.
Does your Arduino answer that request?

Please read the code yourself to find out what's needed.

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