Optional steps

WARNING: THIS IS A PAGE IN PROGRESS! DO NOT FOLLOW IT IF YOU ARE LOOKING FOR THE BUILDING OF A CAMERA FROM SCRATCH

Ahoj! In this section, you will be introduced to some more, but optional steps.

Connecting the camera to VPN (optional)

IMPORTANT NOTE: You should only complete this step if you were instructed to do so.

1) Open the terminal

2) Navigate to Desktop (there should be a DownloadOpenVPNconfig.sh script there):

cd ~/Desktop

3) Run the DownloadOpenVPNconfig.sh script and give it your station code as the argument. In this example I’m using CA0001 - make sure to use your station code.

./DownloadOpenVPNconfig.sh CA0001

4) If everything goes well, you will see the message: Initialization Sequence Completed. Press CTRL + C to exit the script.

5) Reboot your Pi.

6) That’s it, the VPN should be working on your Pi! To check the VPN IP address, hover your mouse cursor on the VNC icon (upper right), and it will show you an IP address which looks something like this: 10.8.X.X. If you are also connected to the VPN, you may use this IP address to connect to your camera. If you want to connect to the VPN with your PC, please contact Denis or the GMN group for more details. If you are on Windows, the domain name like ca0001.gmnnet (replace ca0001 with your station code, lowercase) should work too.

IstraStream upload

IstraStream GMN status website

The IstraStream.com is an independent hosting site which is part of our world wide GMN. It is primarily a host for data from cameras sold by IstraStream, but other station operators can request that their data be included.

To enable the IstraStream upload, the external_script_run, external_script_path, and reboot_after_processing parameters have to be changed.

How to modify your config file

Boot up your RPi. On the desktop there is a file called “RMS config”, open it.

This is how the config file should look:

; External script
; An external script will be run after RMS finishes the processing for the night, it will be passed three arguments:
; captured_night_dir, archived_night_dir, config - captured_night dir is the full path to the captured folder of the night
; the second one is the archived, and config is an object holding the values in this config file.
; ---------------
; Enable running an external script at the end of every night of processing
external_script_run: true
; Run the external script after auto reprocess. "auto_reprocess" needs to be turned on for this to work.
auto_reprocess_external_script_run: false
; Full path to the external script
external_script_path: /home/pi/source/RMS/iStream/iStream.py
; Name of the function in the external script which will be called
external_function_name: rmsExternal


; Daily reboot
; ---------------
; Reboot the computer daily after the processing and upload is done
reboot_after_processing: false

Then, send an e-mail to info@istrastream.com with your:

• Station_ID
• Location or Name (if not secret)
• Lens type/size

For example, "CA0001; Elginfield Observatory, Ontario, Canada; 4mm". The IstraStream crew will enable the weblog page within a few days.

Finally, this document explains what every plot on the IstraStream weblog means:

IstraStream Plots Explanation

You are now done with this section and you may introduce yourself and your fancy new camera to the friendly community. Back to the signpost page.