Intel nuc so confused...so many...???

[Nikolas74]

I have started also to think how can i remote control my telescope mount and rig for the cold nights of winter, so i can stay inside my room with my laptop and remote controlling my telescope outside.

So i start reading and looking everywhere for options..

My first option was a Usb extender over cat5/6 cable since the distance is only 15 meters of cable , from my room to the balcony.....make a small hole on the wall pass the cable and that's it....but , there were a few concerns like 5v of power , is it going to work flawlessly or am i going to have delays or disconnections ?? etc, plus the fact that it was almost half the price of buying an intel nuc.

Then i checked about the USB active cables , but then i would need a bigger hole in the wall to pass the cable out and still i was reading about connection problems and disconnection issues.

Now i am checking for an Intel Nuc , there are a lot of threads here about them and many people use them with success , but there are so many options available which makes it so much difficult to choose the one that would be appropriate for just capturing images and remote operation etc..

Small versions vs Tall versions ?

Core i3 or core i5 ? 2.3Ghz or 3.80Ghz or more ?

Which generation ? 8th or 10th ?

Which Graphic card ? is it important ? Iris 655 or UHD ?

Which hard disk drive ? SSD or SATA ?

If someone could be kind enough to give me some advice on what to look for before buying one of these , i would much appreciate it...

Many thanks, 

Nikolas.

Edited January 19, 2021 by Nikolas74

[Stuart1971]

Just get a raspberry PI, it will do the lot with Astroberry....cheap and very small....you can run it all from that, or just use it as a INdI driver server on the mount, and then run the Kstars software from your indoor PC, completely wireless........ 👍🏼

[Skipper Billy]

54 minutes ago, Nikolas74 said:

My first option was a Usb extender over cat5/6 cable since the distance is only 15 meters of cable , from my room to the balcony.....make a small hole on the wall pass the cable and that's it....but , there were a few concerns like 5v of power , is it going to work flawlessly or am i going to have delays or disconnections ?? etc, plus the fact that it was almost half the price of buying an intel nuc.

Then i checked about the USB active cables , but then i would need a bigger hole in the wall to pass the cable out and still i was reading about connection problems and disconnection issues.

Now i am checking for an Intel Nuc , there are a lot of threads here about them and many people use them with success , but there are so many options available which makes it so much difficult to choose the one that would be appropriate for just capturing images and remote operation etc..

Small versions vs Tall versions ?

Core i3 or core i5 ? 2.3Ghz or 3.80Ghz or more ?

Which generation ? 8th or 10th ?

Which Graphic card ? is it important ? Iris 655 or UHD ?

Which hard disk drive ? SSD or SATA ?

The USB - Cat5 converter works really very well - I used it for a couple of years before installing a NUC in the Obsy - its a good solution.

Active USB cables - run away !!!!!!!!!!!!!

NUC is the Rolls-Royce solution but you are right the choice is bewildering! It also depends on how many USB ports you need both now and in the future - many NUC's (but not all) take an after market lid that provides another 2 USB ports.

I needed 6 USB ports so chose on the basis that the USB lid was a must have.

Running everything at the same time doesn't require enormous processing power - I chose an i5 2.3 Ghz with 16gb RAM and an SSD - it never breaks into a sweat and it can even run Pixinsight concurrently so I can use Blink etc to keep an eye on image quality etc. Its connected to indoors via Windows RDP and it works flawlessly.

If you choose the first route I think I saw one for sale on here.

Shout out if I can help you!

PS - I am in the process of installing ethernet controlled relays to turn everything on and off remotely - the NUC can be set to run at power up which is a nice feature - mine has run for 2 years now with zero issues.

 

 

 

 

[Skipper Billy]

here you go.....  

 

[inFINNity Deck]

Hi Nikolas,

I have a 64bit Intel NUC7i5BNK, i5-7260U with 8Gb RAM and 500Gb SSD. The latter is slightly too small, I have difficulty keeping approximately 200Gb available for sessions. This sounds like quite enough, but when doing planetary imaging this is barely enough for half an hour data (so when doing RGB, it is just enough to create a 10 frames animation). The advantage of a NUC is that I also do all the processing on it using a remote-desktop connection: simply start the processing, close the connection and look a few hours later if it is done. 🙂

Speed-wise this NUC is fast enough to control the observatory, but for processing it is never fast enough...

Nicolàs

[Nikolas74]

37 minutes ago, Stuart1971 said:

Just get a raspberry PI, it will do the lot with Astroberry....cheap and very small....you can run it all from that, or just use it as a INdI driver server on the mount, and then run the Kstars software from your indoor PC, completely wireless........ 👍🏼

I am going to have a look again about the raspberry Pi, now i see there is a version 4, I think its the newest.

I am afraid that it will be complicated to buy cables, housing etc and all the other spare parts it may need... 

Just looking for Nuc as it looks like a more ready made solution.. and more easy for me to understand how it works. 

Just to buy memory RAM and hdd and install Windows. 

[Paul M]

Millions of options. 

As stated above there is the Linux based option of the RasPi and Astroberry. The key components of that can be run very nicely on any other Linux based machine. I've used Ubuntu on a mini PC at the mount running KStars/Ekos/PHD2. More recently I put W10 on the same machine and currently run APT on that along with PHD2 and ASTAP. It's not a very high spec machine. 4Gig of RAM and a quad core processor running at about 1.5G and a 240G internal SSD. My machine is a cheap, unbranded Chinese import. What attracted me to it was having 4 x USB3 and 2 x USB 2 ports. I save all my images to a portable SSD and process on my laptop later. 

To run a mount and cameras you don't need anything exotic just good USB architecture, particularly with ZWO ASI cameras, known for needing high USB bandwidth. 

 

[Nikolas74]

19 minutes ago, Skipper Billy said:

here you go.....  

 

Thank you very much for the information given...

I have already contacted Tim about the USB Extender..he is selling it at an excellent price..but I think he prefers to give it away in UK. 

Just wanted to ask how do you power up your Nuc? 

I have a Pegasus Astropocket power box that gives 12volt, 10amps...could that work? 

I know that not all Nuc's work with 12volts so this is another point to check before buying..... 

[KP82]

I've used both Pi4 + astroberry and a custom built ITX mini-PC running W10. For the price, you cannot beat a Pi4. But in the end I settled for the mini-PC as I preferred the interface of BYEOS to Ekos (also partly because I don't want my BYEOS license to go waste). I still have my pi4 + astroberry and modified them into a plate solve based finder for my visual setup.

Edited January 19, 2021 by KP82

[Skipper Billy]

2 hours ago, Nikolas74 said:

Just wanted to ask how do you power up your Nuc? 

I have a Pegasus Astropocket power box that gives 12volt, 10amps...could that work? 

I know that not all Nuc's work with 12volts so this is another point to check before buying..... 

The one I use states 19v - but it runs just as well at 12v. I originally used a 12v to 19v step up buck but when plugging things in I accidentally hooked it up to 12v - I didnt notice for 3 months - it made no difference at all to the performance.

[inFINNity Deck]

11 hours ago, Nikolas74 said:

Just wanted to ask how do you power up your Nuc? 

I have a Pegasus Astropocket power box that gives 12volt, 10amps...could that work? 

I know that not all Nuc's work with 12volts so this is another point to check before buying..... 

I never power up my NUC, it is always on. I just give it a reboot prior to imaging to ensure it runs smooth. Indeed my NUC uses 19V, never tried it at 12V, but in an observatory that is no problem.

Nicolàs

[AngryDonkey]

If the NUC needs 19V you can use a DC step up converter from 12 to 19V (that's what I use). They are fairly cheap.

Edited January 20, 2021 by AngryDonkey

[scitmon]

15 hours ago, Stuart1971 said:

Just get a raspberry PI, it will do the lot with Astroberry....cheap and very small....you can run it all from that, or just use it as a INdI driver server on the mount, and then run the Kstars software from your indoor PC, completely wireless........ 👍🏼

can you schedule refocusing yet?  That was always the deal breaker for me.

[alacant]

16 hours ago, Nikolas74 said:

stay inside my room with my laptop

Hi

Why not simply leave your laptop at the telescope and control it using your 'phone/tablet/desktop using vnc/teamviewer/autodesk? From anywhere.

Cheers

[Nikolas74]

8 minutes ago, alacant said:

Hi

Why not simply leave your laptop at the telescope and control it using your 'phone/tablet/desktop using vnc/teamviewer/autodesk? From anywhere.

Cheers

I didn't try that yet but it's worth an effort , although my laptop is expensive and i feel sorry to leave it outside in winter time.

[Space Oddities]

Good thing with the NUC is that you can select its components. I actually use an 8th generation i5 (NUC8i5BEK) as a desktop computer, for processing my images. Some models are more powerful than they look!

I loaded mine with 32 GB of memory (for PixInsight), a 512 GB M.2 NVME SSD from Samsung (Evo 970 I think), and boy it is fast! The integrated graphics of the 8th generation NUC (Iris Plus Grafik 655) are actually better than the 9th generation NUC, for some reason. But I'm not sure the graphics are very important for your usage, as it is with mine (Photoshop uses graphics accelerator for instance).

Anyway, that build is overkill for what you will do, but here are some thoughts:

• I think an i3 is sufficient for remote control, but i5/i7 are of course more robust and future proof. Intel also make some NUC with Celeron/Atom processors. They're less powerful than i3, but they're cheaper and use less power. In any case, checking the Geekbench score of the processor might give you an idea.
• Make sure you get a good SSD (M.2 NVME, if the NUC is compatible) for hosting Windows. Western Digital and Samsung make very good SSD, that don't cost an arm. 
• If weight isn't an issue, take the "high" version. It allows you to fit a 2nd disk in the NUC with a 2.5" factor. Here you can put any SSD with a high capacity, to store your images during the session. Unless you prefer having an external USB drive, to transfer photos more easily to another computer? In that case, having a 2nd disk inside your NUC isn't necessary.
• I think 2x4GB of RAM or more is recommended for Windows 10. Get the fastest RAM you can for your NUC model (mine is 2333 MHz, just check the specs). RAM also costs nothing nowadays, and you can easily find it used for a lower price. People often upgrade their computers, so RAM is very easy to find!

I would recommend that your build the NUC yourself; it's very easy, just plug and play the RAM and the SSD. It took me 5 minutes. And you can optimize the price/performance better than a "ready to boot" computer. 

Check out this Wikipedia page, it has a nice table showing you all models avaiable: https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Next_Unit_of_Computing 

Hope that helps a bit!  

Edited January 20, 2021 by Space Oddities

[Stuart1971]

44 minutes ago, scitmon said:

can you schedule refocusing yet?  That was always the deal breaker for me.

Hmmmm, not sure on that one, it’s something Ive not done or tried myself...but I will find out... 👍🏼

[Nikolas74]

Actually i am after in one of these two options :

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i3bek.html 

or , 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i5bek.html

I think they should be more than enough for what i need them for...There was a post in cloudy nights and someone claimed that even with an Intel Celeron processor we can do the job...but i think Celeron is too old , yes maybe cheaper by £100

[scitmon]

33 minutes ago, Nikolas74 said:

I didn't try that yet but it's worth an effort , although my laptop is expensive and i feel sorry to leave it outside in winter time.

Not to mention the cold would not be good for the battery, I would avoid this.

[gilesco]

1 hour ago, Stuart1971 said:

Hmmmm, not sure on that one, it’s something Ive not done or tried myself...but I will find out... 👍🏼

There are a number of focus options, in addition to the below you can also force a focus on a filter change. I think refocus after meridian flip is either in the pipeline or already there as well.

[Nikolas74]

Anyone knows if the NUC's need ventilation for high temperatures in summer? 

Edited January 20, 2021 by Nikolas74

[gilesco]

4 minutes ago, Nikolas74 said:

Anyone knows if the NUC's need ventilation for high temperatures in summer? 

NUCs, in general, do have fans, and you want to ensure that they get a fresh supply of unheated air.

If a NUC is fanless, then it is usually advertised as such (e.g. the "UltraNUC fanless").

In any case, you should ventilate them, and the internal air temperature should not exceed 50 deg C during operation.

[Skipper Billy]

3 minutes ago, gilesco said:

Anyone knows if the NUC's need ventilation for high temperatures in summer? 

I wouldn't put it in a sealed box for instance  - it needs ventilation. As for heat - its all relative - a very warm summers day here is 18º !!!  I guess its a tad warmer in Athens !!!  Certainly cold doesn't bother them - mine has run very happily at -21º. (Mine is the fanless flavour)

 

 

 

 

[Space Oddities]

1 hour ago, Nikolas74 said:

Actually i am after in one of these two options :

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i3bek.html 

or , 

https://www.intel.com/content/www/us/en/products/boards-kits/nuc/kits/nuc8i5bek.html

I think they should be more than enough for what i need them for...There was a post in cloudy nights and someone claimed that even with an Intel Celeron processor we can do the job...but i think Celeron is too old , yes maybe cheaper by £100

I use the 8i5BEK for Photoshop, Lightroom, PixInsight, DeepSkyStacker and even some gaming   So yes, it will do just fine, and it's even overkill for just controlling your rig. The i3 is also sufficient I believe. But since it's now a couple generation behind, you can find both for a good price, I believe.

Celeron and Pentium aren't necessarily old, Intel still uses this name for brand new processors. Atom, Celeron, Pentium, Xeon... are different product families for different usage: mobile, IOT, servers, laptops... As explained here. I believe some of these low-end processors can work OK, but like everything in IT, they might not be future-proof, and won't give you the smoothness of a regular processor. But you know, you get what you pay for   Also if low power is a requirement, they can be a good alternative to higher end models.

In terms of ventilation, my NUC is well ventilated, with spaces on the side. You can adjust the settings in the BIOS. For normal usage, especially if it's outside, the ventilation should be minimum. It only gets hot when running heavy 3D thing, when the CPU is at 100% (e.g. when stacking) or when writing to the disk a lot (NVME SSD can be very warm).

Please note the fan can be very loud when running at full power! I got used to it, but it can be surprising the first time. 

[whipdry]

I'm on my second NUC i5, first one was onboard the mount running on a 12v supply it was the slim version with just the M2 ssd worked fine until 3months out of warranty... started using sleep mode before switch off as it just booted up when powered remotely, died in its sleep just didn't wake up one day! 

Now have the NUC8I5BEH it's a little taller with space for standard sized laptop drive... couldn't swap out the memory but put the old M2 ssd in & Windows 10 booted straight up!

Dicided to keep the NUC in the closed area of my observatory by using supplied power adapter always on that way I'm able to shut down & WOL remotely, l just run a single USB 3.0 cable to the industrial hub on my mount. 

 

Peter