indihub-agent

The indihub-agent is a command line interface tool to connect your astro-photography equipment to INDIHUB network. The network can be used to share you equipment with others, use others' equipment remotely or just use your equipment without sharing but still contribute your images to INDIHUB-network.

NOTE: all astro-photos taken via INDIHUB-network (with auto-guiding or main imaging cameras) will be processed by INDIHUB cloud pipeline and used for scientific purposes.

Prerequisites

0. You have a desire to contribute to Space exploration and sustainability projects.
1. You have motorized astro-photography equipment connected to your home network.
2. Your equipment is controlled by INDI-server, manuals and docs can be found on INDI-lib Web-site.
3. INDI-server is controlled by INDI Web Manager.
4. You have ready to use INDI-profile created with INDI Web Manager.
5. Raspberry PI (or computer) where you run indihub-agent is connected to Internet so it can register your equipment on INDIHUB-network.

Registration on INDIHUB-network as a host

Registration is very easy - you don't have to do anything.

The indihub-agent doesn't require any signup or token to join INDIHUB.

When you first run indihub-agent and it is connected to INDIHUB-network successfully - it receives token from network and saves in the same folder in the file indihub.json. Please keep this file there and don't loose it as it identifies you as a host on INDIHUB-network. Also, this file will be read and used automatically for all next runs of indihub-agent.

indihub-agent modes

There are four modes available at the moment:

1. share - open remote access to your equipment via INDIHUB-network of telescopes, so you can provide remote imaging sessions to your guests.
2. solo - use you equipment without opening remote access but equipment is still connected to INDIHUB-network and all images taken are contributed for scientific purposes.
3. broadcast - broadcast you imaging session to observers watching it via INDI-clients, in this case without any equipment remote access and sharing (experimental).
4. robotic - open remote access to your equipment to be controlled by scheduler running in INDIHUB-cloud (experimental).

The mode is specified via -mode parameter, i.e. to run indihub-agent in a share-mode you will need run command:

./indihub-agent -indi-profile=my-profile -mode=solo

The only mandatory parameter is -indi-profile where you specify profile name created with INDI Web Manager. All other parameters have default valyes. I.e. -mode default value is solo.

To get usage of all parameters just run indihub-agent -help.

The latest indihub-agent release can be downloaded from releases or indihub.space Web-site.

Building indihub-agent

You will need to install Golang.

There are make build-commands for different platforms available:

• make build-macos64 - build for macOS (64 bit)
• make build-linux64 - build for Linux (64 bit)
• make build-unix64 - build for Unix (64 bit)
• make build-win64 - build for Windows (64 bit)
• make build-win32 - build for Windows (32 bit)
• make build-raspberrypi - build for Raspberry Pi (ARM5)

Contributing

PRs and issues are highly appreciated. TODO: indihub-agent speaks to the INDIHUB-cloud so special dev-server will be added for development purposes soon.

What is next

The INDIHUB-network is in its beta release at the moment. We board new hosts on the network, collect data and most importantly - feedback from our first hosts.

Also we work on partnerships. If you are interested please send us email at info@indihub.space.

And last but not least - don't forget to signup to our mailing list on indihub.space so you will know all the news first!