Connector for the ASCOM Alpaca REST API designed to work with Home Assistant via MQTT.
The integration with Home Assistant is implemented via MQTT for sensor and camera entities and supports autodiscovery of Home Assistant for the devices.
AstroLive uses the nice ALPACA client implementation of the OCA Box classes which is used by the Araucaria Project.
- AstroLive connects via the ASCOM Alpaca API to your observatory.
- For each configured and connected component a MQTT device configuration for sensors and if applicable camera is created below
homeassistant/sensor/astrolive/
andhomeassistant/camera/astrolive/
respectively. - As of now the following components are supported:
- Telescope
- Camera
- Camera via File
- Focuser
- Switch
- These configurations allow MQTT auto discovery in Home Assistant.
- AstroLive then starts a seperate thread which queries the compenent status interval based according to the configuration and publishes the device state to MQTT.
- If the component is of the type Camera the last captured FITS image is autostretched, downsized and published as a .jpg. This is the same for Camera via file where AstroLive watches a directory for new FITS images.
Slewing the telescope using the equatorial coordinate system, moving the focuser and some more commands are possible directly from Home Assistant.
AstroLive is designed to run as a container to be deployed on a dedicated host or next to Home Assistant. It does not require any custom integration for Home Assistant since communication is solely via MQTT.
- A windows (mini) pc/notebook controlling your scope
- ASCOM Platform
- ASCOMRemote.
- Container runtime engine (e.g. Docker).
- MQTT Broker (e.g. Mosquitto).
- A recent version of Home Assistant with MQTT autodiscovery enabled.
To give you an idea how I did setup my observatory together with AstroLive and AstroWeather here's my setup:
- Hardware
- Telescope: Skywatcher Esprit 120ED
- Mount: Skywatcher EQ6-R
- Camera: QHY268c
- Guide Camera: QHY5III462c
- Off Axis Guider: OAG-M
- Switch: PegasusAstro Ultimate Powerbox v2
- Focuser: PegasusAstro Focus Cube
- Mini PC: MeLE Quieter2 8GB 256GB Windows 10 Pro
- Software:
- NINA 2.0.0.9001
- PHD2 2.6.11
- ASCOM Platform 66
- EQASCOM V200w
- QHYCCD Win AllInOne 21.10.23.19
- IOTLink 2.2.2
- Polemaster 3.2.8
- PegasusAstro Unity Platform 1.5.84.12
- Dropbox
All off the software is running on the MeLE Quieter2 mini pc which I mounted on top of the scope. I configured NINA to store image files within a dedicated directory which is synced by Dropbox. This directory is then monitored by AstroLive to enable the image processing.
Since NINA does provide it's own drivers to interact with the QHY camera I did not connect the cameras to ASCOMRemote. During my tests with AstroLive I encountered problems while imaging if AstroLive uses the Camera API of ASCOMRemote. I need to investigate this further, but processing the resulting image stored on disk is working nicely for me and lowers the load on the mini pc anyways.
Ensure to have the ASCOM Platform deployed on your astro imaging server.
Download and install the latest version from here: ASCOMRemote
Show instructions
Add the devices you want to use in conjunction of AstroLive. The following screenshot show a connected Focuser, Telescope and Switch.
You need to press [Setup] for each configured device to connect it to the ASCOM Remote Server Configuration.
Set a name for the servers location (e.g. Backyard) and specify the Server IP Address. This is the IP the Remote Server is running on. Choose a port (default is 11111) and leave the rest to the defaults.
Press [OK]
Links:
Clone AstroLive
git clone https://github.com/mawinkler/astrolive
Now, create a default.cfg.yaml
based on the supplied default.cfg.yaml.sample
and modify it to your needs. The yaml should be pretty self explanatory :-)
cp astrolive/default.cfg.yaml.sample astrolive/default.cfg.yaml
Note: If you are using drivers provided with the sequencer software, using ASCOM remote in parallel will mess up the imaging session when accessing the camera API. Tested with QHY and N.I.N.A./PHD2. For that reason, I'm always using the
camera_file
component witch checks for the latest FITS-file published within a given directory tree.
Show YAML
default:
include: backyard
backyard:
observatory:
# Name of the observatory
comment: Backyard Scope
# Longitude
lon: <LONGITUDE>
# Lattitude
lat: <LATTITUDE>
# Elevation
elev: <ELEVATION>
# Communication protocol
protocol: alpaca
# Address of the ASCOM Remote server
address: http://<IP OF ASCOMRemote>:11111/api/v1
components:
telescope:
# Kind of the device
kind: telescope
comment: <NAME OF YOUR SCOPE>
# Device number as configured in ASCOM Remote
device_number: 0
# Name prefix of the created sensor in MQTT
friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR SCOPE>
# Update interval in seconds
update_interval: 15
# List of components belonging to the telescope
components:
# Note to ASCOM:
# If you are using drivers provided with the sequencer software,
# using ASCOM remote in parallel will mess up the imaging session.
# Tested with QHY and N.I.N.A./PHD2.
# Valid device kinds are
# telescope: Telescope
# dome: Dome (NYI)
# camera: Camera
# filterwheel: Filter Wheel (NYI)
# focuser: Focuser
# rotator: Rotator (NYI)
# switch: Switch
# safetymonitor: SafetyMonitor (NYI)
# camera_file: Camera File, reads and processes the latest image within
# from a configured location.
# camera:
# # Kind of the device
# kind: camera
# # Device number as configured in ASCOM Remote
# device_number: 0
# # Name prefix of the created sensor in MQTT
# friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR IMAGING CAMERA>
# # Get image via ASCOM remote. If false, process sensors only
# image: true
# # Update interval in seconds
# update_interval: 60
# guiding_camera:
# kind: camera
# device_number: 1
# friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR GUIDING CAMERA>
# image: true
# update_interval: 60
camera_file:
kind: file
friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR IMAGING CAMERA>
# Monitoring directory for new image files
# Only FITS files are supported
monitor: '/fits'
update_interval: 60
focuser:
kind: focuser
friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR FOCUSER>
update_interval: 15
switch:
kind: switch
friendly_name: <NAME OF YOUR SWITCH>
update_interval: 30
# MQTT configuration
mqtt:
# Address of the MQTT broker
broker: <IP OF YOUR BROKER>
# Listen port of the MQTT broker
# defaut 1883 or 8883 for tls
port: 1883
# Client name for astrolive
client: astrolive
# Username
username: ''
# Password
password: ''
# TLS insecure
tls:
enabled: False
insecure: True
# The certification authority certificate which signed the MQTT server certicate
ca: /certs/ca.crt
AstroLive checks recursively within the configured directory for new FITS files if you configured camera_file
. By default it checks within the directory /fits
.
If you want to use TLS for the connection to the MQTT broker you need to provide the certificate of the certification authority which signed the MQTT server certificate (defaults to /certs/ca.crt
).
Run with Python
Ensure to have the dependencies installed
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
Start AstroLive
python3 run.py
Build & Run as a container
This is the way :-).
| [T]
| | |√ <••>
| ( ) ( )
Build
docker build --tag astrolive .
Run
# As a container
docker run \
--volume /fits:/fits:ro \
--name astrolive \
--rm \
astrolive
# As a detached container
docker run \
--volume /fits:/fits:ro \
--name astrolive \
--rm -d \
astrolive
If using TLS
# As a container
docker run \
--volume /fits:/fits:ro \
--volume /certs:/certs:ro \
--name astrolive \
--rm \
astrolive
# As a detached container
docker run \
--volume /fits:/fits:ro \
--volume /certs:/certs:ro \
--name astrolive \
--rm -d \
astrolive
Effectively, there is no configuration required if you just want to monitor your observatory. Simply creating your Lovelace UI using the generated sensors and camera(s) would do the trick.
The following devices with the sensors attached are created in Home Assistant based on the example default.cfg.yaml
from above:
Telescope | Camera | Switch | Focuser |
---|---|---|---|
At home | Image Type | Max switch | Position |
At park | Exposure Duration | Switch 0 | Is moving |
Altitude | Time of observation | Switch 1 | |
Azimuth | X axis binning | Switch ... | |
Declination | Y axis binning | ||
Declination rate | Gain | ||
Guiderate declination | Offset | ||
Right ascension | Pixel X axis size | ||
Right ascension rate | Pixel Y axis size | ||
Guiderate right ascension | Imaging instrument | ||
Side of pier | CCD temperature | ||
Site elevation | Filter | ||
Site Latitude | Sensor readout mode | ||
Site Longitude | Sensor Bayer pattern | ||
Slewing | Telescope | ||
Focal length | |||
RA of telescope | |||
Declination of telescope | |||
Altitude of telescope | |||
Azimuth of telescope | |||
Object of interest | |||
RA of imaged object | |||
Declination of imaged object | |||
Rotation of imaged object | |||
Software |
My personal Lovelace configuration from the screenshot above using mushroom-entity-card
, button-card
, grid
and picture-entity
:
Sending commands to the observatory is implemented by the use of input texts and the mqtt publisher service of Home Assistant. To not accidentaly park/slew the scope or power of the camera during an imaging session I'm intentionally using dedicated buttons to send a command.
The initial values of RA and DEC are pointing to Polaris
Show YAML
astrolive_target_ra_h:
name: Target RA h
min: 0
max: 24
initial: 02
astrolive_target_ra_m:
name: Target RA m
min: 0
max: 60
initial: 59
astrolive_target_ra_s:
name: Target RA s
min: 0
max: 60
initial: 58.71
astrolive_target_dec_d:
name: Target DEC d
min: -90
max: 90
initial: 89
astrolive_target_dec_m:
name: Target DEC m
min: 0
max: 60
initial: 21
astrolive_target_dec_s:
name: Target DEC s
min: 0
max: 60
initial: 30.5
astrolive_focuser_position:
name: Focuser Position
min: 0
max: 35000
initial: 10000
Sending a single command like park
and unpark
.
Show YAML
alias: AstroLive - Send Command
sequence:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: astrolive/command
payload_template: >
{{ '{{ "component": "{}", "command": "{}" }}'.format( component,
command) }}
mode: single
Slewing the telescope.
Show YAML
alias: AstroLive - Send Command Slew
sequence:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: astrolive/command
payload_template: >
{{ '{{ "component": "{}", "command": "slew", "ra": "{}", "dec": "{}"
}}'.format( component | trim, ra | trim, dec | trim ) }}
mode: single
Moving the focuser.
Show YAML
alias: AstroLive - Send Command Focuser Move
sequence:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: astrolive/command
payload_template: >
{{ '{{ "component": "{}", "command": "move", "position": "{}"
}}'.format( component | trim, position | trim ) }}
mode: single
Turning on or off a port on the switch.
Show YAML
alias: AstroLive - Send Command Switch On/Off
sequence:
- service: mqtt.publish
data:
topic: astrolive/command
payload_template: >
{{ '{{ "component": "{}", "command": "{}", "id": "{}" }}'.format(
component | trim, command | trim, id | trim ) }}
mode: single
Using button-card
, entities
and the mushroom-entity-card
cards.