Pure Python 3.7+ implementation of INDI for client and server
Example of a custom GUI using pyINDI
At it's core, INDI is a small set of xml definitions that are designed to be passed between a set of devices and clients. Those definitions are described in detail by INDI's create Elwood Downey in the INDI White Paper. You can also find the DTD file in this repo here. The passing of the XML between the device drivers and clients is almost always done by a server called indiserver
indilib is a c++ implementation of the INDI protocol with support for other languages (including python) via swig. It has a massive following in the astronomy community with lots of clients and devices/drivers.
This repository aims to be a pure python implementation of the INDI protocol. It uses the indilib naming scheme for many of its methods and variable.
python setup.py install
Device drivers are usually run as an argument to the indiserver program. Ubuntu users can get the indiserver program by adding the indilib ppa and installing indi bin
sudo apt-add-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt-get update
sudo apt install indi-binindiserver <path to executable device driver>
To learn how to build a device driver with this repo, look in example_drivers directory. The skeleton.py shows how to build a device driver from a skeleton xml file. To run this driver with indiserver type:
cd example_drivers
# the -vv argument gives you verbose output
indiserver -vv ./skeleton.py
This will start the indiserver with the skeleton driver running on port 7624. You can see all the output from indiserver by using netcat:
echo "<getProperties version='1.7'>" | nc localhost 7624
This should print the INDI xml.
The best way to get started with a client is to use the SkeletonClient.py example. This is made to match skeleton.py driver but should also work with other device drivers.
To run this client:
cd example_clients/
python SkeletonClient.py
This will run the webserver and client.
The root url is serving the client.html page.
client.html is a good example of how to interact with the device driver with the maps-indi api. This api gives you access to three functions.
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setPropertyCallback This function maps a callback to an incoming indi vector property when it is recieved from the indiserver/device driver. This can either be a property definition (def) or an update (set).
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setINDI This function sends an updated INDI vector property to the server/device driver from your webpage.
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showMapMessage This function is called when the indiserver/device driver sens an INDI message. client.html simply prints to console.log. A dialog box on the webpage would be a better use of this funciton.