wornish

Yes I felt the same. The last few slides he skipped looked interesting.

Absolutely brilliant.

Some useful info here from the developer of Sharpcap.

It's from the flat face of the flattener see image below. The 55mm is the required distance from that face to the actual sensor in the camera.

What mount were you using?

There is a passing satellite in the second one :- AutosaveL.tif Not exactly sure what you are asking . Otherwise not a great difference as far as I can see.

Must be a facebook thing. All I get is your homepage with two images on it.

No image in the link just your home page ?

What OS are you running on the Rock64 Pro?

I am not 100% certain about the ASIAir but the Stellarmate does, in fact, use a Raspberry Pi. I think the ASIAir uses an ARM processor of similar power. Some people seem to be trying out the latest Rock processor which is more powerful and has USB3 ports built in, but I am not sure what version of Unix it runs so software becomes a potential issue.

I have recently installed a Raspberry Pi 3B+ and 12V power distribution in a homemade box on my mount together with a powered USB hub. I run Astroberry software on the RPi which then lets me use INDI software to control my mount, cameras, focuser and guiding remotely via WiFi. It is powerful enough to run PHD2 guiding as well on the mount so no need for rapid transfer of files back to a remote computer and I can control PHD2 via any web browser. I then use KStars/Ekos on my indoor host laptop to control the whole setup. The RPi3B+ is perfectly capable of transferring the main image file after each exposure ( ~32MB each) as these are typically created one every 300 secs, so no big load. I am not sure if it could cope with planetary imaging though as that creates a lot more data. So I have ended up with 12V power being the only physical connection required. It was quite a learning curve to get to grips with it all, but it does work. It's just different, and a big plus is it's Free.

This thread is amazing, they will help you get your kit working if you stick at it. The amount of help provided to newbies is way beyond anything I have seen elsewhere, just amazing - there I said it again.

Learned a lot from this thread thanks. There is a good tutorial here on making synthetic flats using Pixinsight which people may find of use.

So far it's working for me. Fingers crossed.

Finally got everything working. Using Kstars and Ekos with Astroberry on a RPi3B+ on the mount, all work great. Just set up for a remote control session tonight. This is my astro setup.

Plus 1 for astroberry. Recently installed it on my Raspberry Pi3B+ and it works great. For the first time, I can remotely control all my gear.

As said its the GPS equivalent of the millennium bug year 2000 role over that affects early GPS systems. More details here https://www.orolia.com/resources/blog/lisa-perdue/2018/gps-2019-week-rollover-what-you-need-know

It can be done using the terminal. After a lot of searching the command that worked for me was. sudo do-release-upgrade You can also do it from the main Astroberry window using the System - Administration - Software Update app as well. Its a bit complicated though doing it that way. I also looked at using the Rock as well but decided to try the more proven RPi3B+ to see what its like. I did invest in a powered hub for the mount as the RPi just couldnt cope with all the USB power needed for the cams and focusser. I am amazed that the inbuilt WiFi actually works without any booster and connects to my house BTHub, so I am completely wireless!

At the moment I am just running the indi-drivers on the RPi and Kstars and Ekos on my windows laptop, I have not suffered any crashes - yet? The standard Astroberry still comes on Ubuntu 16 and I wanted to take advantage of some of the latest indi drivers which need 18. So I have now updated my RPi to 18.10. The release-upgrade takes a long time and after about three hours asks you a couple of questions which you have to answer before it continues for another hour or so. It does however work. I was using a 16gB memory card and that did fill up. So it's important to clear out a lot of the old stuff using some of the command line tools and the Bleachbit (as root) app when upgrade finished to clean out junk and free up disk space.

Just a brief update I had my first real session last night running Astroberry on my RPi3B+ on my mount. Apart from the initial set up of the focuser and then doing polar alignment (I use Sharpcap for that) I controlled the whole thing from a nice warm house using my windows laptop over WiFi. Managed to get 5 x 300 sec shots each R,G and B + 10 x 300s Lum of Makarians Chain with M86 in the centre using the Ekos inbuilt astrometry for platesolving and alignment. I also used the internal Ekos guiding package but don't think I got that working correctly will watch a tutorial again to see what I missed. The whole Kstars and Ekos apps are very powerful and I am going through a steep learning curve, but very pleased to actually get it working pretty well. Here is my attempt from last night.

Previously I have used APT on a windows laptop directly connected to my gear and it really worked well. But I wanted to move indoors so decided to take the plunge. I have just completed installing a Raspberry Pi3B+ running Astroberry on Ubuntu Linux and now I can remotely control my whole setup in the garden over WiFi while I stay in the warm indoors! It was relatively easy once I managed to get all the software up to the latest levels. It took a whole day to update my RPi Ubuntu from the Astroberry supplied version 16 to the latest version 18, but I just left it to run and it all came good in the end. I am just using the Indi drivers on the RPi and all is working as it should. I do have one outstanding issue with my sestor-senso focuser that has to be recalibrated for each new session after being powered off, that is a pain but hopefully, the Indi drivers will get updated to fix the issue. I have had a steep learning curve with using KStars on my laptop as the indoor control application, but I am getting there. Looking forward, Indigo is a new open platform Astro software package that will run on any platform. Indigo has just released Indigo Sky which is a complete Raspberry Pi preconfigured disk image running on Debian Linux and having played with it, it looks very promising. APT is planning to introduce Indigo support in their next release and subject to drivers being available for all my gear (again sesto-senso is an issue) I plan on switching back to APT as my overall control application as I know my way around it. So bottom line: If you are OK using the terminal for the occasional command line update to install a missing bit of software, then Linux is absolutely great.

I have taken the advice from RadekK and downloaded astroberry to try on my new RPi3B+. After a few teething problems because of a slightly low 5V supply, I have managed to get Indi / Kstars and PHD2 up and running and being accessed over WiFi. I have updated Ubuntu from 16 to 18 and all still works, this allows me to use extra drivers in Indi. I think I am going to need a WiFi extender though as the one in the RPi does not have a very long range I am told. So progress is being made.

Thanks for the replies but there is no explanation of the steps needed to load exactly what software on the RPi and what software on the remote controlling computer if its running Windows. Indi is not fully supported on Windows even today according to their website. Its a minefield of issues, which most posts seem to gloss over, or drown you in lots of technical info which never actually come to a working solution. I am looking at indigo which could be the way forward but it's still effectively in Beta and not solid, but shows promise. Remote control of your total imaging system and mount etc is certainly not ready for non-techies who want to get into the warm! I use APT as my main application which in the next version is promising indigo support and that will make a big difference if it delivers.

Thanks, I have read her long post but it seems she only controls the focuser and camera, not the mount. I am sure someone is doing it but I can't find them on here.

I have searched this forum but can't find any post where someone is actually controlling their mount remotely using a Rasberry Pi at the mount end. What software needs to run on the Rpi to actually connect to the mount? Any help or links appreciated.