Ph 2 for Android?

[Mike M]

I suspect this has been asked but could not find a thread on it, is there a version of PH 2 for Android?

[Andy Galasso]

Hi Mike,

There's no PHD2 for Android now, and it's not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. There are primarily two reasons for this: first, the cross-platform toolkit on which PHD2 is built, wxWidgets, has not been ported to Android. The other reason is that many (all?) of the drivers that PHD2 uses (cameras, mounts, and other devices) are not available for Android.

Could you tell us about what you were looking to do? Maybe we can offer alternatives?

Andy

[John R Pierce]

On 5/9/2017 10:11 AM, Andy Galasso wrote:

There's no PHD2 for Android now, and it's not likely to happen in the foreseeable future. There are primarily two reasons for this: first, the cross-platform toolkit on which PHD2 is built, wxWidgets, has not been ported to Android. The other reason is that many (all?) of the drivers that PHD2 uses (cameras, mounts, and other devices) are not available for Android.

also, wxWidgets is in C++, as is PHD2...  C/C++ apps are normally compiled to native machine language.      Android is essentially a virtual machine, and runs on a variety of different processors (ARM, MIPS, and X86 being the most common), android apps need to be CPU transparent, and run on something equivalent to a JRE.

-- 
john r pierce, recycling bits in santa cruz

[Mike M]

Andy, thank you for both your answer-explanation and for asking my purpose, which is this: I have developed an imaging rig small enough to fit into an airline carry-on, including telescope (80mm refractor), mount, tripod, DSLR, ccd guide camera & guide scope. The thing that blows my space and weight budget is my laptop, which is necessary only to run PHD... My Android phone runs planetarium SW and controls the mount... So I'm looking for alternatives to replace the laptop. It would be awesome if the phone could do everything, which is the reason I asked about Android, thinking about how much processing power these multi-core processor phones have nowadays...

I've heard of something called Raspberry Pi that some folks are running some astronomy SW on but have no experience with it...

I would love to hear your advice!!!

Mike

[Mike M]

John, thank you for these details. I can see that this more complicated than I thought. I have not done programming since high school and college, BASIC, FORTRAN and COBAL in those days, which may give you some idea of the paleo-era I am from. I get the idea from what you said that to run on Android and be CPU transparent, the code might be quite large, memory intensive and slow? Not to mention the work it would take to translate it, which sounds significant.

[Andy Galasso]

Mike,

I think the Raspberry Pi would be a great solution. PHD2 runs on RPi, as does all the other awesome Linux Astronomy software. What guide camera do you have? You can check out the PHD2 Wiki section on Supported Hardware to confirm that your devices will work with the Linux version of PHD2.

Andy

[John R Pierce]

On 5/9/2017 8:51 PM, Mike M wrote:
>
> I've heard of something called Raspberry Pi that some folks are
> running some astronomy SW on but have no experience with it...

raspberry pi is a little 3" board... the current version is the
Raspberry Pi 3 model B, this is a $35 board with a quad core 64 bit
1.2Ghz ARMv8 cpu, 100baseT ethernet, wifi, bluetooth, 1GB ram, 4 USB
ports, HDMI video, and a microSD slot for the operating system, and is
powered off a 5V 2A USB power supply. it typically runs a stripped
down version of Debian Linux, known as Raspberian. add $10 or $15 for
a case and 12V PSU, and you're looking at $50 for a linux shell server
that can do some pretty powerful things.

are you comfortable with using Linux from a shell, and configuring stuff
manually via ini files and such? then you'll get along fine with Pi.
If not, well, maybe its not for you unless you want to learn all that.

[Mike M]

Dear Andy and John, thank you both for the info.

Andy, I followed your link and it appears my guide camera, SBIG ST-i, is not supported under LINUX... Any other suggestions?

[Now, I did see something else at GitHub that sparked my interest: Predictive PEC! Wondering if this been implemented in PHD2... I'll search for a thread on it and if I don't find start a new one to ask.]

John, undstood your first paragraph, RPi sounds awesome! Second paragraph was Greek! So this old 🐕 will have to learn something new!

Andy, John et al, you guys are the bomb! It's amazing the outstanding job you do and have done on the PHD suite, and the level and amount of attention to support & feedback... impressive! Few paid software companies match.

Mike

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to a topic in the Google Groups "Open PHD Guiding" group.
To unsubscribe from this topic, visit https://groups.google.com/d/topic/open-phd-guiding/Or_TmJO3zaw/unsubscribe.
To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to open-phd-guiding+unsubscribe@googlegroups.com.
For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

[Brian Valente]

Mike

 

Yes the latest PHD2 has a great feature of predictive PEC. Definitely recommend you check it out

 

 

 

Thanks

 

Brian

 

 

Brian Valente

Brianvalentephotography.com

To unsubscribe from this group and all its topics, send an email to open-phd-guidi...@googlegroups.com.

For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.

--
You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "Open PHD Guiding" group.
To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to open-phd-guidi...@googlegroups.com.

[Andy Galasso]

On Wed, May 10, 2017 at 11:46 AM, Mike M <sarga...@gmail.com> wrote:

Andy, I followed your link and it appears my guide camera, SBIG ST-i, is not supported under LINUX... Any other suggestions?

There is an SBIG INDI Driver, so yes, you should be able to use the ST-i with PHD2 on Linux. (INDI is analogous to ASCOM on Windows, but INDI is available on multiple platforms including Linux and OSX.)

Andy

[Mike M]

John, can you help line this out for me? Ok, assume I get and assemble the Pi hardware, and install the Pi OS on the SD card. I need an input device and some sort of display; can I use my Android phone, preferably via WiFi, to do those functions? Carrying a keyboard and monitor would sort of defeat the purpose of small and light for traveling.

Then, with keyboard and display connected, what am I presented with? Is it a GUI or a command line thing like the old DOS where you have to know cryptic coded commands to get anything done?

Thanks again for taking time to explain and suggest.

Mike

[John R Pierce]

On 5/10/2017 10:18 PM, Mike M wrote:
>
> Then, with keyboard and display connected, what am I presented with?
> Is it a GUI or a command line thing like the old DOS where you have to
> know cryptic coded commands to get anything done?

everything I've done with raspberry pi's is linux shell, command line
based. the applications I've run on pi typically have a web server so
I can operate them remotely with a web browser. certainly most of the
configuration stuff is done via shell...

not sure how you'd use php2 this way. maybe your phone could run a NX
client, or one of the VNC systems, and connect to the pi running phd2,
this would be sort of a 'remote desktop'

looks like this guy did it ...

http://www.astronomyforum.net/astronomy-software-forum/211048-got-phd2-lin_guider-working-raspberry-pi-jessie-release.html

[Brian Valente]

Mike you might consider using a windows-based Intel NUC – it’s a super small complete windows PC in a box (think Mac Mini but smaller) and with windows remote desktop you can pretty much use any device for input including iPad (and I think Android but I don’t know for sure).

 

All in it’s around 500-600 but very functional

 

Thanks

 

Brian

 

 

Brian Valente

Brianvalentephotography.com

 

From: open-phd...@googlegroups.com [mailto:open-phd...@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of Mike M
Sent: Wednesday, May 10, 2017 10:19 PM
To: Open PHD Guiding <open-phd...@googlegroups.com>
Subject: Re: [open-phd-guiding] Ph 2 for Android?

 

John, can you help line this out for me? Ok, assume I get and assemble the Pi hardware, and install the Pi OS on the SD card. I need an input device and some sort of display; can I use my Android phone, preferably via WiFi, to do those functions? Carrying a keyboard and monitor would sort of defeat the purpose of small and light for traveling.

--

[Mike M]

John, Brian, on your suggestions I am researching Linux shell commands and went to Intel’s site to check out NUC, interesting possibilities all.

 

Thank you for your advice!

 

Mike

[Bryan]

Mike

I don't know if this fits your criteria, but you might consider one of the Shuttle PC products

http://global.shuttle.com/main/productsList?categoryId=84

I have a DS81, which is now a bit out dated, but still quite fast.  It is about 6" x 8" x 1.5' and includes

USB 2 and 3 ports

TWO RS 232 ports

Ethernet port

VGA and HDMI output.

WiFi module option (I didn't bother with this, because of the Ethernet)

You add a motherboard, CPU, RAM, SSD.  It runs Win 10 fine. as well as PHD2 and all my other astro software

While bigger and heavier than Arduino, Raspberri, NUC, etc options, it has been quite stable.  In actuality, the monitor is the biggest component.

  

Bryan