Snooping is a term used in INDI for getting information from other devices in the system. In this case the mount driver can utilitize time and location information from a GPS driver and as you probably don't have any specified, it uses the simulators by default. That doesn't actually do anything unless you start changing location or time in the simulator so it's harmless, nothing to do with controlling the mount as such. For EQDirect cable you should use EQMod driver, Synscan driver is used to drive the mount via the hand controller serial port in non-PC direct mode. In both cases you need to select the serial port and connect to it from a client application like KStars before there is any more output from the driver.

Thanks Jarno for your reply!
I am not sure if I understand what you mean by selecting the port via kstars.
Here is what I had understood and was planning to do. Please tell me if I was wrong and how.

I thought I would run indiserver on the rPi which is connected to the scope, tell indiserver (how?) to use a given serial port, and then connect the application to indiserver using TCP-IP (address and port).

Is that correct?
If so, how can I select the serial port on the application?

Also, I have two ports on the mount: one says hand controller, the other says auto guider. The cable I have fits the "hand controller" port.

Thanks

bye

Dave

I mean the EQDirect cable shows up as a serial port device to the Raspberry, probably named /dev/ttyUSB0 if you don't have other devices connected. By default the driver doesn't know which port to use and doesn't connect automatically, so they need to be controlled by the client application, for example KStars. Connecting the cable to hand controller port is normal for EQDirect cable. So after you connect the cable to Raspberry and start indiserver -v indi_eqmod_telescope, connect to the indiserver from KStars (possibly from other machine via TCP or locally) and open INDI control panel tab. There select EQMod mount and go to connection tab, scan for system ports and select the correct one (probaly only one shows up). This should look something like this:



I have multiple serial port devices connected and they show up in random order each reboot so I have configured a link to the correct port to be as /dev/mount, but you don't need that unless there are multiple serial port devices connected. Then go to main control tab and select Connect. That initiates the actual connection to the mount and then you can control the mount normally.



KStars can also be set up to automatically connect devices when connecting to the INDI server and that can be used after the configurations have been finalized. Don't forget to save the configuration in INDI control panel too.

Thanks a lot!!!!
This is very clear now!
Thanks!

Quick update!
Everything works now! In addition to not understanding indi's behavior, I was missing a modprobe rule for the cable so the device file was not being created. I now managed to get it to work with Stellarium (I also had to update it to the latest version as mine was several years old BTW )

thanks again!