Ubuntu: Losing my head!

[stash_old]

5 minutes ago, Paul M said:

And it works!

Great and that is all that matters.

You might want to tape the blue light if Mni PC near the end of you OTA

[stash_old]

Or you could now use the old RPI4 (just SD card,no stupid GUI as not required ) in conjunction with your MiniPC/Indi or even Windows 10 using CCDCIEL(windows and Indi all at once) to control Mount,Focuser etc but not the camera's(leave them on Mini PC with software)  😈

You did say you wanted to do something with the RPI4 other than a door step.

Whatever please do "dry runs" BEFORE wasting another clear night 🙂

[Paul M]

13 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Whatever please do "dry runs" BEFORE

I dry ran that RPi to the point of absolute desiccation! And still it ruined my life, ruined it I tell you!!

For those interested (just sayin'  ) in mini, system-on-a-chip PC's, here's what this bad boy looks like inside.

It's got a lickle WiFi board, 8Gb RAM, a 128 Gb mSATA SSD and alongside you can see SATA connectors to install a 2.5 SATA SSD upto 2Tb if desired, I've got a SanDisk 500Gb external SSD for storage of images and transferring to my W10 lappy for torture processing. The alu bracket thing on the right is a foot that can be crew mounted to a short end for upright desk top use.

The CPU is an Intel Celeron N3150 Quad-Core Processor, Ok, could have spent more and got something a bit faster/more modern but I'm sure it's absolutely fine for running EKOS, its primary mission. My intention has always been for processing to be done externally.

[Stuart1971]

2 hours ago, stash_old said:

Not for an 8gb RPI4 , decent  case, good PSU,cables ,SSD and fan(if reqd)

Ok, then £90 tops, unless you buy it all from the same place you paid £120 for just the rpi...and you dont NEED the SSD at all......😂😂

Edited October 7, 2020 by Stuart1971

[Paul M]

Right then. All done!

Had everything working, VNC working, cameras working. Had Ekos solving an old image and then slewing the simulated mount and then taking a picture. All seems good except the GPS mouse that I got for the Pi but never connected it to. Had it working fine in W10 but not it's working on Ekos under GPSD. No Fix, actually no data of any kind.

So before packing up for the night after a successful conclusion to prepping the Ubuntu Machine for some action at the telescope I decided to move it to the back kitchen so  I could get the GPS mouse near a window. Powered it down via the GUI and the unplugged everything and moved the machine to the kitchen, plugged in the power supply and GPS mouse and turned on the power. I returned to my laptop in the lounge and refreshed VNC viewer after giving it a chance to boot. Nothing. Maybe the WiFi isn't so good even with the antenna farm, so I plugged in Ethernet. Nothing.

I noticed the power indicator was cycling. On for a while the off for a shorter period then back on... Oh dear, maybe Bios can't find the boot volume? Back in the loft for the keyboard and then connect the computer to the TV and power up. Nothing not even Bios or an opportunity to enter boot options or the recovery console. No sign of Bios. Plugged in the USB stick that I burned the Ubuntu install ISO to, See if could see that. Nothing. A green LED briefly flashes on power up on the mSata board and the blue power LED are the only signs of life.

I've re seated the mSata SSD and RAM, just in case. My only other option before contacting the vendor is try another power supply. Not hopeful though.

Off to bed now more deflated than a badly deflated thing in a flat universe...

I mean, seriously?

[Stuart1971]

17 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Right then. All done!

Had everything working, VNC working, cameras working. Had Ekos solving an old image and then slewing the simulated mount and then taking a picture. All seems good except the GPS mouse that I got for the Pi but never connected it to. Had it working fine in W10 but not it's working on Ekos under GPSD. No Fix, actually no data of any kind.

So before packing up for the night after a successful conclusion to prepping the Ubuntu Machine for some action at the telescope I decided to move it to the back kitchen so  I could get the GPS mouse near a window. Powered it down via the GUI and the unplugged everything and moved the machine to the kitchen, plugged in the power supply and GPS mouse and turned on the power. I returned to my laptop in the lounge and refreshed VNC viewer after giving it a chance to boot. Nothing. Maybe the WiFi isn't so good even with the antenna farm, so I plugged in Ethernet. Nothing.

I noticed the power indicator was cycling. On for a while the off for a shorter period then back on... Oh dear, maybe Bios can't find the boot volume? Back in the loft for the keyboard and then connect the computer to the TV and power up. Nothing not even Bios or an opportunity to enter boot options or the recovery console. No sign of Bios. Plugged in the USB stick that I burned the Ubuntu install ISO to, See if could see that. Nothing. A green LED briefly flashes on power up on the mSata board and the blue power LED are the only signs of life.

I've re seated the mSata SSD and RAM, just in case. My only other option before contacting the vendor is try another power supply. Not hopeful though.

Off to bed now more deflated than a badly deflated thing in a flat universe...

I mean, seriously?

I think the moral of the story, is if you are going to go down the mini PC route, then buy a quality one, maybe an Intel NUC, or Get the rpi back out.... 👍😀

Edited October 7, 2020 by Stuart1971

[fozzybear]

did you try unplugging the usb GPS mouse and then rebooting?

[Paul M]

8 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

I think the moral of the story, is if you are going to go down the mini PC route, then buy a quality one, maybe an Intel NUC, or Get the rpi back out.... 👍😀

I enjoy problem solving. Much more fun than just doing stuff!

Update time. Because I don't like to be beaten and I drink way too much coffe to sleep... I opened it up againg and pulled out the RAM just to have a look at the board below, maybe a reset switch somewhere? Lo and behold, a real time clock battery!  Pulled it out for a minute or so and put it back in. Bios was back and it could see the boot volume. But exiting Bios put me in some Grub text console. Typed reboot and held down f11 for boot options. Selected the bootable partition and off we go!

Back in the room

Typing this via VNC to the Ubuntu machine.

As you were... The next exciting episode can't be far away.

 

 

[fozzybear]

so 6 inch nail and hammer behind "break glass" in emergency panel for now. great news 

[Paul M]

13 minutes ago, Paul M said:

maybe an Intel NUC

I had one in my shopping cart along side the one I eventually bought. Tossed and turned over the choice for a couple of weeks. Similar price but in my price range the NUC was both second hand and 7 years old with a slower CPU. The decider for me was the number of USB sockets, the 12v nominal supply and Ubuntu pre installed (fat lot of good that was) because I really wanted to see Ekos do it's thing having spent many hours playing with it on the RasPi. 

I feared that W10 might struggle on an NUC in my price range. Too easy to get on the slippery slope of thinking just another £50...

[DaveL59]

well you're not alone re issues Paul. Yesterday evening I pulled out the i7 W10 lappy, powered it up and it quickly turned itself off. Plugged the PSU in and booted and hmmm, it was restarting from sleep it seems and was all but flat too. Anyway let it charge up a while and plugged in the new webcam. Fired up camera to check and got an odd error message. Run device mangler and nope, not permitted contact admin (I am!). Load sharpcap, no luck either. Hmmm, ok reboot then, oh dear! Now blue screen on power up saying device needs attention 😮 

I think some corruption on the SSD when power went on flat battery. Weird tho as I'm sure I shut it down before I left my dads place a week ago, been sat in the laptop bag since. So swap back the OEM SSHD and instant boot. Did a test of the webcam and then back on charge to install updates, all good. The SSD into the SATA caddy and it works fine so maybe the boot sector/MBR barfed. Anyways I left it cloning the SSHD to SSD overnight, will swap it back into the lappy later and hopefully will work fine again 🙂 

edit - forgot to mention, did do an error check on the ssd while woeful-one-zero was running, hence trying to reboot so it could repair but it didn't get an opportunity since powerup led straight to device needs attention blue screen.

Edited October 8, 2020 by DaveL59

[Paul M]

Im wondering if the RTC battery is getting a bit tired and it left the BIOS in a corrupt state. I've left it unplugged and not booted it yet today.

I'll look at replacing it anyway. This could be old stock and the battery could be years old.

[Stuart1971]

9 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Im wondering if the RTC battery is getting a bit tired and it left the BIOS in a corrupt state. I've left it unplugged and not booted it yet today.

I'll look at replacing it anyway. This could be old stock and the battery could be years old.

Sometimes they just need to have the power on and they will pick up and re charge, maybe try leaving on for a full 24 hours... 👍

[rnobleeddy]

11 minutes ago, Paul M said:

Im wondering if the RTC battery is getting a bit tired and it left the BIOS in a corrupt state. I've left it unplugged and not booted it yet today.

I'll look at replacing it anyway. This could be old stock and the battery could be years old.

Without wanting to sound all doom and gloom, unless this is very different to other PCs a dead battery won't have this effect. Even without a battery you should boot to a warning message and bios default settings.

 

This sounds like something else, and if I've learned anything, things like this tend to happen again. Hopefully not though!

[Paul M]

30 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Sometimes they just need to have the power on and they will pick up and re charge, maybe try leaving on for a full 24 hours... 👍

It'd been powered up for most of the previous 24 hours when it happened.  The battery is a non rechargeable button cell so will eventually die. 

Seems weird though that removing the battery cleared the fault and the BIOS reappeared.

Time will tell.

[Stuart1971]

7 minutes ago, Paul M said:

It'd been powered up for most of the previous 24 hours when it happened.  The battery is a non rechargeable button cell so will eventually die. 

Seems weird though that removing the battery cleared the fault and the BIOS reappeared.

Time will tell.

I think removing the battery was an old reset option for computers in days gone by...so maybe it still works..I have to say I can’t remember the last time I saw a battery on a m/board in a PC, and I was a big computer geek, have built loads of them over the years...the last few I have owned, mostly mini PC NUC and such like, I have never seen a battery...they are all done with capacitors now that charge up...so how old is it...??

[stash_old]

This could be a refurbished stock item - the law allows a manufacturer to correct oe replace a board problem on a returned item and perhaps add a new case then sell it as a "new" item. Note I doubt certain countries even bother to control this!

As for the battery - many brand new OEM modern small boards (with UEFI not Bios) still come with a battery ,though normally rechargable. There is still a method ,which I will not tell you, that you can force a reset of Bios/Uefi but you have to know a bit about electronics and be able to read the board as I doubt it comes with a circuit board layout. Not worth it !

IMHO send it back it sounds like a "pig in a poke" - We still live in a world of "you get what you pay for" - well just.

Think you have had enough problems and dont want them later IMHO 🙂

[Paul M]

I've been around computers a bit myself. From being introduced to a Commodore Pet in about '77 I've always had one. The list is typical of the era but I was never a lover of PC's, I was a Windows Denier  It turns out that Windows PC's just work so I ended up there in the end! But I do love going off the beaten track. I had a RPi 1B that I eventually used to control My mount with via WiFi and SkySafari (with not a little help from the SGL Linux massive). The Pi 4 is likely to end up as the backbone of an all sky camera at some point. Something I've wanted for many, many years. Having watched weather cams accross the world via the internet I want one of my own.

Anyway, Quite a few of the new breed of SBC's come with a button cell carrier for the RTC. It's not old hat, it's the future!

Look at some of the SBC's this guy plays with :https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCbiGcwDWZjz05njNPrJU7jA

This fella presents like the old OU lecturers did on the TV back in the 70's and 80's. Love it!

[Paul M]

So me and Ubu (Ubu pronounced "ooboo" is the pet name of my new friend) have been doing more work on GPS and with thanks to this video: 

 

I finally got it going. It looks like the dongle stream needed binding to GPSD. So GPSMON proved the fix and now Ekos is seeing the data GPS stream.

And Ubu gets upset when you don't talk nice about him...😍

 

Edited October 8, 2020 by Paul M

[Paul M]

Further to the subject of alternative SBC's, the Youtube channel I linked to earlier just release a review of a newly released SBC.

This particular one will happily run Ubuntu and would have been ok for my use. I suspect some of the other SBC's would even run Astroberry with a bit of tweaking. 

Note that the one in this video has a board mounted button cell RTC

There is a huge choice in a relatively small market and Raspberry Pi will need to think hard about their next release.

 

Edited October 11, 2020 by Paul M

[gilesco]

Astroberry is ARM based (Pi) so would not normally be transferable to x64 stuff, but yes probably INDI would run on that, you'd be on your own though, so another kettle of fish.

[Paul M]

I'm sure some of the current flock of SBC's are ARM based.

I'd have too look round to find one but eventually ARM is where it's going.

 

[Paul M]

I'm not in work until Saturday Morning so was hoping for a bit of clear sky last night and it arrived at about 22:00. And it was very clear at that

First light for Ubu, my lickle Ubuntu computer friend, teething problems hopefully ironed out already. What could go wrong?

Even with its array of WiFi antennas it was struggling to connect to the house WiFi. Half expected that so rolled out the Ethernet cable. For some reason my indoors lappy wouldn't talk to Ubu via Ethernet. Ok, I set up my Tablet as a hotspot and tried to VNC as I used to do with the RasPi. No, that wasn't happening either. Got the WiFi connection but VNC didn't like it. I'll look further into that, something I hadn't dry run.

Right, in best John Cleese fashion I started getting ready to connect up my old notebook and do this session on good old APT but while all this palaver was playing out Lappy and Ubu finally shook hands down the Ethernet. So to use my lovely headless setup I dragged my lappy outside and sat it next to Ubu, connected with a 30m cable!

So time is moving on, already passed 11pm... Got focusedish and tried Ubu's first real world image/sole/sync. A few teething problems but got there. Hopped to Capella to refine focus then on to Mars, which was sat close to the meridian. Ok, so I need to look at the meridian behavior. Coudn't get Mars in the frame. Ekos didn't throw up any warnings but I had to take the mount round the long way. 

Got Mars bur by then clouds were shuffling in, guiding was refusing to calibrate. That's a recurring theme. My mount needs a tweak.

So the sum total of last nights efforts was a hop to image the supernova in NGC514:

 

[Martin Meredith]

Very nice shot of the supernova! I didn't realise it was so bright. Regardless of any other issues, the imaging part of your setup looks to be doing really well -- great star shapes and a lovely flat field.

Martin

[Paul M]

1 hour ago, Martin Meredith said:

I didn't realise it was so bright

Me neither. I expected more galaxy and less supernova! Imagine that going off in our own galactic back garden.

It's a rather uninspiring low surface brightness galaxy and my brief effort did it no favours.