Stellarium: Remote Control Plug-in documentation

The RemoteControl plugin provides a remote control using a webserver interface, usable for single or even synchronized cluster of clients (via the RemoteSync plugin). You can simply connect via web browser to a configurable port (default: 8090) of your computer. To use it locally, you can use http://localhost:8090[/index.html] or for a slightly modified GUI which may be better suited for smaller 7inch screens, try http://localhost:8090/tablet7in.html. Your web browser has to support JavaScript and HTML5 (recommended in 2016: Firefox, Chrome).

The web data for the interface resides in the /data/webroot directory inside the installation directory (share/stellarium/data/webroot on Linux), and can be customized with some knowledge of HTML, CSS and maybe JavaScript (not necessary for basic functionality, only when more complex additions are required). Alternative or derived HTML control GUIs must be placed into the same folder, the web server for now cannot read data from the private Stellarium user directory (~/.stellarium, %APPDATA%\stellarium).

This plugin makes extensive use of the StelProperty system introduced with it. This allows not only to trigger actions, but also set QVariant values, which is enough to control many things in the program. A few dedicated modules have been implemented closely following the existing GUI for view motion, location setting, landscape and skyculture selection, searching objects, etc. It is also possible to define interfaces that control plugins, and dynamically show them only when the plugin is enabled.

Because the API is based on simple HTTP calls, it can also be called from command-line clients. For example, to execute the script "double_stars.ssc", one could use one of the following lines:

wget -q --post-data 'id=double_stars.ssc' http://localhost:8090/api/scripts/run >/dev/null 2>&amp;1
curl --data 'id=double_stars.ssc' http://localhost:8090/api/scripts/run >/dev/null 2>&amp;1
curl -d     'id=double_stars.ssc' http://localhost:8090/api/scripts/run >/dev/null 2>&amp;1

This allows triggering automatic show setups for museums etc.

The entry point of the plugin is the RemoteControl class.

To see how the HTTP API looks like (i.e. if you want to extend it or access it without using the web interface), see RemoteControl plugin HTTP API description.
To see how the web interface works (i.e. if you want to modify it or add new controls), see RemoteControl plugin web interface.

Author: Florian Schaukowitsch, Georg Zotti

Note: This plugin includes parts of the QtWebApp library by Stefan Frings, used under the LGPL; This plugin has been developed as project of ESA SoCiS 2015 (http://sophia.estec.esa.int/socis/)