This weekend I decided to get out my old ShoeString Astronomy BT2EQ5 and BT2EQ6 modules to see if they would work with Astroberry.
In the past, I use the BT2EQ5 on my AZ-EQ6 GT and the BT2EQ6 on the NEQ6W.
Bottomline, they work... but what a pain to get it setup. The bluetooth panel Radek chose (part of Raspbian) partially works, but fails to setup the HCI connection properly. Consequently, I had to set everything manually. Wasn't a big deal for me as I'm very comfortable with POSIX systems.
Won't go into details as to the manual configuration as I found it not necessary to go through the manual gyrations. Why??? I started looking around for a more novice type solution and found that
blueman sets everything correctly.
So, on your RPi, perform the following:
- login to the astroberry desktop (via VNC)
- remove the existing bluetooth panel from LXDE (right click and select 'Remove ... From Panel")
- open a terminal
- issue the command "sudo apt-get install blueman" (no quotes)
- after it finishes installing, issue the command "sudo reboot"
- plug in the BT2EQ5/BT2EQ6 into your mount and turn the mount on
- log back into your RPi
- you'll see a new bluetooth icon in the header taskbar
- click on it and then "Setup New Device..." (alternatively, click Start/Preference/Bluetooth Manager in menu system which will bring up the Bluetooth Manager panel. This panel has a Wizard for setup)
- follow the direction to add a new device
- note which device it is bound to (probably /dev/rfcomm0)
- open a terminal
- cd ~/.indi
- edit the file related to your mount ('EQMod Mount_config.xml' in my case)
- replace ttyUSB0 with rfcomm0
- save the file and exit
- start kstars/ekos and confirm it works (if you are using VNC in a browser) or start indi via the astroberry sidepanel and then start kstars/ekos on your remote device/computer.
If anyone has problems, post it here. I have a specific setup and would like to know if this method fails. I'm still testing the system for stability (so far so good).
My hope is that if this process works for all classes of BT that Radek will incorporate blueman into future versions, making it easier for others.
Cheers!
OIC!
