Is there any possibility to integrate Arduino diy projects like weather station, focuser, flat panel or any other ideas?
I will made an arduino base weather station and I will love to have integrated in sg
Thx!
For things that are supported by ASCOM (Camera, Focuser, Telescope, Observatory, Weather Station (via SafetyMonitor) etc…) your best bet is to create an ASCOM driver for your device.
For your flat panel you can use an implementation that I created a while back that mimics the Alnitak protocol and will hook into SGP nicely:
Hope that helps,
Jared
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thx Jared!
Hello all
about your Arduino Light Box:
If I manage a Lightbox made out of LEDs being PWmodulated on a PWM PIN, it is basically a FlatMan after I uloaded the sketch? (adjusting the PIN number of course)
Just installing the original ASCOM Driver? Or am I mistaken…
Sorry for the unaware questions.
Kr
Robin
Hi Jared,
thanks for the link for Arduino Light Box! I read some posts concerning the build.
Do you have infos about the wiring and what transistors or mosfets to be used for?
Very best and CS!!
Lex.
FYI, I use Arduino pretty heavily for control of various items (cameras, alarm, light panel, focuser, etc.) and while so far I’ve only just completed the automation of the ASCOM focuser driver, most of the other items can be controlled by the generic ASCOM switch function. My primary goal at the moment, however, is to get my roll-off control working over Wi-Fi and get an ASCOM driver for that!
On the subject of weather stations, I was surprised/disappointed to see that the support there is limited. I’d have expected to see something for my Davis weather station and/or the Cumulus control I’m using for it. Guess I’ll have to write that myself too!
Beo
I’m pretty sure both of these are supported by 3rd parties that implement the Boltwood One-Line format or the ASCOM Observing Conditions.
Thanks,
Jared
I’m interested in this too. I’m currently trying Indi with Ekos after using SGP for a few years. I like the ability to integrate with remote indi servers that provide information like sky conditions. I also have a Davis weather station, but I don’t want my SGP computer connected to the Davis console. I do have the Davis console connected to a raspberry pi, and it serves as an indi server where I can get data from. I’m not sure if there’s functionality like that in SGP/Ascom, is there?
I’m also in the process of adding a DIY cloud sensor and sky quality meter to my indi setup. That’ll give notification / shutdown triggers. Again, this would be mounted independently of my astroimaging setup.
I would very much like to see indi support in SGP. I heard it’s coming out eventually in SGP v3.0, so I’ll look forward to seeing something like this where we can incorporate other sensors and data with our imaging rigs.
Gabe
ASCOM has had the “Observing Conditions” for a while now, this is supported in SGP.
How the device physically connects to your machine is of no concern to SGP, it just needs to be supported through the ASCOM driver. For instance my dome connects over http and connects via an ASCOM driver that I built. There is nothing in the ASCOM specification that requires the hardware to be directly connected to the PC.
Thanks,
Jared
Okay, that’s my misunderstanding then. Thanks for clearing it up. Perhaps I’ll break down and write my own drivers. Do you have any resources you might suggest to get started?
Thanks!
Gabe
The ASCOM documentation is pretty good. Also if you install the developer templates they give you a head start and have the interfaces and implementation stubbed out for you.
https://ascom-standards.org/Developer/DriverImpl.htm
Thanks,
Jared
I haven’t had a chance to post on it, but I have my Cumulus ASCOM driver running and it works quite well. It just monitors the realtime.txt file from Cumulus and extracts the available data.
My goal is to develop algorithms to process my all-sky camera images to extract cloud cover/seeing/sky quality info.
One thing regarding the environment data. I realize from a technical standpoint we want SI units, but frankly for weather conditions, I’d prefer to have degrees F, MPH, etc. Any option to change the units in SGP?
Thanks,
Beo
The utility Tektite skies does exactly this. I bought it last year but abandoned it for the moment. It did not play nicely with my Starlight cameras and their ASCOM drivers. I think it was designed with WDM in mind.
Beo, where did you get that driver? It seems like that would work with my setup.
Gabe
Beo, where did you get that driver? It seems like that would work with my setup.
Gabe
From my fingers… I wrote it! 
I plan to share it when I’m done, but if you want to try it out let me know. As far as the Cumulus functionality it’s essentially done, but I just haven’t written any documentation, etc. to go with it, and the installer currently uses the debug version of the DLL.
Beo
Yeah, that looks along the lines of what I hope to do. I’ll have to take a look at it and see how well it does with my source data.
Beo
One thing regarding the environment data. I realize from a technical standpoint we want SI units, but frankly for weather conditions, I’d prefer to have degrees F, MPH, etc. Any option to change the units in SGP?
If you are reading the data from a text file, why not just parse and convert to the units you want before displaying?
-Ray
Because ASCOM uses SI units. The data is already in English units in the file and my ASCOM driver has to convert to SI to return in the correct format. The SGP dialog actually adds the units labels on its form.
Beo
Ah OK. I thought that you had created the user interface too.
But I think it wouldn’t be too hard to do that. That is, add your own driver status window to show data in the units you want to see and yet still pass values on to the ASCOM client in their respectively required units.
-Ray
Hi Ray,
There’s no need for an ASCOM UI for this application. I have the actual weather station UI and the web page, etc. if I want to look at something other than SGP. I’d just like SGP to have the option to use user-friendly units for their locale.
Thanks,
Beo