Improve the telecope control feature, and implement a user friendly GUI

Registered by Fabien Chéreau

Allow a user-friendly control of an amateur telescope from Stellarium.
The telescope control feature itself was already coded using a client server architecture. See http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Control and http://www.stellarium.org/wiki/index.php/Telescope_Compatibility

The current code is located at the following places:
 - client code in SVN trunk stellarium/src/modules/TelescopeMgr.hpp/cpp and stellarium/src/modules/Telescope.hpp/cpp
 - server code in SVN trunk/telescope_server/*

The high-level requirements are:
- allow to manage a list of telescopes from a GUI within Stellarium. See KStar for a good illustration of the goal.
- allow to start a local server transparently from the GUI. The user don't need to know that a client server architecture is used in this simple case.

Coding tasks are:
- clean the code on the client and server side so that it uses clean Qt-based sockets.
- possibly redesign the architecture to make it easier to code.
- use a design allowing to add advanced features on the server side like intelligent model of the mount for precise pointing.

Blueprint information

Status:
Complete
Approver:
Fabien Chéreau
Priority:
Medium
Drafter:
None
Direction:
Needs approval
Assignee:
Bogdan Marinov
Definition:
Approved
Series goal:
None
Implementation:
Implemented
Milestone target:
None
Started by
Fabien Chéreau
Completed by
Bogdan Marinov

Related branches

Sprints

Whiteboard

See progress on this thread: https://sourceforge.net/mailarchive/forum.php?thread_name=232637bd0903071133w72ab5c9rdcfffeae2d1cd94e%40mail.gmail.com&forum_name=stellarium-pubdevel

As of 2009-09-11:
- The client side of the TCP communication code has been refactored to use Qt classes instead of platform-dependent system functions. It needs to be tested for reliability and security.
- A functional, though somewhat limited and awkward to use version of a TelescopeControl plug-in has been imported to Stellarium's SVN repository.

https://stellarium.svn.sourceforge.net/svnroot/stellarium/trunk/extmodules/TelescopeControl

The current version of the plug-in is 0.0.4.

As of 2009-09-20:
- The current version is 0.1.0.
- The plug-in has been updated to use Stellarium's new plug-in model, including embedding the graphics in the plug-in's binary file.
- The information used to initialize telescope objects has been migrated from the module configuration file (.ini) to a JSON file. The rest of the configuration information (e.g. colours) has been migrated to Stellarium's main configuration file per Stellarium's new plug-in model.
- An option to choose if a telescope should be automatically started when Stellarium starts or manually later has been added. (The default behaviour before was to start all telescopes at start-up).

Updated release plan:
Version 0.2.x is planned to be a mature version of the current one, the version to be released before or simultaneously with Stellarium 0.10.3. All work in progress on the current features should be wrapped up, including the implementation of the "telescope types" feature.

Versions 0.3.0 and later minor versions are planned to incrementally add support for INDI devices. This will require almost a total rewrite of the code, as the current model is very limited and the code itself is a mess.

--Bogdan Marinov

(?)

Work Items

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