Connecting Astroberry Pi To Laptop Via LAN Cable...

[Ian McCallum]

I've been using the Raspberry Pi with Astroberry for a number of months now, but I'm having some communication difficulties with Wi-Fi.  I've read that using a USB 3 thumb drive in one of the USB 3 ports can cause problems with the on-board Wi-Fi, the workaround is to connect the RPi directly to the PC using a LAN cable.

Previously, I was using Wi-Fi from my smartphone hotspot to get the laptop and RPi to talk to each other, without too many issues - using VNC.  I've tried a similar thing, but using a cat6 LAN cable between the laptop and RPi, but just can't get them to talk.  It's a Win 8.1 laptop.

Any ideas?🤔

[Dr_Ju_ju]

I use a gigabit ethernet cable connection, from my household network, to my external computers (Windows & Linux), and control them using remote desktop / xrdp with no issues....  I tried WiFi, but like you, I found it unreliable, so reverted back to wired connections.    

[Dustspeakers]

Ditto - all kinds of weird intermittent problems using WiFi and rock solid since I went to a wired connection. My PC is running Linux and has a dhcp server configured to provide the Rasp Pi with an IP address, so the ethernet interface on the Rasp Pi should be set up for dhcp client in this configuration. Can't speak for how to configure this on Windoze 8 though - stopped using Microsoft products many years ago...

[Ian McCallum]

4 hours ago, Dr_Ju_ju said:

I use a gigabit ethernet cable connection, from my household network, to my external computers (Windows & Linux), and control them using remote desktop / xrdp with no issues....  I tried WiFi, but like you, I found it unreliable, so reverted back to wired connections.    

I don't have a household connection (router), as I use my smartphone for the internet and broadband hotspot.  I tried the NOOB version of RPi OS on a spare micro SD and can get the laptop and RPi talking, through the LAN cable - therefore it must be something configured differently in the RPi.  I do have SSH and VNC enable in Astroberry, so goodness knows..🙄

[Vulisha]

Manually set IP address and network mask on both devices. 

How would I set it up:

Set your PC lan to 192.168.1.2

Set Astroberry to 192.168.1.3

Set both Network Masks to 255.255.255.0 (or /24 after ip)

Ping using Cmd/Terminal devices to make sure it works.

[AstroMuni]

On 02/05/2022 at 14:18, Ian McCallum said:

I don't have a household connection (router), as I use my smartphone for the internet and broadband hotspot.  I tried the NOOB version of RPi OS on a spare micro SD and can get the laptop and RPi talking, through the LAN cable - therefore it must be something configured differently in the RPi.  I do have SSH and VNC enable in Astroberry, so goodness knows..🙄

When you update your RPi, do you use the hotspot for that too?

[Ian McCallum]

19 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

When you update your RPi, do you use the hotspot for that too?

Yes, I do.  I've managed to get the LAN cable to work between the laptop and RPi. 

[JonCarleton]

OK, sounds like you have the basic networking setup between the Pi and laptop.  You can verify this by pinging the Pi from the laptop:

Open a command window  on the windows laptop (CMD window)

type:  ping nnn.nnn.nnn.nnn   <--(insert Pi lan IP address here)

If that works (because you get ping replies), then you probably have KStars/EKOS still setup with the old IP address from the hotspot and need to update the indiserver IP to the new lan address in EKOS.

If you can't ping the Pi from the laptop, then the problem is network configuration.  You need to be certain of the problem (network config or EKOS config) first to know what to fix.

Edited May 23, 2022 by JonCarleton

[Ian McCallum]

Thanks for everyone's input.  I've managed to get the laptop and RPi to talk to each other via the ethernet cable.  I found that I had to disable WiFi on the RPi, then it would connect to the laptop through the ethernet cable - the RPi being controlled through VNC Viewer.

[AstroMuni]

42 minutes ago, Ian McCallum said:

I found that I had to disable WiFi on the RPi, then it would connect to the laptop through the ethernet cable

Good point that was missed out. I do the same but forgot to mention Useful info for anyone new trying to establish similar connection.

Edited May 30, 2022 by AstroMuni

[Ian McCallum]

5 hours ago, AstroMuni said:

Good point that was missed out. I do the same but forgot to mention Useful info for anyone new trying to establish similar connection.

It took me a while to work than one out too.🙄

[JonCarleton]

I don't like to "fix" things after they aren't broken any more, but you should be able to use both WiFi and Ethernet on a Pi.  I do all the time.  However, it can be a bit challenging, so the point of this post is just to mention that it is possible and practical, but not necessarily a good plan if you no longer need it.  If you are up and running sans WiFi, you have my applause and congratulations.  Ethernet on a Pi is generally rock-solid and significantly faster than any WiFi.

Edited June 1, 2022 by JonCarleton

[Ian McCallum]

10 hours ago, JonCarleton said:

I don't like to "fix" things after they aren't broken any more, but you should be able to use both WiFi and Ethernet on a Pi.  I do all the time.  However, it can be a bit challenging, so the point of this post is just to mention that it is possible and practical, but not necessarily a good plan if you no longer need it.  If you are up and running sans WiFi, you have my applause and congratulations.  Ethernet on a Pi is generally rock-solid and significantly faster than any WiFi.

As I don't have broadband internet or a router in the house, it sort of complicates things.  I use my smartphone as a hotspot and it's mobile data for any internet stuff.

[JonCarleton]

Yep, that adds a level of complication all by itself.  Still, if you have what you need and it works, life is grand!

[Rallemikken]

On 02/05/2022 at 15:18, Ian McCallum said:

I tried the NOOB version of RPi OS on a spare micro SD and can get the laptop and RPi talking, through the LAN cable - therefore it must be something configured differently in the RPi.

If you are using the LAN on your laptop to ONLY connect to your Pi, then it should work if you give both a static (fixed) IP on the same subnet on the LAN interfaces. I.E. 192.168..1.23 and 192.168.1.24. Or something like that. Astroberry is based on Raspberry OS, which is based on Debian, so this should be easy. Use the Ping command on your laptop to check the connection.

[Avocette]

On 02/05/2022 at 09:49, Ian McCallum said:

I've been using the Raspberry Pi with Astroberry for a number of months now, but I'm having some communication difficulties with Wi-Fi.  I've read that using a USB 3 thumb drive in one of the USB 3 ports can cause problems with the on-board Wi-Fi………..

I think there is a slight confusion here - the known ‘problem’ is potential interference between the USB3 circuitry, ports and 2.4GHz WiFi. You may avoid this with Astroberry by forcing the WiFi hotspot to use only the 5GHz band. I run two Astroberrys in Flirc metal cases with the underside plastic panel outwards away from mount metalwork to give minimum restriction to the printed circuit WiFi antennas. The systems work simultaneously close by each other, both exclusively using the 5GHz band, controlled by a laptop outside during polar alignment and from inside the house at a distance of about 8m afterwards. I use Samsung 256GB Fit Plus USB3.1 drives in place of micro SD cards. I pick up lots of other WiFi networks when setting up and selecting the Astroberry hotspot networks (with different SSIDs) on the laptop.

[Ian McCallum]

Revisiting this topic, as I've found that even setting a static IP address on the RPi LAN and laptop LAN, seems to rather hit and miss.  Years ago, when I had a wired home network, this was easily done through the router, but laptop direct to RPi seems to be a real pain...  Would a network switch help?

[Rallemikken]

Should be easy, as long as you run Linux on both. The traditional way of editing /etc/network/interfaces doesn't always work now, miss the old days. You can check out network-manager and try to configure the laptop's LAN as a "Shared connection". I use this when I  need a screen close to my mount when PA and such. I grab a laptop, connect LAN to LAN and fire up X2go. It looks like the main computer that runs KStars (a desktop in my case)  serves the laptop the same, consistent IP.

Edited September 16, 2022 by Rallemikken

[Ian McCallum]

I eventually manager to get a reliable connection between the laptop and RPi, using a LAN cable.  I bought a cheap Gigabit network switch, but in the end up it wasn't required.  I had to muck about with some of the IP setting on the RPi, but at least the connection is stable now...