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RPi3B ... new mb for lappy ... what to do? ...

Demonperformer

By Demonperformer
in DIY Astronomer

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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Right, I think I am about ready to take the plunge. Just want to check that I am getting all that I will need [I already have a Win7 laptop which I will be using to control it via WIFI].

(1) Motherboard, including 32gb card; £38.40

(2) Case for said motherboard; £3.59

(3) Power supply; £7.79

I am guessing that I will need an ethernet cable for setting the Pi up initally and getting WIFI working? IIRC, an ethernet cable that was bought with a networking kit will not work [I have an old networking kit somewhere that never got used] - something to do with crossovers? So
(4) Ethernet cable; £2.79 [by following the '2 new' link]
I was considering the 0.5m cable rather than the 2m cable, if all I am going to be using it for is setting-up, but then I thought that a 2m cable would be more useful, particularly if the WIFI proves to be not powerful enough in the garden to control everything adequately. And for the extra 50p, I might as well go for the longer cable.

(5) Self adhesive hook and loop tape; £1.54 - to attach the box to the side of the mount.

Total cost: £54.11 + whatever p/p gets added.

Am I forgetting anything?

Thanks.

 

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Gina

Gina

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I'm running Raspian Jessie Lite and installing only necessary stuff - running headless, which saves an enormous amount of space.  The OS takes up just 2GB and I'm using an 8GB micro SD card.  When I have everything working which I'm confident of achieving before too long, I shall save the card image, ZIP it and upload it somewhere.  I may get my web site sorted out one day :D

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Hicks

Hicks

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If you've not bought yet, check the price on cpc.farnell.com/ just in case it works out cheaper. Their site is offline right now though, prob be a few hours before it's back up. When I priced up a pi 3 cpc worked out cheaper at the time.

Fwiw I've been controlling my LX90 + SXVR + Lodestar + Filterwheel via an olimex A20 for the last year or two now. I'm looking into switching over to the Pi 3 though (it's sat on my desk just need to get around to installing indi on it) since it's got 4 usb ports which avoids the hub I've used with the olimex. Between the extra usb ports and gpio for focuser/lx90 serial control I'll have a more compact box to fasten to the scopes fork arms than the olimex box :)

libindi is imo the only sane way* to do remote imaging on linux. You can run kstars+ekos (or any other app that supports libindi) clients on your main machine. Then the pi can just run indiserver + a few drivers.

As Gina mentions, Rasbian Jessie Lite is worth using since it avoids the pi running any gui and saves on SD space. If you run raspi-config you can drop the GFX memory down to the absolute minimum too which frees up a little extra RAM.

*Ok, not the only. Some people do like using VNC as they can set a session going then shutdown their main pc and leave the remote one doing its thing. Outside of that specific use case though, libindi imo.

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Hicks

Hicks

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On 03/10/2016 at 13:35, John78 said:

It is that simple, but there is of course a caveat ;)

That caveat is you can only use full stepping then it will work fine driving a 5 wire unipolar as bipolar on any driver, half stepping will work fine on the drivers we like to use A4988 or DRV8825 but nothing more microsteppy will work properly.

I've been considering getting a moonlite focuser which afaik uses a 5 wire unipolar stepper. I was going to use a DRV8805 to drive it, but you've put a spanner in the works :)

If that +12v 5th pin is not connected giving just the 4 pins for the 2 coils and assuming a suitable bipolar driver is used. What would be the gain is operating it bipolar full (or half) step vs unipolar?

I was under the impression I'd have to open the unit and cut the common connection between the two coils, which I wasn't willing to do. But if it's possible to just not connect that 5th pin in the cable. Worth considering.

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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11 hours ago, Gina said:

I'm running Raspian Jessie Lite and installing only necessary stuff - running headless, which saves an enormous amount of space.  The OS takes up just 2GB and I'm using an 8GB micro SD card.  When I have everything working which I'm confident of achieving before too long, I shall save the card image, ZIP it and upload it somewhere.  I may get my web site sorted out one day :D

Just thinking out loud here (and probably sounding like some ungrateful g*t - which is not my intent) ...

You are building your system to run your setup [reasonable, I suppose ;) ]. OK, camera (same one, no problem); mount (yours is EQ8, mine is only EQ6 - syntrek version not synscan - 'devices' page says the mount needs to be "controllable by Synscan hand controller" - I believe I would need to install a new board to control it by the synscan hand controller - mmm); focusser (I don't have one - if I were to get one (e.g. this one, if it would fit on my ZS71) I would need to install different drivers - Oh, there don't appear to be any for that model - would they conflict?); guidecam [I really am going to get guiding working sometime ... really ...] (different camera - QHY5LII - would need to install different drivers - again, would they conflict?); FW (driver available - should be no conflict as yours is ZWO which works off the camera drivers).

So, apart from the camera (and possibly the mount), the other drivers on the card would be superfluous and/or would need replacing.  Would it be more trouble to do this than to start from scratch and install everything, following the guidance that has been put on this thread (and others)?

Maybe try installing from scratch first, if I make a complete mess of things, I can always delete my sd card and start over with your image - assuming the EQ6 syntrek will work on the EQ driver, this would only leave the guidecam as an immediate problem ...

Thanks.

 

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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7 hours ago, Hicks said:

If you run raspi-config you can drop the GFX memory down to the absolute minimum too which frees up a little extra RAM.

Is that something I do every time I start-up, or is it something I would have to build into the system?

Thanks.

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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Right, done some pricing from the farnell website:

Delivery free (as the total order is more than £5 ex VAT)
Total £48.53

Although the case is (at first glance) more expensive, the Amazon version is £3.59 + £3.90 p/p, which is £7.49 and so £2.09 more expensive. The ethernet cable and adhesive I could still get from Amazon (£4.33 - free delivery), bringing my grand total cost for the project down to £52.86 - a saving of £1.20, BUT that only gives me a 16GB card instead of 32GB. However, based on Gina's comments about only using an 8GB card, I guess that would not be too much of a problem.

Thanks.

 

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Hicks

Hicks

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raspi-config will likely already be installed if you're using a raspbian image. If it's not then as root (or with sudo) you can do apt-get update; apt-get install raspi-config

It's a terminal app that will edit your config.txt file for you. You don't _need_ it but it makes various tasks easier/safer to do. One option is setting how much memory to reserve for the gfx card, or enabling wifi etc

As it writes to your config.txt file you only need to run it once and the settings will be remembered each boot (for that SD card of course). For most setting changes you will need to reboot after running it.

You can always order the SD card from elsewhere, I bought mine from cclonline.com as they had fast sd cards with 16GB and 64GB for quite a cheap price. That said, 16GB or even 8GB is perfectly fine.

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Gina

Gina

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4 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Just thinking out loud here (and probably sounding like some ungrateful g*t - which is not my intent) ...

You are building your system to run your setup [reasonable, I suppose ;) ]. OK, camera (same one, no problem); mount (yours is EQ8, mine is only EQ6 - syntrek version not synscan - 'devices' page says the mount needs to be "controllable by Synscan hand controller" - I believe I would need to install a new board to control it by the synscan hand controller - mmm); focusser (I don't have one - if I were to get one (e.g. this one, if it would fit on my ZS71) I would need to install different drivers - Oh, there don't appear to be any for that model - would they conflict?); guidecam [I really am going to get guiding working sometime ... really ...] (different camera - QHY5LII - would need to install different drivers - again, would they conflict?); FW (driver available - should be no conflict as yours is ZWO which works off the camera drivers).

So, apart from the camera (and possibly the mount), the other drivers on the card would be superfluous and/or would need replacing.  Would it be more trouble to do this than to start from scratch and install everything, following the guidance that has been put on this thread (and others)?

Maybe try installing from scratch first, if I make a complete mess of things, I can always delete my sd card and start over with your image - assuming the EQ6 syntrek will work on the EQ driver, this would only leave the guidecam as an immediate problem ...

Thanks.

 

That's perfectly fine with me :)  I agree that it would be best anyway as your setup is bound to differ from mine and as long as you are happy to copy/paste command lines to your CLI you should be fine.  Good luck :)

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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21 hours ago, Demonperformer said:

Right, done some pricing from the farnell website:

Delivery free (as the total order is more than £5 ex VAT)
Total £48.53

Although the case is (at first glance) more expensive, the Amazon version is £3.59 + £3.90 p/p, which is £7.49 and so £2.09 more expensive. The ethernet cable and adhesive I could still get from Amazon (£4.33 - free delivery), bringing my grand total cost for the project down to £52.86 - a saving of £1.20, BUT that only gives me a 16GB card instead of 32GB. However, based on Gina's comments about only using an 8GB card, I guess that would not be too much of a problem.

Orders placed ... no going back now!

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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Now thinking about whether I should use my Win7 laptop as a controller, or whether my Win10 tablet would be a better option.

I have used the tablet for nothing, other than reading pdfs on the bus, so there is none of the extra rubbish that I have downloaded onto the laptop in the years that I have had it.

I have discovered (this morning!) that I can change the display on the tablet so that it works like a normal desktop (I hate the 'tablet' display), so that is an obstacle that is out of the way.

The only downside is that the tablet does not have a cat5 connection, which I gather will be necessary to get the RPi running before I get its WIFI connected. I could presumably do the initial 'get WIFI running' bit from my laptop and then move over to the tablet to do the rest and to 'run' the system in anger.

While waiting for the 'bits' to arrive, I'm going to have a look at Kstars & Ekos ... maybe even download them onto the tablet and get them configured ready ... if they run on W10.

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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Fine, Kstars seems to be runnable of W10, so I will have a go at downloading it onto the tablet. But reading the Ekos requirements page, it says that Ekos can only be run on Linux.

From reading other threads/posts my understanding was that Kstars and Ekos run on the laptop, which can be Windows ... ?

 

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Gina

Gina

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Maybe install Linux on your laptop.  If you want to run Windows as well you can install Linux beside it and then when you boot you get a choice of which OS you want to use.  Makes two PCs out of one :)  Though you can only use one at a time, of course, and you share HD space.  But Linux is much smaller (tighter code) than Windows and doesn't take up much room.

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Demonperformer

Demonperformer

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Thanks, Gina.

That is certainly a step-up from what I was thinking ['going to have to buy a linux and/or 64-bit tablet now'].

I could do that with the laptop, but I am becoming more attracted to the idea of using the tablet, and apparently it is not so simple with a tablet. I have found this thread, and the linx7 is my tablet. I am going to have to work through all the posts to make some kind of sense of it, but a quick peruse seems to say that it can be done. Obviously, the first thing to do will be to make a backup of the tablet's drive in case of total disaster ...

Thanks.

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Hicks

Hicks

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Ekos uses libindi which I believe is Linux only.

What I'd do is have a 2nd hdd in your laptop if you have a spare slot or cdrom bay you can remove and replace with a hdd caddy. Then you can install ubuntu* + kstars/ekos via the ppa.

The bonus of this setup is that you can install linux 32bit or 64bit depending on your hardware and once it's configured, that's that. Unless you need to use it online or feel the need to update the software on it, you can just keep it frozen in time for astro work. Using your other hdd for your day to day work knowing what you're doing is not going to mess up your setup for astro (which you tend to only find out once setup and the clear sky time is rapidly going away :P).

*I use debian testing on mine but that's not really recommended unless you're used to linux. Next year testing "stretch" will go stable though and kstars/ekos in testing is usable enough. You could also install debian Jessie but the version of kstars and ekos in that is quite dated now. Ubuntu is simpler for getting going imo.

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riklaunim

riklaunim

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Intel based tablets running Windows are usually bound to run it as Linux does not support tablet displays as the interface is usually non-standard. As for booting Linux - using Ubuntu or it direct derivative is the best option as it AFAIK can run with Secure Boot and other UEFI shenanigans, but you may still need help with making a special bootable image with Rufus if the UEFI still makes problems (64 bit CPU having 32 bit UEFI which wasn't widely supported by Linux distributions not so long ago, now it's said some do support that).

If tablet display is supported by Linux then either 32 or 64 bit version should run, as the CPU is 64 bit.

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