Monday, January 6, 2014

Remote observatory using Raspberry PI

One the great strengths of the INDI protocol is that it is based on a Server/Client architecture where commands are sent back and forth in XML over TCP/IP. Therefore, network transparency is built right at the protocol level and it makes distributed data acquisition and control quite trivial.

For the last few months, I have been running all my astrophotography gear (HEQ Mount, QSI CCD, Lodestar Guider, MoonLite focuser) on my HP laptop using INDI & KStars/Ekos. As it was getting quite cold recently (even in Kuwait it gets quite cold!), I found myself using VNC to access the laptop which sits with all my equipment on the roof. While the performance was OK since it is a local network, I was curious to try to use Raspberry PI (RPi) to run the INDI server and drivers, and connect to them remotely from Ekos.

Building and installing the drivers on RPi was straightforward. Due to power limitations of the RPi, I used a powered USB hub to connect all my equipment. That worked pretty well, and to my surprise, everything worked without a hitch from the first time! I used a USB WiFi dongle on the RPi and gave it a static IP address as well.

Connecting to the RPi from Ekos was straight forward, and I was able to carry on 6+ hours of continious image aquisition, guiding, and focusing without any issues! While all my equipment only sit less than 20 meters away, the same principle is applicable to 2000 km away as long as you have a reliable network connection.

For those curious about using RPi with their astro gear, I wrote a tutorial on getting started with INDI & Raspberry PI.