Harnessing Astronomy with Raspberry Pi 5: Installing INDI for Stellar Exploration

INDI, Interface, Raspberry Pi 5, Software

With its compact size, low power consumption, and versatility, the Raspberry Pi 5 can serve as the brain of an astronomical imaging system, controlling devices such as telescopes, cameras, and mounts. One essential software component for this purpose is the Instrument Neutral Distributed Interface (INDI), a framework for controlling astronomical instruments. In this guide, we’ll walk you through the steps to build INDI from source and install on a Raspberry Pi 5, unlocking the potential for celestial exploration right from your backyard.

This article describes a procedure to install software on a Raspberry Pi 5 with 8G RAM running Raspberry Pi OS (64-bit) (Debian v.12 bookworm) booted directly from a 1TB NVMe SSD PCIe drive. This procedure may work for other configurations, so please do let us know if it does, or tell us about any issues you faced and your configuration. Thanks!

Prerequisites:

Before we dive into the installation process, make sure you have the following:

A Raspberry Pi 5 board with NVMe SSD installed. Check out our guide Unleashing Raspberry Pi 5 Power: Installing NVMe SSD via PCIe for more information.
A stable internet connection for downloading software packages.
Basic familiarity with the Raspberry Pi 5 environment, including how to access it via SSH or directly through a monitor and keyboard.

Step 1: Prepare your Raspberry Pi 5

Begin by ensuring that your Raspberry Pi 5 is up to date. Open a terminal or SSH session and run the following commands:

sudo apt update && sudo apt upgrade

This will update the package lists and upgrade any installed packages to their latest versions.

Step 2: Build INDI from Source Code

The prepackaged versions of INDI are out of date, and will not be compatible with other astronomy software that is available for the Raspberry Pi 5, so we will build the package from source code. First, we need to install some prerequisites:

sudo apt install -y git cdbs dkms cmake fxload libev-dev libgps-dev libgsl-dev libraw-dev libusb-dev \
  zlib1g-dev libftdi-dev libjpeg-dev libkrb5-dev libnova-dev libtiff-dev libfftw3-dev librtlsdr-dev \
  libcfitsio-dev libgphoto2-dev build-essential libusb-1.0-0-dev libdc1394-dev libboost-regex-dev \
  libcurl4-gnutls-dev libtheora-dev

Create a project directory into which the source will be downloaded:

mkdir ~/Projects
cd ~/Projects

Are you planning to use Pixinsight’s XISF file format for your image processing? Then you may want to include XISF support in your INDI build, which is built from source published on the author’s Gitea repository:

git clone https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/libXISF.git
cd ~/Projects/libXISF
cmake -B build -S .
cmake --build build --parallel
sudo cmake --install build

Download the INDI source code from the official INDI repository on GitHub. We will use a shallow clone to speed things up and save space:

cd ~/Projects
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/indilib/indi.git

Build the code:

mkdir -p ~/Projects/indi/tmp
cd ~/Projects/indi/tmp
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ~/Projects/indi
make -j4
sudo make install

The INDI server is now installed. The server version can be found by entering the command without parameters:

indiserver

INDI Library: 2.0.7
Code v2.0.7. Protocol 1.7.

There may come an occasion when you want to remove your source built INDI package from your Raspberry Pi 5, or you want to make a portable package that you can use to install on other Raspberry Pi 5 devices. To achieve this, we can make a Debian package from our build, then use the Raspberry Pi 5’s package manager to install and remove it. First, we need install the Debian package builder and prerequisite INDI plugins package:

sudo apt install checkinstall libindi-plugins

Then we create our Debian package:

cd ~/Projects/indi/tmp
sudo checkinstall

The builder process will ask you a number of questions. Generally, the default response is fine:

Should I create a default set of package docs?  [y]: y

Please write a description for the package.
End your description with an empty line or EOF.
>> INDI Core Library
>>

The package name will default to the folder we are in, and we probably don’t want that, so we will change it from the menu using option 2:

*****************************************
**** Debian package creation selected ***
*****************************************

This package will be built according to these values: 

0 -  Maintainer: [ root@orion ]
1 -  Summary: [ INDI Core Library ]
2 -  Name:    [ tmp ]
3 -  Version: [ 20240403 ]
4 -  Release: [ 1 ]
5 -  License: [ GPL ]
6 -  Group:   [ checkinstall ]
7 -  Architecture: [ arm64 ]
8 -  Source location: [ tmp ]
9 -  Alternate source location: [  ]
10 - Requires: [  ]
11 - Recommends: [  ]
12 - Suggests: [  ]
13 - Provides: [ tmp ]
14 - Conflicts: [  ]
15 - Replaces: [  ]

Enter a number to change any of them or press ENTER to continue: 2
Enter new name: 
>> indi-core

The other values should be fine as they are, so just hit ENTER to continue. Once the package is built, there are a few more questions:

Some of the files created by the installation are inside the home directory: /home

You probably don't want them to be included in the package.
Do you want me to list them?  [n]: n
Should I exclude them from the package? (Saying yes is a good idea)  [n]: yes

After some time, the package should be created and installed:

**********************************************************************

 Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

 /home/ian/Projects/indi/tmp/indi-core_20240403-1_arm64.deb

 You can remove it from your system anytime using: 

      dpkg -r indi-core

**********************************************************************

To remove the package, use the package removal option:

sudo dpkg -r indi-core

And to reinstall it, or install it afresh on a different Raspberry Pi 5:

sudo dpkg -i indi-core_20240403-1_arm64.deb

Don’t forget to change the package name to match your own!

Step 3: Installing 3rd Party Device Drivers

A good selection of INDI core device drivers are shipped with INDI library by default. Many more drivers are available from 3rd party providers, so if you don’t find your required driver in the core package, then there is a good chance it will be available in the INDI 3rd party repository. We will build these from source as well, again using a shallow clone:

cd ~/Projects
git clone --depth=1 https://github.com/indilib/indi-3rdparty

Now we have the source code for all of the 3rd party device drivers, but we only want to compile the ones we need. For this guide, we will compile the EQMod Mount driver, in case we have an EQMod mount we want to use:

mkdir -p ~/Projects/indi-eqmod/tmp
cd ~/Projects/indi-eqmod/tmp
cmake -DCMAKE_INSTALL_PREFIX=/usr -DCMAKE_BUILD_TYPE=Debug ~/Projects/indi-3rdparty/indi-eqmod
make -j4
sudo make install

We can also build Debian packages for each 3rd party device driver:

sudo checkinstall

**********************************************************************

 Done. The new package has been installed and saved to

 /home/ian/Projects/indi/tmp/indi-eqmod_20240403-1_arm64.deb

 You can remove it from your system anytime using: 

      dpkg -r indi-eqmod

**********************************************************************

Repeat this procedure for every 3rd party device driver you need to install.

Step 4: Configure Network for Remote INDI Access

By default, INDI listens for connections on port 7624. If you’re using INDI on the Raspberry Pi 5 itself, you can skip this step. However, if you intend to control your Raspberry Pi 5 remotely from another device, you may need to open port 7624 on your router and forward it to your Raspberry Pi’s local IP address.

Step 5: Test INDI

To ensure that INDI is installed and functioning correctly, you can run a simple test using simulated devices. Open a terminal and type the following command to start the INDI server in verbose logging mode:

indiserver -v indi_simulator_telescope indi_simulator_ccd indi_simulator_rotator indi_simulator_focus

You can find a list of available INDI drivers on the INDI website.

Step 6: Connect to INDI

Once the INDI server is running, you can connect to it using an INDI client application installed on your Raspberry Pi 5 or on another computer:

Raspberry Pi 5 Software Supporting INDI

Install your preferred INDI client on your local machine or remote computer and connect to the Raspberry Pi by specifying its IP address and port number (default is 7624).

Conclusion:

With INDI successfully installed on your Raspberry Pi 5, you now have the foundation for building a powerful astronomical imaging system. Whether you’re a seasoned astrophotographer or a beginner exploring the night sky for the first time, the combination of Raspberry Pi and INDI opens up a world of possibilities for celestial exploration. So gather your equipment, set up your Raspberry Pi, and embark on a journey to uncover the wonders of the universe right from your backyard. Happy stargazing!