Support remote indi server devices

[GuLinux]

Useful for alignment module: https://github.com/GuLinux/StarQuew/issues/28

[picciux]

Hi, don't know if this is exactly what you meant in this bug, but would be nice to let users specify remote running drivers when starting indi server. It's simply a matter of specifying them as server arguments: a simple text box to fill with space separated 'device@host' strings than you can directly pass as indiserver parameters. Don't know if I'm enough skilled with React and Python, maybe I can try to propose a patch if you can give me a pointer to where to start. If you're interested ;) Tks

[GuLinux]

Hello, Yes, that was exactly what I meant, I know about the device@host syntax too. It's on a low priority at the moment: it could have been useful with the previous implementation of the Astrometry Solver (I used the indi driver, so in theory you could have been using an astrometry indi driver on your desktop rather than on a raspberry pi), but I've now written my own implementation for that. Do you see any other usages where the remote device could come in handy?

I wouldn't go and implement it straight away, as I'm planning to change a lot of the current INDI infrastructure. I guess this would be easier to do with the next implementation, where you dynamically load the drivers instead of relying to the XML descriptors.

As a workaround though, you can already start an INDI server manually (using the remote device syntax), rather than let AstroPhoto Plus start one for you. Then instead of clicking "start" in the UI, just click "connect". It should work straight away

[picciux]

Hi, thank you for replying. It could come in handy if you have a "distributed" setup: for instance, if you have the AstroPhotoPlus imaging/guiding/solving raspi on the OTA, and an indiserver-only raspi Zero W on the mount (to avoid cables). Or some other fancy setup ;) Anyway, I agree that I can start it with Indi Webmanager and connect AstroPhotoPlus to the already running instance, it's not that hard :D, I only thought for integration and completeness; maybe after the INDI infrastructure re-work. Anyway, great piece of software! :beers: Thank you very much.