Anyone running KStars/Ekos/Indi on a Raspberry Pi 5 with RPi OS bookworm?

[Avocette]

I have a Raspberry Pi 5 8GB in the post on its way to me. I have been using 32-bit Astroberry and some 64-bit installations of KStars/Ekos/Indi on RPi OS bullseye and Arch on my Raspberry Pi 4s. I tried to use @Nou's script to install Kstars etc on RPi OS bookworm on an RPi 4 without success. Anyone out there already got the RPi 5 up and running with astrophotography capture software?

[Stuart1971]

Well I do know that Stellarmate will not yet run on the RPI5.., so maybe there is a reason why Kstars and Ekos won’t…🤔

[nfotis]

Just received my Rpi5 (8 GB), I hope to play with it by next week.

I was hoping to see astrophotography software being ported to it already, but it seems we will have to wait for programmers to receive their systems for porting?

 

[AstroKeith]

After a month of struggling, I finally got my own digital finder (aka eFinder) to run on a Pi5 under Bookworm. Bookworm is a fundamental step forward in Linux architecture and there are many changes necessary under the hood. The good news is that it's fast. I get blind plate solves in 0.6 seconds using astrometry.

For those brave, read up on virtual environments first and the relative differences between pip install, sudo pip install, apt get install and sudo apt get install!

Bookworm is evolving as bugs are found which makes it more difficult. The serial port has been a big issue for me which I needed to talk to the Nexus DSC. 

[Rallemikken]

On 17/11/2023 at 22:36, Avocette said:

I tried to use @Nou's script to install Kstars etc on RPi OS bookworm on an RPi 4 without success.

If RPi OS Bookworm is compatible with current Debian stable, Bookworm, you should not need any scripts. KStars, astrometry cataloges and most of the INDI--servers are all present in the repo's, both in armhf and arm64. Install everything with "sudo apt" or install Synaptic and use that.

Should be piece-of-cake. Not long ago you had to install Mint/Ubuntu and add Jasem's ppa, or build INDI-servers from source on Debian. Today most is present in the Debian stable repo's. If your Raspberry OS is Debian, based on Debian or otherwise compatible with Debian the KStars/Ekos/INDI-suite is just another piece of software, no need for witchcraft to get things running. Install Synaptic, search for KStars and indi and see what turns up.

[Rallemikken]

8 hours ago, AstroKeith said:

For those brave, read up on virtual environments first and the relative differences between pip install, sudo pip install, apt get install and sudo apt get install!

pip is a python installer.  On bare-metal Debian you use "sudo apt install <myprogram>" to install software from the repo's.

[AstroKeith]

3 hours ago, Rallemikken said:

pip is a python installer.  On bare-metal Debian you use "sudo apt install <myprogram>" to install software from the repo's.

But if the package isnt in a repo?!

Bookworm is significantly different to Bullseye.

[Rallemikken]

1 hour ago, AstroKeith said:

But if the package isnt in a repo?!

It is. Just checked. I'm writing this on a OrangePi5 on Armbian, based on Bookworm, and it's there. Can also confirm it's in the repo for stock Debian. At least what I need: indi-asi, indi-gphoto and indi-eqmod. If you need some rare indi-driver, try to find the deb other places, maybe download separately from Jasem's ppa.

If we are installing ordinairy software, we seldom use pip. It's for Python scripts and applications only. The prefered method is to install software from your distro's repo with apt. If you feel lucky you can try to find a package elsewhere in your native packaging format (.deb for Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, MX and more) for the version you use (Debian 12, Mint 20.04 and so on). Use dpkg to install downloaded .deb-files on your computer. If things go west (missing dependicies and such) use (sudo) "apt --fix-broken install" to clean up. If you use the native tools in the Debian universe it's hard to mess up an install. Not so on rpm-based distros. Or at least, it wasn't.  My first distro was Red Hat 7 in 2001. Those were the days.... Challenging, I would say.

Btw; Red Hat 7 from 2001 must not be confused with RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

Edited November 21, 2023 by Rallemikken

[AstroKeith]

55 minutes ago, Rallemikken said:

It is. Just checked. I'm writing this on a OrangePi5 on Armbian, based on Bookworm, and it's there. Can also confirm it's in the repo for stock Debian. At least what I need: indi-asi, indi-gphoto and indi-eqmod. If you need some rare indi-driver, try to find the deb other places, maybe download separately from Jasem's ppa.

If we are installing ordinairy software, we seldom use pip. It's for Python scripts and applications only. The prefered method is to install software from your distro's repo with apt. If you feel lucky you can try to find a package elsewhere in your native packaging format (.deb for Debian, Mint, Ubuntu, MX and more) for the version you use (Debian 12, Mint 20.04 and so on). Use dpkg to install downloaded .deb-files on your computer. If things go west (missing dependicies and such) use (sudo) "apt --fix-broken install" to clean up. If you use the native tools in the Debian universe it's hard to mess up an install. Not so on rpm-based distros. Or at least, it wasn't.  My first distro was Red Hat 7 in 2001. Those were the days.... Challenging, I would say.

Btw; Red Hat 7 from 2001 must not be confused with RHEL, Red Hat Enterprise Linux.

I'm not using Indi. Mine is a home grown Python suite of programs that drive Usb & serial connected peripherals, various cameras, using astrometry.net, Skyfield, Phidget modules.

One of the biggest issues with Bookworm seems to be its treatment of UARTs and GPIO more broadly. Patches are available but not documented.

[Rallemikken]

11 hours ago, AstroKeith said:

Mine is a home grown Python suite of programs that drive Usb & serial connected peripherals

Well, sounds like you'll have to make your own repo!  One reason to use off-the-shelve software. In time the specs will mature and surface. Never tinkered on that level myself, can't really be of  any help. Good luck! Btw; why not use the indi-server framework as a backbone for your homegrown suite? The indi servers are not KStars/Ekos only, the API is out there. Extremely lean; i did a test on a RPi3 B+: The indi_canon_ccd peaked at 7% cpu during file transfer.

Edited November 22, 2023 by Rallemikken

[Avocette]

On 21/11/2023 at 16:18, Rallemikken said:

If RPi OS Bookworm is compatible with current Debian stable, Bookworm, you should not need any scripts. KStars, astrometry cataloges and most of the INDI--servers are all present in the repo's, both in armhf and arm64. Install everything with "sudo apt" or install Synaptic and use that.

Should be piece-of-cake. Not long ago you had to install Mint/Ubuntu and add Jasem's ppa, or build INDI-servers from source on Debian. Today most is present in the Debian stable repo's. If your Raspberry OS is Debian, based on Debian or otherwise compatible with Debian the KStars/Ekos/INDI-suite is just another piece of software, no need for witchcraft to get things running. Install Synaptic, search for KStars and indi and see what turns up.

Well, my RPi5 is with customs and should be in the DHL van out for delivery at the beginning of next week. My plan is to use @Nou's method https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/astro-soft-build to see whether it works on RPi OS bookworm on the RPi5. Fingers crossed!

[Rallemikken]

52 minutes ago, Avocette said:

My plan is to use @Nou's method https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/astro-soft-build to see whether it works on RPi OS bookworm on the RPi5.

I guess you are going to use https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_armhf/images/raspios_armhf-2023-10-10/2023-10-10-raspios-bookworm-armhf.img.xz or https://downloads.raspberrypi.com/raspios_arm64/images/raspios_arm64-2023-10-10/2023-10-10-raspios-bookworm-arm64.img.xz

When things are up and running, open Synaptic and search for KStars and the indi-drivers you need. Install from repo and try that out first. If things don't work out as expected, flash the sd-card once again and do it your way. Software from official repo's are not always the newest, but that should absolutely not be an issue in AP. You'd rather run software that's tested, and don't fall over during a session. And software in the debian repo's fits together and are updated when necessary. You just run "sudo apt update" and "sudo apt upgrade" and KStars/Ekos/INDI is updated together with everything else that needs updating at the moment.

[JonCarleton]

I just started running an OrangePi5Plus as a primary imaging computer running SkyChart, CCDciel and PHD2 with ASTAP for plate solving under Ubuntu Linux.  It is working really well and the power consumption versus my X86_64 desktop is spectacularly low.  I use Pi4 computers on the scope mounts running just indiserver with the appropriate drivers.  That is, the imaging computer looks to the mount computers for the indi drivers over the network (WiFi).

To be clear, the only change to my setup is the imaging computer; from a 110V AC standard X86_64 to a 5V DC OrangePi5Plus.  The OS and software did not change.  The reason for the change was to reduce the power load for use when I go to remote sites and have to run everything from a battery bank.

I have also found that stacking with Siril and rough image processing is reasonable with the OrangePi5Plus.  It won't run PixInsight, but I prefer Siril for stacking anyway.  Add to that Siril has added a suite of fairly robust processing elements that, while they don't replace PixInsight, do many of the processing tasks one would normally perform in PixInsight with equal result.

[Avocette]

So my new RPi5 8GB arrived and I immediately imaged an RPi OS bookworm x64 and followed the @nou astro-soft-build KStars installation procedure. Plugged in my mount, cameras and Pegasus PPB, and KStars 3.5.7 all worked! (after the usual port allocation hesitation). A proper test will have to wait for a change in the weather, not likely for some days.

I had expected the microSD Card to swap over and work also on the RPi4 8GB. It booted and some applications worked but not KStars. This parallels my experience with running OS bookworm on the RPi4 a couple of weeks ago and trying the @nou installation procedure. Kstars did not work in that configuration.

So further tests of an updated installation of KStars 3.5.7 on the RPi4 using OS bullseye will begin later. Running @nou's script takes 3 hours on the RPi4 against 1 hour on the RPi5!

[AstroKeith]

13 minutes ago, Avocette said:

So my new RPi5 8GB arrived and I immediately imaged an RPi OS bookworm x64 and followed the @nou astro-soft-build KStars installation procedure. Plugged in my mount, cameras and Pegasus PPB, and KStars 3.5.7 all worked! (after the usual port allocation hesitation). A proper test will have to wait for a change in the weather, not likely for some days.

I had expected the microSD Card to swap over and work also on the RPi4 8GB. It booted and some applications worked but not KStars. This parallels my experience with running OS bookworm on the RPi4 a couple of weeks ago and trying the @nou installation procedure. Kstars did not work in that configuration.

So further tests of an updated installation of KStars 3.5.7 on the RPi4 using OS bullseye will begin later. Running @nou's script takes 3 hours on the RPi4 against 1 hour on the RPi5!

Thats a good result. Nice.

You cant simply swap a 64 bit Bookworm  SD card built for a Pi5 into a Pi4 as the board hardware is quite different. But they do have a 64bit Bookworm image for Pi4's. I've found I can move applications between the two without problems so far.

[Avocette]

With more in depth testing on my RPi5 I am finding that KStars 3.6.7 stable as built using @nou's script has some issues in the new GUI (WayLand) which make it unusable. Further I tried a clean install script run today on the RPi5 and the script fails at the first stage when installing dependencies. I repeated the clean install on my RPi4 and that worked for KStars 3.6.8 stable. This seems to suggest that my initial 'success' with the RPi5, sadly, was a fluke!

So I have turned my attention to AstroArch 1.7.0 which @mattia has been developing. Happily he included the necessary files in the boot partition to suit the RPi5 so I have now been testing on both RPi5 and RPi4. KStars 3.6.7 runs very smoothly on both devices. 

[AstroKeith]

6 minutes ago, Avocette said:

With more in depth testing on my RPi5 I am finding that KStars 3.6.7 stable as built using @nou's script has some issues in the new GUI (WayLand) which make it unusable. Further I tried a clean install script run today on the RPi5 and the script fails at the first stage when installing dependencies. I repeated the clean install on my RPi4 and that worked for KStars 3.6.8 stable. This seems to suggest that my initial 'success' with the RPi5, sadly, was a fluke!

So I have turned my attention to AstroArch 1.7.0 which @mattia has been developing. Happily he included the necessary files in the boot partition to suit the RPi5 so I have now been testing on both RPi5 and RPi4. KStars 3.6.7 runs very smoothly on both devices. 

A big change in Bookworm was the move from X11 to Wayland for the display environment. You can revert to X11 through command line sudo raspsi-config/advanced options/Wayland. For me this was essential to enable my own legacy code to run.

[Avocette]

Better news today since the latest release of RPi OS bookworm (2023-12-05), the @nou script works again and installs KStars 3.6.8. This looks good, and seems to operate with my Astro equipment. However the Wayland features seem to have ‘lost’ the KStars main screen window control bar, so there are no exit, minimise nor maximise control buttons. This loss is intermittent and very occasionally the window control bar returns. I guess the best workaround for now may be to revert to X11.

[AstroKeith]

The changes in the Bookworm release  2023-12-05 were big and wide ranging. I'm not surprised new issues are still emerging. I'll give a try today.

[jfsoar]

I'm in the process of setting up a n INDI+Ekos+Kstars+phd2 instance on an rpi5. I couldn't find a satisfactory approach to using prebuilt or repo packages, but I haven't had any problems building all of the above from source. All of the required dependencies for compilation install with little problem, so compiling was a piece of cake.

Originally I tried Ubuntu 23.10 to make use of Jasem Mutlaq's INDI/Kstars PPAs, but there isn't an indi-nightly for 23.10, and the standard INDI PPA has unmet dependencies.  I originally compiled everything from source there too, but was getting lots of random crashes so switched to Bookworm and find it (a bit) more stable. The only bit I needed t install by PIP (as root to spray stuff over the system) was indi web manager, which is fairly small.

All of this is a bit of a no no from a Debian perspective, but it's not like I plan to update much once everything is dialled in and working. I do absolutely want the latest versions -- there are always bugs and crashes in INDI and want to be able to contribute. Also I'm using some custom hardware so needed to modify some drivers.

In addition to the above, I also had to revert to X11 rather than Wayland to get a useable lag-free, headless VNC or RDP session with autologin.

I assume part of my problem with crashes is the power supply -- I'm trying to minimise cables to the scope mounted pi so am just running 12v to a power/relay hat and ethernet (I originally tried PoE on the Pi4 but it wasn't beefy enough -- I guess this is what eventually resulted in SSD corruption. Eventually I'd love to run the whole setup with one ethernet cable).  The 10A supply is man enough but the 12V-5V regulator on the hat can only manage 3A. Hopefully this will be enough until better hats come out.

I'm using the relay on the power board together with a stepper hat to drive a custom flip-flat.

Crashes seem to have reduced since I disabled the "USB current limit due to unsupported power supply", so I'm cautiously optimistic. (very cautiously, RPIs always have the power to disappoint).

I'm using Wifi to connect from the RPi to my mount. Curiously the WiFi signal is very weak under Bookworm when compared to Ubuntu, but hopefully it is useable.

I'm about to spray the whole thing with conformal coating. Anyone else done this (and run one passively without a fan) yet?

 

Edited January 9 by jfsoar

[SteveBz]

On 09/01/2024 at 17:13, jfsoar said:

I'm in the process of setting up a n INDI+Ekos+Kstars+phd2 instance on an rpi5. I couldn't find a satisfactory approach to using prebuilt or repo packages, but I haven't had any problems building all of the above from source. All of the required dependencies for compilation install with little problem, so compiling was a piece of cake.

So I used nou's script here for the first 3.

https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/astro-soft-build

Which works perfectly.

What did you use for PHD2?

Kind regards

Steve

 

[Pete K]

On 09/12/2023 at 03:44, Avocette said:

Better news today since the latest release of RPi OS bookworm (2023-12-05), the @nou script works again and installs KStars 3.6.8. This looks good, and seems to operate with my Astro equipment. However the Wayland features seem to have ‘lost’ the KStars main screen window control bar, so there are no exit, minimise nor maximise control buttons. This loss is intermittent and very occasionally the window control bar returns. I guess the best workaround for now may be to revert to X11.

Have you resolved the issue with the window controls? I have that also, but I've found a work-around. If I use the file manager to open a .fits file with kstars, it opens kstars with the window controls. The fits viewer lacks the window controls, but I just use the File: Exit menu to close the .fits file viewer and use kstars from that point. Very weird.

Edited February 25 by Pete K

[Avocette]

23 hours ago, Pete K said:

Have you resolved the issue with the window controls? I have that also, but I've found a work-around. If I use the file manager to open a .fits file with kstars, it opens kstars with the window controls. The fits viewer lacks the window controls, but I just use the File: Exit menu to close the .fits file viewer and use kstars from that point. Very weird.

Yes -  I’ve been successfully using the RPi 5 with KStars etc. since my December post. I first install the current 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) and use the Advanced tab in sudo raspi-config to switch off Wayland and revert to X11. After that I simply follow Nou’s instructions. At the present time, the astro-build-stable script builds KStars 3.6.9 with Indi 2.0.6. All working very well (and equally well if a little less snappy on the RPi 4). One oddity, which Nou says is solvable, is that an installation built on the RPi 5 will not work on the RPi 4.

[Pete K]

4 hours ago, Avocette said:

Yes -  I’ve been successfully using the RPi 5 with KStars etc. since my December post. I first install the current 64 bit Raspberry Pi OS (Bookworm) and use the Advanced tab in sudo raspi-config to switch off Wayland and revert to X11. After that I simply follow Nou’s instructions. At the present time, the astro-build-stable script builds KStars 3.6.9 with Indi 2.0.6. All working very well (and equally well if a little less snappy on the RPi 4). One oddity, which Nou says is solvable, is that an installation built on the RPi 5 will not work on the RPi 4.

Thanks for the info. I've been using my work-around with Wayland, I may try with X11 just to see how that works. I'm also building with Nou's scripts - build-soft-latest - and it seems to be working well. I found that with the RPi 5, connecting to my USB devices is much more reliable. With the RPi 4, I often had to restart kstars/ekos and cycle the devices to get them all to connect. I rarely have that problem with the RPi 5. My devices are Nikon D7500, iOptron GEM28, ZWO ASI120MM-mini and a GPS dongle (via gpsd).

[Pete K]

On 17/02/2024 at 14:49, SteveBz said:

So I used nou's script here for the first 3.

https://gitea.nouspiro.space/nou/astro-soft-build

Which works perfectly.

What did you use for PHD2?

Kind regards

Steve

 

I believe Nou's scripts have been updated to also build PHD2, but I haven't built with that (I do build kstars/ekos/indi with those scripts).

I've been building PHD2 with these instructions:

https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/wiki/BuildingPHD2OnLinux