====== Tasks in implementing driver ======

To implement an RTS2 telescope driver, you need to create a child class inherited from [[rts2teld::Telescope]] abstract class. This class provides pure virtual methods, which you must overwrite. The method names should be self explanatory and are well documented.

If you are using a serial port to communicate with your telescope, you can consider using [[Rts2ConnSerial]] class to handle for you communication over serial port. For example how to use this class refer to [[http://rts-2.svn.sf.net/viewvc/rts-2/trunk/rts-2/src/teld/gemini.cpp|src/teld/gemini.cpp]], which uses Rts2ConnSerial for serial port communication.

This is a minimal example. Please refer to some real telescope driver for a more realistic example.

<code c++>
#include "teld.h"

using namespace rts2teld;

class MyTelescope: public Telescope
{
  protected:
    virtual int startMove ();
    virtual int stopMove ();
    virtual int startPark ();
    virtual int stopPark ();
  public:
    MyTelescope (int argc, char ** argv);
};

int Telescope::startMove ()
{
  struct ln_equ_struct tar;
  getTarget (&tar);
  // do all what is needed to start move to tar.ra tar.dec
  // ...
  // return -1 in case of failure
  return 0;
}

int MyTelescope::stopMove ()
{
  return 0; // success
}

int MyTelescope::startPark ()
{
  // do all what is needed to move telescope to park position
  // return -1 in case of failure
  return 0;
}

int MyTelescope::endPark ()
{
  return 0;
}

MyTelescope::MyTelescope (int argc, char ** argv): Telescope (argc, argv)
{

}

</code>

====== Main method ======

After you implement your class, the main() method is trivial and effectively identical in all RTS2 devices (it basically allows you to pass in commandline arguments):

<code c++>

int main (int argc, char **argv)
{
  MyTelescope device = MyTelescope (argc, argv);
  return device.run ();
}
</code>

====== Adding code to automake ======

After you are done with coding, you should add it to Makefile.am, so it will be generated. If your telescope driver needs some external routines, please see example provided in [[http://rts-2.svn.sf.net/viewvc/rts-2/trunk/rts-2/src/teld/Makefile.am|src/teld/Makefile.am]] for Paramount or OpenTPL telescope driver.

In Makefile.am, please add the name of the new executable for your driver to bin_PROGRAMS. Also add the sourcefile name to rts2_teld_mytel_SOURCES (and edit LDFLAGS and CPPFLAGS, as needed). When you have made these changes, you need to run automake && ./config.status in rts2 directory to update the affected makefiles.

====== Debuging a new code ======
 
When you need to debug your code, you have two options:

  - Attach with attach <pid> command to running code
  - Start telescope daemon with -i option, so it will not detach from controlling terminal (set args -i in gdb)

If you don't do this, rts2-teld-mytel will start the new daemon process and then exit - and gdb is tracking the parent, not the spawned process.