Celestron CGX USB driver

This is an INDI driver for the Celestron CGX and CGX-L. It uses the USB port on the mount, and does NOT require the hand controller. The time used for alignment purposes is system time, so be sure whatever system you are running the driver on has a good time source.

This driver has only been tested in the northern hemisphere, and will likely not work at all in the southern. Pull requests for southern hemisphere support are welcome.

Supported Features

• Park/UnPark
• Mount Model Alignment
• GoTo
• Sync
• Tracking
• Guiding

Unsupported (at this time)

• PEC

Usage in KStars

After connecting to the mount, in the INDI Control Panel, click the Align button. This will send the mount to the switch position and give us a roughly known position. For best results, use the Mount Model Tool in the KStars Alignment module to generate 3 or more sync points and run the tool. The more sync points you add, the more accurate the mount model will be, which will give more precise GOTOs. After the model is built, you should have accurate GOTOs. NOTE: Any time you click the Align button, the driver will clear the existing model, and you'll need to re-sync to build it up again.

Installation

All

wget -qO - https://rickbassham.github.io/indi-celestron-cgx/public.key | sudo apt-key add -

Ubuntu Focal (amd64/arm64)

echo "deb https://rickbassham.github.io/indi-celestron-cgx/repos/apt/focal focal main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/indi-celestron-cgx.list

Ubuntu Groovy (amd64/arm64)

echo "deb https://rickbassham.github.io/indi-celestron-cgx/repos/apt/groovy groovy main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/indi-celestron-cgx.list

Raspbian Buster

echo "deb https://rickbassham.github.io/indi-celestron-cgx/repos/apt/raspbian buster main" | \
    sudo tee /etc/apt/sources.list.d/indi-celestron-cgx.list

All

sudo apt update && sudo apt install indi-celestron-cgx

Compiling on any linux system

The compilation is simple. You will need indi libraries installed. The best way is to install libindi-dev package from the PPA. You may also want to have indi-gpsd and gpsd packages installed (not strictly required). If you cannot use the PPA you need to install libindi-dev from your distribution or compile the indi libraries yourself using instructions from the INDI website. I have not tested the backward compatibility but the driver should compile and work at least with the 1.8.4 version of the library. My recommendation: use PPA if you can. To compile the driver you will need also: cmake, cdbs, libindi-dev, libnova-dev, zlib1g-dev. Run following commands (you can select other install prefix):

sudo apt install build-essential devscripts debhelper fakeroot cdbs software-properties-common cmake
sudo add-apt-repository ppa:mutlaqja/ppa
sudo apt install libindi-dev libnova-dev libz-dev libgsl-dev

mkdir -p ~/Projects
cd ~/Projects
git clone https://github.com/rickbassham/indi-celestron-cgx.git
mkdir -p ~/Projects/build/indi-celestron-cgx
cd ~/Projects/build/indi-celestron-cgx
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ~/Projects/indi-celestron-cgx
make

You can run sudo make install optionally at the end if you like to have the driver properly installed.

Building debian/ubuntu packages

To build the debian package you will need the debian packaging tools: build-essential, devscripts, debhelper, fakeroot, cdbs

Create package directory at the same level as indilib directory with the cloned source. Then execute:

mkdir -p ~/Projects/build/deb-indi-celestron-cgx
cd ~/Projects/build/deb-indi-celestron-cgx
cp -r ~/indi-celestron-cgx .
cp -r ~/indi-celestron-cgx/debian debian
fakeroot debian/rules binary
fakeroot debian/rules clean

this should produce two packages in the main build directory (above package), which you can install with sudo dpkg -i indi-celestron-cgx_*.deb.