INDIGO to GO is on the App Store

[aaron]

Hello everyone! I'm happy to announce that INDIGO to GO 1.0 is now available on Apple's App Store. Thanks to our intrepid TestFlighters in Peter's forum, it's pretty stable too!

The app for iPhones and iPads is intended to help you plan and monitor your imaging sequences. It required iOS 14. I'll have a Mac version out when Big Sur is released.

Features:

• Uses Bonjour to discover agents on the network
• Progress bar is colored according to my guess of your filter names
• Respects when sequences repeat
• Estimates completion time
• Calculates meridian, HA limits, and sunrise
• Displays a preview of the latest image
• Displays cooler status
• Displays guiding status & RMSE
• One-button operation to park your mount and turn off the camera cooler, if applicable

INDIGO to GO was inspired by the Astro* suite of apps, but is not related to CloudMakers, and you shouldn't expect them to support it, of course. It's been tested it with AstroImager, AstroTelescope, AstroGuider, and indigosky.

Besides living on the App Store, INDIGO to GO is open source. If you are included to code, I welcome your contributions!

Please let me know how well it works for you. I'd also love to hear your ideas of how the app can mature.

And of course, thanks so much to Peter and Rumen for creating software that's given me so many hundreds of hours of pleasure!

[JohanB]

Hi Aaron,

Downloaded the app from the pastor; works fine! Congrats!

Regards, Johan

[aaron]

Apple's just released INDIGO to GO 1.1 via TestFlight.

The new version can display a preview of both the imaging camera and your guiding camera. The sequence is now a bit cleaner too. And I rewrote a lot of bits under the hood for (hopefully) more stability and future enhancement.

I'm thinking about where to go next with this. Perhaps some sort of remote access would be useful, so you can monitor your imaging away from home? What do you all think?

[JohanB]

Hi Aaron,

Ran the 1.1 version from Testflight.

Seems to be running fine! No crashes, no issue, all functionality seems to work.

Like the separation between preview and monitor and reconnecting after sleep appears to be swifter.

Some very minor GUI remarks;

- When no servers are connected, the app suggests to "tap Settings", but there is no "Settings" button. "tap the Servers section above" would be more appropriate.
- The "Server" section at the top of the screen could be a little big bigger for my taste; attracts more attention, easier to read and easier to tap. You could additionally consider a brigther text color to attract more attention.

Regarding future functionality; would be great, but i assume this will take manual configuration of the server, since discovery would not work outside the home network, as well as setting up NAT on the FW/Router.

Regards, Johan

[aaron]

Hi Johan. Thanks for the feedback!

Have you set up your NAT to allow access outside your home? I’m curious about your experience.

INDIGO lacks any security or authentication — not a big deal for the 99% of us using it locally. To allow for safe remote access, I was thinking of integrating Sign In with Apple to create an anonymous identifier, and routing the traffic through Amazon in a secure way. This could allow “reflecting” the data without firewall configuration.

[JohanB]

Hi Aaron,

I have used port forwarding on the ADSL router on occasion in the past, e.g. to access a NAS or security camera's. It is fairly simple to do. But it does always make me bit nervous, so i typically remove the NAT settings as soon as i don't need them anymore.

Regarding security in Indigo; i did see some indigo development on GitHub regarding authentication tokens and access rights in the last six months, but i'm not sure whether this is useful for remote access. Maybe Peter can shine a light on this?

In your suggested approach with Apple sign in and AWS would you still need manual config of the server and NAT to be set up? How would it work in more detail? Would you need an agent on the inside of the homenetwork, to send the traffic out to AWS?

Regards, Johan?

[aaron]

I am thinking an agent inside the network. Specifically, the upcoming Mac version of Indigo to Go. Mac = agent in network, iPhone = client outside network. Hopefully very simple to configure without ever knowing your IP address

[iMustBcrazy]

I don't get it. All I get is this:

Screenshot of Indigo to Go on iPhone

Screenshot 2020-11-09 at 8.47.41 PM.jpg (71.33 KiB) Viewed 133 times

I click servers and it found AT, AI and AG that I had running on my Mac with IndigoServer but there is no status, no help, no controls. What to do?

[aaron]

Hey there! Thanks for trying these. What versions of the Astro apps are you running? I admit I tested only with v4 -- I should probably test with v3 right?

[iMustBcrazy]

Yes please, I'm using v3 because v4 is just beta. Specifically I'm using the latest v3.15.545

PS: I'll probably go over to v4 when its released on apple apps store. If its soon, then maybe its not worth supporting v3.