Ad Astra Observatory

The observatory just inherited two computers; the 2010 iMac from the house, and my old 2009 Macbook Pro laptop. Both of them had full hard drives, and needed a refresh, so I did one last Time Machine run on each one, then reformatted the drives, and installed OSX Yosemite.

I used the old (old!) Time Machine disk to back up the iMac to; it had been my wife’s machine, so I mostly just needed to make sure that the files had been saved.

The laptop, however, had been mine, so I ended up backing it up to an empty Time Machine disk, which turned out to be a great idea; I dove in there and pulled out old files several times while getting the new rig up and running, but I digress.

The Astro Jedi had set up an Astronomy VM for me a couple of years ago; my current imaging rig requires Windows XP, and he spent quite a while making sure that everything would work well, so I was gratified to find it, right there on my backup, just like it should be.

I downloaded the latest VMWare Fusion (7.x as of this writing), got that installed on both machines, and went to work, making sure that two copies of ArtVM (one to use, one as a “base snapshot”) were on each box.

I then spent a whole day, fighting my gear, until I finally figured out that I needed to replace my USB Hub. Once I did that, within 30 minutes, I had control of the 350D and SSAG in MaxIM5.18 (including downloading and displaying the images), and control of the NJP in TheSky6.

I also ordered a new USB Hub for the house, as that’s the one I found to work, and I ordered a pair of USB-to-Serial adapters using the FTDI chipset, as that will apparently make my life easier once I move to Windows 7.

TheSky is just different enough from Cartes du Ciel that I am completely lost how to use it. I will get there, I’m certain, but CdC will continue to be a part of my workflow, because I have a whole telemetry system set up around it. A couple of months ago, I figured out that Cartes du Ciel implements a TCP Server, which can be easily accessed by external applications. The server can either read information from the app (getRA, getDec, getFOV, etc), or send information *to* the app (“set” versions of the above). I got the idea that it would make a great “external mirror” — and so I decided to write a script. I did this while the observatory was being built, but didn’t mention it until now, because The Reveal is better (yes, I’m like that). Anyway, about 20 lines of Python later, I had the ability to read the coordinates out of one CdC instance, and set the coordinates in another.

So, it turns out that CdC runs on Raspberry Pi. I have ranted about RPi before, and in fact CdC really stinks running on an RPi 1, but on the new quad-core RPi 2, it runs quite well.

On Sunday (of a 3 day weekend, no less), A VESA bracket showed up for me to play with, so I attached a spare monitor to the wall, and hooked up a Raspberry Pi to it. After some initial fighting with the WiFi networking (Linux is great, but sometimes you have to fight a lot for something that should be a lot easier), I got CdC up and running. And after only a little more fighting with security rights, I was able to run my Python script and make the “wall mounted display” show the same object as “the box attached to the mount”. woot!

I also spent a bit of time, making sure that VNC was working properly; I can now control the mount remotely, from iPad or laptop, connecting directly into the XP VM, without having to VNC into the intervening host iMac at all. There are implications of that which have not entirely sunk in yet.

With control of the mount, both cameras, and even a few extra whizbang features thrown in, I am now 100% ready for First Light. The next clear night, I *will* catch some ancient photons.

I guarantee it.