Remote Device Control
KStars provides a simple yet powerful layer for remote device control. A detailed description of the layer is described in the INDI white paper.
You need to configure both the server and client machines for remote control:
Server: To prepare a device for remote control, follow the same steps in the local/server setup. When you start a device service in the , a port number is displayed under the Listening port column. In addition to the port number, you also need the hostname or IP address of your server.
Client: Select the from the menu and click on the Client tab. You can add, modify, or delete hosts under the Client tab. Add a host by clicking on the button. Enter the hostname/IP address of the server in the Host field, and enter the port number obtained from the server machine in step 1.
After you add a host, right click on the host to or . If a connection is established, you can control the telescope from the Sky map or INDI Control Panel exactly as described in the local/server section. It is as easy at that.
While KStars allows you to easily deploy an INDI server; you can launch an INDI server from the command line.
Since INDI is an independent backend component, you can run an INDI server on a host without KStars. INDI can be compiled separately to run on remote hosts. Furthermore, device drivers log messages to stderr and that can be helpful in a debugging situation. The syntax for INDI server is
as following:
$ indiserver [options] [driver
...]
Options:
-l d : log driver messages to d/YYYY-MM-DD.islog
-m m : kill client if gets more than this many MB behind, default 10
-p p : alternate IP port, default 7624
-v : show key events, no traffic
-vv : -v + key message content
-vvv : -vv + complete xml
driver : executable or device@host[:port]
For example, if you want to start an INDI server running an LX200 GPS driver and listening to connections on port 8000, you would run the following command:
$ indiserver -p 8000 lx200gps
Suppose we want to run an indiserver with INDI drivers on a remote host,
remote_host, and connect them to KStars running on the local machine.
From the local machine log onto the remote host, remote_host, by typing:
$ ssh -L local_port:remote_host:remote_port
This binds the local_port on the local machine to the remote_port on the remote_host. After logging in, run indiserver on the remote host:
$ indiserver -p remote_port [driver...]
Back on the local machine, start KStars then open the and add a host under the Client tab. The host should be the local host (usually 127.0.0.1) and the port number should be the local_port used in the steps above. -click on the host and select from the popup menu. KStars will connect to the remote INDI server securely. The host information will be saved for future sessions.
