Raspberry Pi 4 for Imaging Rigs

[DST]

Hello All,

I am trying to accomplish what appears to be a similariler rig as what was achieved by Avocette. I currently have a RPi4 4Gb with a powered USB3 4 port mini hub which is powered by the Celestron battery unit. The hub is connected to the USB port of the headless RPi4. My new ZWO ASI120MC-S camera connects via USB3 to the hub. Also, my Celestron NexStar mount connects via USB2 to the hub. Since the mount gets its power from a Celestron battery unit, it should not put a load on the hub. The only device that may put a load on the hub is the camera. Based on this configuration, should I be able to power the RPi4 from a 10KmAh/5V battery pack?

[SiD the Turtle]

Similar question. While it's been cloudy I've been playing with Raspbian with Kstars and Ekos (all new to me) on my Raspberry PI 2, with the mount indoors to understand how it all works. The 2 is pretty slow by modern standards so looking to buy a 4.

Power has tripped me up: The mount is powered by a https://www.celestron.com/products/powertank-lithium, and I had the Pi connected via a wall charger. I was thinking about using the power tank's USB sockets to power the Pi, but of course this is the first time I've realised the power tank can supply on the 12v line, or the USB, but not both at the same time 🤦‍♂️. So I can power the scope, or the Pi, but not both. Really trying to avoid further astro-related expense right now after just getting the mount (HEQ5) and other goodies so any way I can use the power tank? Somehow split the 12v line, but then do I risk under-powering the mount?

[vlaiv]

I'm late to this party, but would appreciate some quick info.

I think I get how all of this works as I'm pretty experienced with computers, and here is what I would like to do:

Get myself a RPI4, put some bare distro on it without GUI and INDI server. Use this RPI4 to connect my ASI178mcc and AzGTI and I need basic wireless functionality to slew the scope and take exposures - maybe create basic plan - take X exposures having Y length with Z settings (gain, offset and all of that).

This is for my "fun & wide field" imaging rig that I'm putting together. It will use vintage M42 manual lens and small sensor cooled camera. Main goal is to keep it light/portable.

Question is: how stable is KStars light Lite as I want to use my mobile phone and operate without laptop in the field? Will it let me do what I want to do?. Laptop is just another item to be powered that requires large external battery to operate for more than 1.5-2h.

 

Edited August 25, 2020 by vlaiv
Some corrections ...

[gilesco]

On 29/03/2020 at 18:59, SiD the Turtle said:

Similar question. While it's been cloudy I've been playing with Raspbian with Kstars and Ekos (all new to me) on my Raspberry PI 2, with the mount indoors to understand how it all works. The 2 is pretty slow by modern standards so looking to buy a 4.

Power has tripped me up: The mount is powered by a https://www.celestron.com/products/powertank-lithium, and I had the Pi connected via a wall charger. I was thinking about using the power tank's USB sockets to power the Pi, but of course this is the first time I've realised the power tank can supply on the 12v line, or the USB, but not both at the same time 🤦‍♂️. So I can power the scope, or the Pi, but not both. Really trying to avoid further astro-related expense right now after just getting the mount (HEQ5) and other goodies so any way I can use the power tank? Somehow split the 12v line, but then do I risk under-powering the mount?

I have that power tank, don't think it has enough juice to run a Pi properly.

I'm getting the bigger one with the dual car jack sockets. I have a 3A 5V USB charger that I hope to power the Pi from and plug the rest of my kit into the other one.

Will be a while before I have it as other stuff on the order has a 13 week lead time.

[gilesco]

10 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

I'm late to this party, but would appreciate some quick info.

I think I get how all of this works as I'm pretty experienced with computers, and here is what I would like to do:

Get myself a RPI4, put some bare distro on it without GUI and INDI server. Use this RPI4 to connect my ASI178mcc and AzGTI and I need basic wireless functionality to slew the scope and take exposures - maybe create basic plan - take X exposures having Y length with Z settings (gain, offset and all of that).

This is for my "fun & wide field" imaging rig that I'm putting together. It will use vintage M42 manual lens and small sensor cooled camera. Main goal is to keep it light/portable.

Question is: how stable is KStars light Lite as I want to use my mobile phone and operate without laptop in the field? Will it let me do what I want to do?. Laptop is just another item to be powered that requires large external battery to operate for more than 1.5-2h.

 

kstars lite is not under active development any more, the guy who was working on it stopped.

Maybe a tablet vnc to the Pi would work, probably best to preset all your settings at home on the Pi first, and set up the scheduler. Then kick off the scheduler via VNC when at the dark site.

[MarkAR]

21 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Get myself a RPI4, put some bare distro on it without GUI and INDI server.

Why not just load up Astroberry.

Not sure if it uses a full or light version of KStars/Ekos but as above, set up a schedule at home then via phone or tablet link to hotspot to start.

[gilesco]

Just now, MarkAR said:

Why not just load up Astroberry.

Not sure if it uses a full or light version of KStars/Ekos but as above, set up a schedule at home then via phone or tablet link to hotspot to start.

Astroberry = Full version of kstars (v3.4.3 if up to date I think).

[Richie092]

yep, Astroberry and a tablet to hotspot. Keep it simple.

[stash_old]

18 hours ago, vlaiv said:

Get myself a RPI4, put some bare distro on it without GUI and INDI server

Then how do you expect to control you devices - not using the GUI(desktop) is no problem but you still need Indiserver (command line only) or something similar to control your camera/mount. Yes you can control your mount directly from your phone without Indiserver(or similar) but control of a non DSLR camera maybe a little harder.

Indigosky ( paid version works on Apple Iphones /Ipad but doesn't display Blob's) allows you to control devices via a web browser ,including basic image taking (but not DSLR long exp), but how feasible on small screen I cannot comment on.

 

[vlaiv]

11 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Then how do you expect to control you devices - not using the GUI(desktop) is no problem but you still need Indiserver (command line only) or something similar to control your camera/mount. Yes you can control your mount directly from your phone without Indiserver(or similar) but control of a non DSLR camera maybe a little harder.

Indigosky ( paid version works on Apple Iphones /Ipad but doesn't display Blob's) allows you to control devices via a web browser ,including basic image taking (but not DSLR long exp), but how feasible on small screen I cannot comment on.

 

At the moment I'm thinking of either using Python or NodeJS to make a small server and Angular type web app to do the job. My server will talk to INDI server on RPI. Phone will load Angular app in browser from RPI (nginx)

I'll just connect ASI178mcc to RPI at the moment and power both from portable battery - 12V ~20Ah would be enough for shortish couple of hours session.

What I need is simple - shoot X subs, Y seconds each and store them on USB attached SSD or similar with RPI.

Web app only needs to report progress (refresh every few seconds or so) and have start new sequence / abort current sequence options. Most of things will be hard coded for now (which driver to load, where to store images and so on).

[gilesco]

2 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

At the moment I'm thinking of either using Python or NodeJS to make a small server and Angular type web app to do the job. My server will talk to INDI server on RPI. Phone will load Angular app in browser from RPI (nginx)

I'll just connect ASI178mcc to RPI at the moment and power both from portable battery - 12V ~20Ah would be enough for shortish couple of hours session.

What I need is simple - shoot X subs, Y seconds each and store them on USB attached SSD or similar with RPI.

Web app only needs to report progress (refresh every few seconds or so) and have start new sequence / abort current sequence options. Most of things will be hard coded for now (which driver to load, where to store images and so on).

Rather than re-invent the wheel, perhaps look to collaborate with someone else who is doing something similar: https://github.com/rickbassham/ekos-web

[vlaiv]

3 minutes ago, gilesco said:

Rather than re-invent the wheel, perhaps look to collaborate with someone else who is doing something similar: https://github.com/rickbassham/ekos-web

Good point, but I really can't afford to get involved in another project (have 3 ongoing things at the moment) and I need a quick solution for my needs.

This is also somewhat different in that it needs running EKOS instance. I had a brief look at the code and server seems to be just a relay for RPC type api. I wonder why is it needed in the first place - maybe web client could talk to EKOS directly.

I'm after lighter weight variant in any case.

[stash_old]

13 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

What I need is simple - shoot X subs, Y seconds each and store them on USB attached SSD or similar with RPI.

I think you may find Indigosky Web interface gives your all that just the command line running on RPI (No Ekos/Kstars etc) -worth a look if you dont want to create your own 🙂

Edited August 26, 2020 by stash_old

[gilesco]

3 minutes ago, vlaiv said:

Good point, but I really can't afford to get involved in another project (have 3 ongoing things at the moment) and I need a quick solution for my needs.

This is also somewhat different in that it needs running EKOS instance. I had a brief look at the code and server seems to be just a relay for RPC type api. I wonder why is it needed in the first place - maybe web client could talk to EKOS directly.

I'm after lighter weight variant in any case.

I take it you've discounted running Kstars/Ekos on the Pi4 then?

I understand your reasoning I suppose - something lightweight and efficient.

ekos-web is essentially an offline version using the ekos-live API which Ekos runs, which is a kind of cloud based remote solution that is associated with Stellarmate.

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, gilesco said:

I take it you've discounted running Kstars/Ekos on the Pi4 then?

I understand your reasoning I suppose - something lightweight and efficient.

ekos-web is essentially an offline version using the ekos-live API which Ekos runs, which is a kind of cloud based remote solution that is associated with Stellarmate.

I've not discounted Kstars/Ekos completely.

I might be running those on laptop / desktop computer and connect to RPI running INDI server instance.

Beauty of RPI is that memory cards are cheap and one can have multiple OS installations - just changing memory card and booting up - one can have different environment. I'm mentioning this as I have now seen INDIGO.

9 minutes ago, stash_old said:

I think you may find Indigosky Web interface gives your all that -worth a look if you dont want to create your own 🙂

How come that there are two "standards" for this? Or rather, If I understand it correctly INDI is just messaging standard and INDI is reference POSIX implementation while INDIGO is another "more efficient" implementation of the same thing?

They are supposed to be compatible, right?

[vlaiv]

33 minutes ago, stash_old said:

I think you may find Indigosky Web interface gives your all that just the command line running on RPI (No Ekos/Kstars etc) -worth a look if you dont want to create your own 🙂

Just had a deeper look and I think this is the first one to try out.

Official website does not offer much in terms of what is available thru web GUI but there is nice "shutter" icon in top bar - I suppose that can be used to take exposures and do simple scheduling?

[vlaiv]

@gilesco

Don't laugh

I did not mean actual shutter icon - but rather tab page with controls. Just checked github code and that page indeed looks like simple imager ...

simple glance at the code looks promising. It looks like it features all the needed controls - location for local storage of images, temperature, exposure time, delay, count, etc ...

[gilesco]

Sounds like you're onto something and that it will work for you.

The way I see it is INDI is the protocol, and indigo and indilib are different implementations of it. Indigosky is a basic interface to Indigo that runs on the Pi.

Not had any experience with Indigo / Indigosky.

[vlaiv]

2 minutes ago, gilesco said:

Sounds like you're onto something and that it will work for you.

The way I see it is INDI is the protocol, and indigo and indilib are different implementations of it. Indigosky is a basic interface to Indigo that runs on the Pi.

Not had any experience with Indigo / Indigosky.

At first I thought so too, but Indigo, although compatible aims to be more than indi/indilib.

They have nice explanation on their FAQ page ...

Anyways, I'll give it a go at some point (once I assemble all the gear needed - some things are in the mail as we speak) and will report back here my experience with it.

[SiD the Turtle]

22 hours ago, gilesco said:

I have that power tank, don't think it has enough juice to run a Pi properly.

I'm getting the bigger one with the dual car jack sockets. I have a 3A 5V USB charger that I hope to power the Pi from and plug the rest of my kit into the other one.

Will be a while before I have it as other stuff on the order has a 13 week lead time.

Sorry I should have updated what I did in the end. The Powertank is a bit of a bondoggle as it can't support power on the DC jack and USB at the same time. So I have the Raspberry Pi 4 connected to an old 'emergency mobile phone' charger from Anker, which is strapped to the side of the power tank which powers the mount. No problems for the last couple of months, though to be fair all it has to power is the Pi and a guide cam.

I'm waiting for the Pegasus Astro powerboxes to come back into stock then will switch to all of that then powered off... something to be decided. I have an outdoor power socket now so might be okay to use the good old mains!

[SiD the Turtle]

22 hours ago, Richie092 said:

yep, Astroberry and a tablet to hotspot. Keep it simple.

Seconding this. I have the Pi4 velcro-ed to the side of the mount, running Astroberry and it's very stable. I use a Chromebook to VPN to it as it's light, the battery lasts forever and I don't have to fight with Windows to get it working.

I'd suggest a laptop over mobile purely because once you've got Kstars, Indi, PHD2 and anything else running, suddenly even a laptop screen gets crowded. Plus it's more forgiving to drop than a tablet.

[retret66]

I did build an RPi 3+ a year ago to make my triscope completely wireless in case I moved to a different house. Without any complicated setup I loaded Indigosky on it. Everything works, 3 cameras simultaneously, dithering, PHD2 all worked. I use APT which support Indi bridge. This is how I set it up.  

 

[turboIII]

Hello this topic is very good to have    information   for  Raspberry 4  to astronomy....

 

Is there any news?

new test

[StevieDvd]

13 hours ago, turboIII said:

Hello this topic is very good to have    information   for  Raspberry 4  to astronomy....

 

Is there any news?

new test

What news are you seeking?

The Asiair Pro, Astroberry & Stellarmate all run on RPI4 now.  From cheapest to dearest.

Astroberry free download to put on your own RPI4 hardware. Nice Browser support to setup & run everything.

Stellarmate - IOS/Android app as well as Browser support to setup & run everything. But preloaded RPI4 or the OS on it's own (comes with support and app).

Asiair Pro - App support on IOS/Android no browser like the above. Locked into ZWO hardware (except selected Canon/Nikon DSLR cameras).

[AnakChan]

I have had the ASIAir Pro for a year now and in the past few months with the help of some friends, been able to get full functionality running Astroberry on the ASIAir Pro hardware. I actually got it all working last year however with the DC ports control hard coded (outside of INDI/KStars/EKOS). I got it rudimentary INDI functionality of the ASIAir Pro DC hub with the Asstroberry DIY relay driver, however a friend was able to code up a proper INDI driver ASI Power which provides full control of the DC Hub to manage variable power to dew heaters, flat panels, etc.

With this Astroberry build on the ASIAir Pro hardware, one can get full functionality that's camera/focuser brand agnostic (as long a there's INDI drivers for it), and full use of the ASIAir Pro hardware including the DC hub.