Rallemikken

I guess you are going to use https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_armhf/images/raspios_armhf-2023-10-10/2023-10-10-raspios-bookworm-armhf.img.xz or https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2023-10-10/2023-10-10-raspios-bookworm-arm64.img.xz When things are up and running, open Synaptic and search for KStars and the indi-drivers you need. Install from repo and try that out first. If things don't work out as expected, flash the sd-card once again and do it your way. Software from official repo's are not always the newest, but that should absolutely not be an issue in AP. You'd rather run software that's tested, and don't fall over during a session. And software in the debian repo's fits together and are updated when necessary. You just run "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt upgrade" and KStars/Ekos/INDI is updated together with everything else that needs updating at the moment.

Well, sounds like you'll have to make your own repo! One reason to use off-the-shelve software. In time the specs will mature and surface. Never tinkered on that level myself, can't really be of any help. Good luck! Btw; why not use the indi-server framework as a backbone for your homegrown suite? The indi servers are not KStars/Ekos only, the API is out there. Extremely lean; i did a test on a RPi3 B+: The indi_canon_ccd peaked at 7% cpu during file transfer.

It is. Just checked. I'm writing this on a OrangePi5 on Armbian, based on Bookworm, and it's there. Can also confirm it's in the repo for stock Debian. At least what I need: indi-asi, indi-gphoto and indi-eqmod. If you need some rare indi-driver, try to find the deb other places, maybe download separately from Jasem's ppa. If we are installing ordinairy software, we seldom use pip. It's for Python scripts and applications only. The prefered method is to install software from your distro's repo with apt. If you feel lucky you can try to find a package elsewhere in your native packaging format (.deb for Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, MX and more) for the version you use (Debian 12, Mint 20.04 and so on). Use dpkg to install downloaded .deb-files on your computer. If things go west (missing dependicies and such) use (sudo) "apt --fix-broken install" to clean up. If you use the native tools in the Debian universe it's hard to mess up an install. Not so on rpm-based distros. Or at least, it wasn't. My first distro was Red Hat 7 in 2001. Those were the days.... Challenging, I would say. Btw; Red Hat 7 from 2001 must not be confused with RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iuMZG-SyDCU&list=PLrzbdmripj1c9p7hzt7ffgH3oN8vzCFI3&index=3 Start here. Then I suggest this one for the processing: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4_a8XmC6H3I&list=PLrzbdmripj1c9p7hzt7ffgH3oN8vzCFI3&index=1 NebulaPhotos with Nico Carver and also AstroBackyard with Trevor Jones. Very good tutorials for the beginners.

pip is a python installer. On bare-metal Debian you use "sudo apt install <myprogram>" to install software from the repo's.

If RPi OS Bookworm is compatible with current Debian stable, Bookworm, you should not need any scripts. KStars, astrometry cataloges and most of the INDI--servers are all present in the repo's, both in armhf and arm64. Install everything with "sudo apt" or install Synaptic and use that. Should be piece-of-cake. Not long ago you had to install Mint/Ubuntu and add Jasem's ppa, or build INDI-servers from source on Debian. Today most is present in the Debian stable repo's. If your Raspberry OS is Debian, based on Debian or otherwise compatible with Debian the KStars/Ekos/INDI-suite is just another piece of software, no need for witchcraft to get things running. Install Synaptic, search for KStars and indi and see what turns up.

I have an obsy with a heated section. I usually don't start the computer unless I have +12 celsius. Below that, my monitors flickr and die. Some are better than others, have replaced one monitor already. And then there are fans and oldfashion harddrives. The display temporarly dying is one thing, a corrupted drive is worse.

Agree on this. But try KStars/Ekos/INDI on bare-metal laptop, and a Pi as an INDI-server only. This is how I manage my StarTracker while my main rig runs on a linux desktop in my obsy. The RPi4 have fast enough wireless to make the whole setup remote if you can feed the rest from 12V. An alternative is OrangePi-Zero2 if all you need to handle is a DSLR. Love mine! Anyway, when you pick a Pi as an INDI-server, be sure to have enough USB-ports of the types needed. Can turn out to be a bottleneck, and a hub is just another cause for trouble.

Don't know what makes your Pi tick, most likely it's Raspbian or RaspberryPiOS. Just install KStars/Ekos/INDI. Most likely, it's in the native repo's. Ekos has modules for all you need. No need for PHD2 or special software for capture, platesolving, PA, focuser and so on. Just started my third season with this setup. Never missed a single minute of capture due to software hickups. And the rig is always bang-on target after three platesolves. Done in two minutes. Accurate PA. And KStars has it's own planetarium, like Stellarium. Not fancy, but all targets can be searhed for and with two clicks you are unparked and (close) on target. This is where the platesolving module comes to right.

Color balancing of different elements in a mosaic is not easy. Especially when they are shot on different evenings. Consistent stacks with the same settings/options. Looks like you use Siril. First I'd say you have a green tint in both. Used the "remove green filter"? Another option is photometric color calibration. I've found out that the green filter gives a very consistent base background color without adding noise or altering the overall colors. Then the fine-tuning in the image editor of your choice. I use Gimp. The lower panel is obviously darker than the upper. Have you feathered the intersectioned area? Lots to add, but the two most important: When doing mosaic's, try to shoot the panels close in time (best is same night) and don't touch the camera. Nor focus or rotation. If possible, set up a sequence where you shoot first the first panel, then the second, and then next and so on. After collecting 20-30 subs of each, you start over, and keeps on until daylight. Repeat next night, and the night after that if you wish. This will give you more consistent stacks of each panel. Easy if you have the possibility to plate-solve. Switching between targets takes only 3-5 minutes. Second, do the final fine-tuning and stitching in a image editor. Takes some effort, but gives 100% control. Import each panel as a layer, arrange them, and do the final color correction on each. Finally you use the gradient tool to feather the intersectioned area. When all looks good, merge down.

I have one, love it! I image with Canon DSLR's. You will need a coma corrector for this scope, I use the SkyWatcher 0.9, works great. Gives a focal lenght of 540mm, nice for wide-view with my 5D MkII fullframe. Focus is stable and consistent, never considered any motorized focuser. Cheap, but good. Room for improvements, flocking, focus masks and such.

Not so much that, rather it will be one more thing to cause possible trouble and complexity. I'm a reflector guy, and I try to image without any glass between the stars and camera sensor. I'm no expert on refractors, but I think a field flattener works about the same way as a coma corrector on a reflector; it fixes the misshaped stars along the edges and in the corners. With small targets at long focal lenghts the "area of interrest" often gets small, and there is room to crop. On bigger targets I use my CC to get nice finish all out, but mostly I leave it in the drawer. I have two scopes, one 6" f/4 and one 8" f/5. Thats 600 and 1000mm focal lenght. I have 3 Canon's, one 5D MkII fullframe, one 600D cropsensor, and one 450D, also cropsensor. My coma corrector is a Skywatcher 0.9. Together, this relatively cheap setup offers a waste number of combinations. As for the guiding, I turn my guidescope slighly off target. Not much, but enough that I don't get my main target in the view. I guide my 8" reflector with the smallest mono camera on a 50mm SW finderscope in the findershoe on the big scope. Actually the same finderscope that came with the main scope. Works great. Don't spend big bucks on guiding hardware before you have a sturdy mount, and you master the software. Guiding up to focal lenghts of 1000mm is relatively painless. Just needs to be learned. Keep everything tight, the guidescope in perfect focus, and a tripod or pier that's rock solid. The better you master your current setup, the better the chance is that your future upgrades will be spot-on.

Not bad for such a narrow scope. Keep the optical train simple in the beginning. Put away the flattener and the filter for the time being. Mount a 50mm finderscope with a ASI 120 mini in the finder shoe as a dedicated guide camera. OAG seems cool at first glance, but does not offer any advantages other than weight savings versus a dedicated guide scope. Learn to guide and dither. I point my guide scope slightly off-target. You dont want to guide on the center of a galaxy or star cluster. 70% of the image lies in the processing. Stack each series of subs at least twice, in two different programs. I use Siril, DSS and Sequator. I can never tell in advance witch stack I will keep. In some cases my finished image is a blend of two different stacks, stacked in two different applications. Don't tie yourself to one application, or one way to do things. Finish the image in a decent, regular Photo Editor, that being Photoshop, Gimp or any other. 180 seconds @ ISO800 is exactly my favourite setting on my 600D. I live under bortle 4 skies, shoots with f/4 and f/5 scopes, never uses filters and only uses flatteners to increase field-of-view. The 600D have small pixels and with my focal lenghts (600 and 1000mm) I rather crop out the edges with the elongated stars.

The StellaLyra has the best base and the best focuser. The SkyWatcher has the best and most robust primary mirror cell. The secondary mirror holder on the StellaLyra has a design that makes it safer for beginners, you can't rotate it freely. Overall, I'd take the StellaLyra, despite a few design flaws.

http://astronomy.tools/calculators/field_of_view/?fov[]=53||26||1|1|0&fov[]=53||481||1|1|0&messier=33 Get an old full-frame, like my Canon 5D MkII. A little bit more demanding, but it gives you a huge increase in FOV. The focuser tube on the SkyWatcher you have should be wide enough. Have had my fullframe one season so far, and like the opportunity to mix scopes and different DSLR's. I try to avoid reducers if I can. I have a fast f/4 newt that needs a coma corrector, and those also often increase the FOV. My best pictures are taken with no glass between the stars and the camera sensor.

Lots of guides out there on how to make a wifi hotspot with a RPi, and even some on how to make a headless indi-server. Combining those are piece-of-cake, but I wanted a setup where I could choose if I want to connect on wifi or cabled as long as my own device was configured to receive IP's on the interface I wanted to use. That meant that the headless Pi had to offer IP's on BOTH wifi and cable. Not well tested, but it worked wih my Canon 450D connected to my Raspberry Pi3 B+. For us nerds, work in progress, open for suggestions. Next episode will deal with images, sizes and compression. For backup and distribution. If there is some interest out there...... indiserver-hotspot-1.0 ----------------------- # THIS IS NOT A BASH SCRIPT, though it looks like one. # Default user is <pi> and default password used when SSH'ing in is <raspberry> # How to put together an image for Raspberry Pi3 B+ that handles out # IP's on both interfaces, accepts SSH connections and serves as a headless INDI-server. # Base image: 2021-05-07-raspios-buster-armhf-lite.img # Can be found at https://downloads.raspberrypi.org/raspios_lite_armhf/images/raspios_lite_armhf-2021-05-28/2021-05-07-raspios-buster-armhf-lite.zip # Unzip and flash to SD-card. # Config files enlosed in --------------------------- # After first boot the Pi will expand the file system to use the whole # SD-card and reboot by itself. # After this reboot, start with theese commands (with monitor & keyboard): # Set locale, keyboard layout & countrycode for wifi # Activate SSH sudo raspi-config # Fresh start sudo apt update sudo apt upgrade sudo reboot # We install the software needed. # First hostapd # hostapd makes the wifi able to deal out ip's. sudo apt install hostapd sudo systemctl unmask hostapd sudo systemctl enable hostapd # Then dnsmasq sudo apt install dnsmasq # This is my config file for dhcpcd. Edit with nano. # When finished, Ctrl+O Enter Ctrl+X Enter # Some options may be removed, but this works for me. No expert. sudo nano /etc/dhcpcd.conf --------------------------- hostname clientid persistent option rapid_commit option domain_name_servers, domain_name, domain_search, host_name option classless_static_routes option interface_mtu require dhcp_server_identifier slaac private interface wlan0 static ip_address=192.168.50.2/24 nohook wpa_supplicant interface eth0 static ip_address=192.168.50.1/24 --------------------------- # The config for the dhcp server. # Same here,this file might be trimmed down some. sudo nano /etc/dnsmasq.conf --------------------------- interface=wlan0 dhcp-range=192.168.50.10,192.168.50.20,255.255.255.0,24h domain=indiserver address=/pi.indiserver/192.168.50.2 interface=eth0 dhcp-range=192.168.50.30,192.168.50.40,255.255.255.0,24h domain=indi address=/pi.indi/192.168.50.1 --------------------------- # Unlocks the wifi. Not sure if this is needed. Better safe than sorry. sudo rfkill unblock wlan # Config for the wireless hotspot. Feel free to use own SSID/password # Also, use your own countrycode. sudo nano /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf --------------------------- country_code=NO interface=wlan0 ssid=indiserver hw_mode=g channel=7 macaddr_acl=0 auth_algs=1 ignore_broadcast_ssid=0 wpa=2 wpa_passphrase=raspberry wpa_key_mgmt=WPA-PSK wpa_pairwise=TKIP rsn_pairwise=CCMP --------------------------- # Get repo key and add the astroberry repo wget -O - https://www.astroberry.io/repo/key | sudo apt-key add - sudo su -c "echo 'deb https://www.astroberry.io/repo/ buster main' > /etc/apt/sources.list.d/astroberry.list" sudo apt update # Theese are the drivers I need. # For the complete set, use "sudo apt install indi-full" # Adds about 15 mb of space sudo apt install indi-asi indi-gphoto indi-eqmod # Clean apt cache sudo apt clean # A reboot. Now the dhcp-server should work on both interfaces. # At this point the Pi don't have access to the internet. # Remove keyboard. Keep the monitor just in case, to catch any boot errors. # From now on, the Pi is truly headless. sudo systemctl reboot # You should be able to SSH in either wireless or on a LAN cable directly connected # I was able to connect on both Ip's on two terminal windows at the same time. # # The whole point of this setup is to be able to choose between wifi and cabled. # When my StarTracker is just outside my house, the weather is warm and the signal is strong # it's convenient to use the wifi. The Pi runs of the same 12V battery (via a cigarette lighter USB adapter) # as my dew heater. And sometimes my tracker to, via an adapter like the one for the Pi. # When I set up in the same spot for several nights, I use a cable and connect directly. # It gives faster download times and less hazzle. # The download speed on wifi will vary with your signal and equipment. # Do some read-up on the option "hw_mode" in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf # The RPi3 B+ that I use is somewhat crippled, but the RPi4 should give good speed on wifi, # along with two USB3-ports. # # As seen in /etc/hostapd/hostapd.conf the wifi SSID is <indiserver> and the password is <raspberry> # The machine you use to connect with must accept IP's via dhcp on the interface you use. # The Pi's IP on wlan0 is 192.168.50.2 and on eth0 192.168.50.1 # Use theese to SSH in. # The INDI-server(s) don't start automagically. I prefer to SSH in and start them in the shell. # It gives valuable feedback, and it's easy to stop them with Ctrl+C # Just as easy to start again, usually I use Arrow+Up and Arrow+Down to parse bash history # INDI-servers can be started one at a time or several at once: # indiserver indi_canon_ccd indi_asi indi_eqmod # for my imaging rig or just indiserver indi_canon_ccd # when I use my DSLR on my startracker. # ALWAYS TURN ON YOUR EQUIPMENT BEFORE YOU START THE INDI-SERVERS # Good practice. The Pi is the last thing powered on outside. # I also wait a minute for it to settle before I power on my laptop # that runs KStars/Ekos. Lot easier when the hotspot is up and running.

Maybe, but their repo is up and running. They have binaries for all drivers, less then one year old, for 32 and 64-bit arm for Buster and Bullseye. For a pure INDI-server I would flash a lite (headless) Raspberry Pi OS onto a card, boot, and add the corresponding Astroberry repo. It is explained on their site. My choice would be the armhf (32-bit) version based on Buster. A small learning curve, if you let your Pi go via a router you can skip much of the network stuff. On the other end of the ethernetcable you can run anything with KStars. You don't need the drivers on this device, just the KStars/Ekos suite and the basic free and open-source indi framework.

Pick any Pi with an ethernet connection, and install INDI-servers ONLY! Find an old laptop and install Linux/KStars/Ekos and hook up to the Pi with an ethernet cable trough the window. You manage the rig from your kitchen, and the images goes straight on to the laptop. You can review them as they come in, and make corrections if needed.

The safest option is a regular stabilized power supply. My HEQ5 did run ok on a 12V computer power supply, but most advices out there seems to settle on a 13.8V stabilized supply. The argument is more precise guiding, especially in cold weather. They state that the electronics and motors works in a more presice manner when voltage isn't a limiting factor. I run my mount on a 7A switched 13.8V supply, and it has plenty of grunt to provide amp's for my dew heaters as well.

It don't beat the bill of having a wife.........

Don't worry. I imaged a whole winter with that noise on my HEQ5, don't think anything has gone west, but you should take a peek inside. Have learned to tune it, did that before this season (sept 2022) and now it's smooth as silk. Almost no sounds, been so the whole winter. Lots of guides on youtube. I started with adjusting the worm gear, but the rattle didn't dissapear untill I tightened the motors and corresponding gears. Don't be to afraid of binding, just be careful with the first test-runs. I've tightened it all so that there is no salck, whatsoever. It has stayed that way, stable and consistent.

Season is over up here, and I'm already preparing targets for the coming autumn. Inspiration can be found in the weirdest places, among others in your Stellarium install. The path on my computer is /usr/share/stellarium/nebulae/default - an old Linux install. Direct you favourite image viewer to the proper folder and relax for a while!