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Stellarmate, ASIAir or Astroberry?

simondodd

By simondodd
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simondodd

simondodd

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Has anyone here tested all three of these and if so which one did you end up settling with...?
I was originally thinking of the ASIAir but am leaning away from it as I'm not too sure about how many other cameras it supports and I also don't have an ipad/tablet.
Astroberry looks pretty cool and it's free but I'm struggling a bit with the setup (will get there in the end though)
I've not tried stellarmate at all but it looks pretty good and for $50 for the OS it's much better value than having to buy another Raspberry pi if I go down the ASIAir route...

Anyone got any pointers on either of them? I really want to get rid of my slow old laptop that sits outside when imaging and just get everything nice and neat :)

 

Thanks in advance!

Clear skies

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fozzybear

fozzybear

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Hi,

I am playing with astroberry on my rpi 3b latest version think it is the + running his version so far so good at first yes a big learning curve and the developer @RadekK  is on this forum so feel free to ask him some questions the rpi is local to the scope then you run everything from your laptop/desktop

I have my canon 450d connected astroeq for my mount,qhy5-IIm for guiding with a 9x50 finderscope  so as I say still experimenting and also planning  to implement an auto focuser based on Arduino by Robert Brown. Again so far so good.

Andy

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simondodd

simondodd

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Hmm, that may just swing it then if the dev is on here ;) I'm currently struggling to get Astroberry to even connect to my home network! haha I'm heading away for a few days though so I'm hoping my subconscious will provide the solution for me ;) Are there any advantages to having Stellarmate over Astroberry? 

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fozzybear

fozzybear

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1 minute ago, simondodd said:

Hmm, that may just swing it then if the dev is on here ;) I'm currently struggling to get Astroberry to even connect to my home network! haha I'm heading away for a few days though so I'm hoping my subconscious will provide the solution for me ;) Are there any advantages to having Stellarmate over Astroberry? 

I have not tried it so cannot comment

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fozzybear

fozzybear

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4 minutes ago, simondodd said:

I'm currently struggling to get Astroberry to even connect to my home network

you do have to read his instructions at first I failed but then success on this read and re-read you have to edit one of the files on the sd-card to enter your wifi details if connecting via wifi, are you connecting your rpi via this way or not

Andy

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fozzybear

fozzybear

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19 minutes ago, simondodd said:

Yeah I've seen that one ;) thanks.
I sometimes do tour management stuff for bands, this time I'm just a driver. Off on the road for 7 days with David Gray. :)

Sorry had to ask the wife who David Gray was, Lucky you then. Anyway any probs when you get back post on here and will try and get you sorted.?

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simondodd

simondodd

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Haha, its lucky he is kind of famous! Some of the ones I work with are known by about 100 people worldwide! Haha.

 

thanks for the guidance. I should be able to sort it on Monday with a bit of luck :)

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fozzybear

fozzybear

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2 minutes ago, simondodd said:

Haha, its lucky he is kind of famous! Some of the ones I work with are known by about 100 people worldwide! Haha.

 

thanks for the guidance. I should be able to sort it on Monday with a bit of luck :)

just wiki'd him and he was born down the road from me ok about 5 miles in Sale,Cheshire. Small world...

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simondodd

simondodd

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24 minutes ago, RadekK said:

Can we fix it? Yes we can! I come to serve ?

 

Thanks man. I’ll be back on Monday with some more specific questions or a hooray post about getting it to work :) 

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simondodd

simondodd

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On 15/03/2019 at 19:48, fozzybear said:

forgot to mention when adding your wifi details that it is case sensitive

OK that may have been my problem! Only just coming back to this now! OK turns out that was my problem... I feel pretty damn stupid now! haha Heres to getting it up and running! :)

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CVEd

CVEd

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I have Stellarmate, Astroberry and an RPi with Raspbian/Kstars installed.  I did the learning on the Stellarmate by following the YouTube tutorials.  It was a long, painful process.  I recently installed Astroberry and was able to get it setup fairly quickly since I had learned the process with Stellarmate.  I haven't tried the Raspbian/kstars installation yet.

Some of the differences I have noted between Stellarmate and Astroberry:

The Stellarmate Wi-Fi setup seemed to be a little easier.  I haven't figured out how to configure the Wi-Fi on Astroberry to automatically switch between Wi-Fi networks and the internal hotspot/virtual access point.

Astroberry seems to be a little easier to connect to and use remotely because the remote operation is implemented using a web server on the Astroberry RPi.  So the remote computer needs only a web browser and kstars does not have to be installed on it.

Astroberry  has a telescope mount simulator for learning how to use it.  I couldn't find the telescope simulator on Stellarmate.

          - correction: I found the telescope simulator on the windows installation of ekos/kstars.  I just found it in the RPi installation under the "others" category.  It was very difficult to find.

Astroberry appears to have a polar alignment tool although I haven't tried it yet.  Stellarmate does not appear to have that tool.

          - correction: Stellarmate does have the same polar alignment tool.  The polar alignment tool in SharpCap looks much easier to use.

I am interested in hearing about other experiences and comments from the Astroberry author.

Ed

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stash_old

stash_old

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Cant say about Stellarmate as I have not used it.

I have used Astroberry which like Stellarmate is based on Indilib/Kstars/Ekos and have created then same ,on other Linux distro.

As you have hinted Astroberry's implementation is different but the basic EKOS should be very very a like so maybe the missing parts (Tele Sim,Polar Alignment etc) is down to not being up todate. The Tele Sim is normally under "Other" on the devices list - cant see this would not be there on Stellarmate but I believe you - so put a request in for help/update - you have paid for it.

Anything else is just the creators view on how Linux should work and is not part of Kstars/Ekos/Indi - e.g. Wifi - These are "add ons" created as I say by Jasem and Radek. There are , I believe , some options on Stellarmate which are not part of the std "free" (or fully implemented)  Indi/Kstars/Ekos - Ekos Live I think is an example.

Ease of use of very subjective - ask 10 people about Stellarmate/Astroberry you will get lots of variations - love ,hate and everything in between.

I dont know how much direct help Radek gets but I believe Stellarmate is more of a development team "baby" not just Jasem (might be wrong).

So Radek does one hell of a job on Astroberry - which is FREE unlike Stellarmate and other RPI Indi flavours.

I will be honest I dont even use the RPI as a Wifi AP but prefer to use a stand alone 12v DC AP which I can take into the field so my connections are basically very simple no messing with Hot Spots etc and simple slots back into my home network without changes.

I guess (know 🙂 ) others will have different views/thoughts but of course there is also Indigo so together with Ascom/Windows we are (will be) spoilt for choice.

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david_taurus83

david_taurus83

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The ASIAir I understand. Its fully mobile and you dont need a laptop at all for it to work. Can run off its own app on your phone or tablet. The only thing that keeps me away is it wont support my auto focuser and there seem to be lots of issues posted on the Facebook group. ZWO do seem pretty fast to provide support tbf.

Does Stellarmate or Astroberry also do away with the need for a laptop like the Air? Because that's what it would need to peel me away from Windows!

 

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Ouroboros

Ouroboros

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On 16 April 2019 at 21:30, chaxastro said:

Hi Simon,

Came across this YouTube vid recently, hope it helps,

Regards,

chaxastro

'Humour is reason gone mad!'  Grouch Marx

 

 

Thanks for that. At least I now understand what this sort of astro gizmo will do for the imaging astronomer. 

Pretty impressed that he picked up his whole rig and carried it outside too.  

We don't see him polar align and plate solve his target in the video, which presumably he did to get the decent guiding. 

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