ASIAir Alternative - Installing Indigo Sky on Raspberry Pi 5 with Fast SSD

[RoryG]

Note that all links in this post have no affiliation to me, they are there for information only to show the kit that I bought and some setup procedures.

I have an ASIAir Plus running my Akskar 65PHQ wide field rig with ASI533MC Pro, EAF, ZWO Mini Guide Scope with an ASI120MM Mini on an EQM-35 Pro mount. I put it together over the summer but I've yet to test it properly due to light clear nights and now dark cloudy nights! I did manage a couple of short sessions, enough to polar align, get focus, calibrate guiding, etc., before the haze obscured most of the sky. First impressions of the AA+ are good, although I wish there was a proper downloadable manual for it, rather than the online version that jumps between the plus and the pro versions.

My wide field deep sky rig

I have a couple of other makes of cameras I would like to use with this rig (Altair Astro and Player One) which the AA+ won't talk to, so I looked at the other options out there. Being a Mac user (not exclusively, I have a mini PC driving my Celestron CPC800 EdgeHD) my options are limited for direct connection to my MacBook Pro, so I looked at using a Raspberry Pi and building a similar setup to the AA+. There's quite a few Pi astro images out there from various vendors / open source, but only a few will run on the Pi 5 which I wanted to use, given the increased processing power over the Pi 4 and the ease of booting from an SSD. The one that caught my eye was Indigo Sky which runs on the Pi 5 and has a multitude of drivers for cameras, mounts, focusers, etc.

I bought an 8GB Pi 5, case with genuine Pi cooling fan, NVMe hat and a 1TB NVMe SSD from Amazon, total cost just £160 (compared to £329 for AA+ 256GB). I planned to keep the AA+ mounted and use the power ports only, with the camera, guide camera, EAF and mount connected to the Pi 5. I'm very IT savvy having worked in the industry for 20 odd years, and a geek by nature (yes, at 62!), so building a system from scratch didn't daunt me one bit. But this is actually pretty easy, there's no real coding involved, putting the parts together is a doddle, and most of the hard work is done for you by the Indigo Sky developers. There is some command line stuff you have to do, but Google is your friend and in most cases you can just copy / paste from your browser into the terminal. You'll need a SSH client (built-in on a Mac and most Linux distros, you can download Putty for Windows).

The first step is to build your Pi, I bought this case from Amazon (UK) but have since ordered this one which is much neater, not as high and comes with a cooling fan. You'll also need an NVMe hat and a M Key NVMe SSD, I have used KingSpec NX SSDs before and they are cheap and reliable, and work with the Pi 5 perfectly. You can image Indigo Sky directly to the SSD if you have a suitable NVMe to USB enclosure, but it's just as easy to image to a microSD card then use RPI-Clone to move it to the SSD afterwards. Make sure you use a good quality USB C power adapter with a minimum of 12v 5A.

 

RPi 5 in case with NVMe hat and 1TB SSD

Once you've built your Pi download the Arm64 Bookworm image from the Indigo Sky page then use something like Balena Etcher to install the OS. Install the microSD card into the Pi and boot it up. The Indigo Sky image already has Wi-Fi and SSH enabled so you should be able to connect to it using its hotspot then browse to http://indigosky.local:7624/mng.html to connect it to your home Wi-Fi and run the updates. Note that if you are using Windows don't use the Edge browser as it won't find the host, use Chrome or Firefox.

The Indigo Sky web console. It will look different on first run as no drivers will be installed

The Pi will need internet access to run updates, so use the web console to connect it to your home Wi-Fi. It won't scan for available networks so you'll need to enter the SSID and password if you know it, or type it in exactly as it appears on your router. You'll need to reconnect your computer to your home network then refresh the browser, if you have entered the details correctly it will now be ready to update. You can upgrade (or downgrade) Indigo Server directly from the web console, then SSH in to the Pi to update the OS and install Indigo Desktop if you want it. I recommend it as the Ain Imager is pretty good, but you can connect to the Indigo server from Windows using APT or other INDI / Indigo compatible apps.

Using your SSH client create a connection to indigo@indigosky.local or from a terminal type ssh indigo@indigosky.local. You'll be asked to accept and trust the certificate the enter the password which is 'indigo' without the quotes.

Indigo Sky SSH terminal screen

Once connected there's just two commands to run to update the OS:

sudo apt-get update

followed by:

sudo apt-get upgrade

The upgrade process will ask you to accept the disk space usage, and if you have made any changes before upgrading it may ask you if you want to keep or overwrite certain config files. Best option is to keep (which is the default). If you want to use the Indigo desktop which comes with Ain Imager, Indigo control panel and Ain Viewer run:

sudo apt-get install indigosky-desktop

The simple desktop can be accessed using any VNC client, or the Screen Sharing tool on a Mac. You can access it from an iPad or Android tablet as well, making it similar to the AA+.

  

The Indigo desktop and Ain Imager access via Screen Sharing on a Mac

Once everything s up and running you want to move the OS from the microSD card to the SSD and make it bootable. It's a reasonably easy process, rather than go through it all here there's detailed instructions on Jeff Geerling's page here. As you'll be using Git to install RPI-Clone you'll need to install it first: 

sudo apt-get install git

Once RPI-Clone has completed (it takes a bit of time even cloning to a SSD) you can shut your Pi down, either from the web console, or from the terminal:

sudo shutdown now

Remove the microSD card then switch the Pi back on, it will take a bit of time before you can connect to it but just be patient, subsequent boots are near instantaneous!

The final step is to setup file sharing so you can access your subs from the SSD. You can use file sharing over Wi-Fi (the Pi 5 has 802.1ac which is reasonably fast if your Wi-Fi infrastructure supports it), or connect it via the ethernet port directly in to your router. To set up file sharing you'll need to install Samba

sudo apt-get install samba samba-common-bin

Once installed create a folder in the indigo user home directory. I used 'ssd' as the folder name:

mkdir /home/indigo/ssd

Now edit the Samba config file to enable the share, and (optionally) hide the default home shares. Type the following command to edit the config:

sudo nano /etc/samba/smb.conf

Scroll or page down to the bottom of the file and type (or paste) the following:

[Indigo-SSD]
Comment = Indigo SSD Data
Path = /home/indigo/ssd
Browseable = yes
Writeable = Yes
only guest = no
create mask = 0777
directory mask = 0777
Public = yes
Guest ok = yes

To hide the default shares put a '#' in front of [homes], or simply delete the entire [homes] section down to the line before [netlogon]. To save the config press ctrl-o then enter, followed by ctrl-x to exit the Nano editor. You need to add indigo to the Samba users:

sudo smbpasswd -a indigo

The final step is to restart the Samba service:

sudo systemctl restart smbd

You will now see the shared folder in the shared section of Finder on a Mac, or for Windows it will show up in the Network page of the file explorer. Connect to it using indigo as the user and the password you set when you added the Samba user.

You can configure the Ain Imager to use the ssd share as the default subs location then you're done! Make sure you shutdown your Indigo Sky box cleanly rather than just turning it off, us the shutdown now command, or Shutdown from the web console.

You now have a fully functional Indigo server running on a fast Raspberry Pi 5, with Ain Imager and the ability to connect to it from compatible apps. You can use it on your home Wi-Fi, via ethernet, or using the hotspot if no networks are available. You may want to harden your installation if there's a chance someone might want to hack it (unlikely unless you expose it to the internet or your neighbour is also an astrophotographer) by changing the default passwords, etc., but I've just left mine as it is, much like my AA+. I have yet to use it for deep sky imaging but I have connected everything up to it and it all works right out the box (I use a EQMod cable to connect to the mount, same as the AA+).

The next instalment will be imaging and guiding with Ain Imager.

[saac]

I'm a big fan of the ASiAir, I'm running a plus and a pro version. Once you get up to speed with them  (the menu system is actually very intuitive) they just work, allowing you to get on with life. It would be great though if ZWO were to be a little more relaxed on what you can connect but I don't think that will happen any time soon despite some other more open arrivals to the market (Toup Tek's Astro Station ).  So all that said, I think I'd be quite interested in giving Indigo Sky a look. Even just as a nice Raspberry Pi project. Thanks for flagging it up Rory and for the useful instructions above, it's something that I hadn't came across before.  Off to find my Raspberry Pi now  

Jim 

Edited September 12 by saac

[Ryachu]

RoryG's post shows how, with the right knowledge and open source software, you can emulate outperform the big boys for a fraction of the price. You end up with a more flexible setup with no lock-in to proprietary

software/hardware.                                                                                                                  
                                                                                                                    
ZWO seem to have a cavalier approach to open source and don't seem to contribute to the ecosystem so they won't be seeing any of my cash.                                                                                                
                                                                                                                   
I ended up with a RPI4 running just an INDI server at the scope with a network cable back to the shack. Is there a benefit to loading up the Raspberry with a GUI, astro software and VNC when all the computing horsepower is not

at the scope end of the cable ? 

[saac]

Tbh honest I don't really begrudge ZWO's approach. For your money you get a system that works really well (effectively plug and play) , is updated and continually developed with new features and is supported with an active user community.  The tie in to their cameras is not hidden so it's an informed purchase.  

Jim 

Edited September 13 by saac

[Stickey]

I use an Asiair Pro and as others have said, it just works, WIFI permitting. I'm spending my time doing astronomy and not fighting with the IT. 

It's like mobile phones and Apple vs Android. The former ties you in to their ecosystem, but it usually just works.

Just sayin'.

 

Mike

[CheshireChris]

Rory,

Thanks for posting this. I hadn't heard of Indigo Sky until now. Like other who have replied here l also have an ASIAir Plus - and I like it very much, for the forseeable future it will be my primary imaging system.

However, l do have a Star Adventurer GTI sat there not doing much and have been looking at options to have a widefield rig with my Canon DSLR and lens without purchasing another ASIAir. I also have a couple of RPi5s with 500GB NVMe using the PiMoroni NVMe boards.

I think I'll give this a go - l like to tinker with this sort of thing. Indigo Sky also looks similar to the Stellarmate OS offering: which isn't free, but is a very reasonable reasonable £38. Does anyone have any view on how the two compare?

Chris

 

[AstroMuni]

On 14/09/2024 at 08:52, CheshireChris said:

Indigo Sky also looks similar to the Stellarmate OS offering: which isn't free, but is a very reasonable reasonable £38. Does anyone have any view on how the two compare?

I had compared INDI vs INDIGO when I was choosing which way to go and at the time there were very few drivers available on INDIGO, hence I chose to go down the INDI, Kstars/Ekos route. But that seems to have changed now. The primary difference that I could spot looking at the INDIGO sky website are:

- Scheduler is quite powerful in Ekos. Couldnt spot it in INDIGO Sky???

- Stellarmate has their own App that runs on ipad & Android. This is quite similar to the ASIAir app.

- INDIGO seems to have better connectivity with ALPACA devices

Perhaps someone who has used INDIGO sky can confirm if they see anything thats missing in Kstars/Ekos but available in INDIGO Sky.

Edited September 19 by AstroMuni

[Dunc78]

I believe QHY are being out starmaster soon as covered in Dylan o Donnells latest YouTube vid. So won't be locked to only ZWO gear.