ASUS Tinker Board

[multiweb]

This (http://hackaday.com/2017/02/15/review-the-asus-tinker-board/) might be of interest to raspberry PI users.

[petarm]

So here is my latest project which is my mobile astrophotography device.

ASUS Tinker board. 2Gig DDR3 Ram Quad Core 1.8GHz processor running Ubuntu 16.04LTS. Kstars ekos with astrometry. See http://indilib.org

All my hardware is connected to this device which I control remotely via VNC viewer from my laptop or tablet.

This is good because there are no cables connected between my imaging equipment and the client computer to trip over in the dark. Communication between the Tinkerboard and my laptop is via Wifi, so I can have my imaging equipment setup outside in the cold and I can control everything from inside my house in front of the fireplace.

The white device attached to the USB port of the Tinkerboard is a GPS adapter. When kstars/ekos is running (this is my astronomy software that controls all my imaging equipment), it automatically acquires GPS position, time and date which is then fed into kstars/ekos. This information is then used in the alignment module (or plate solver) in kstars to acquire your imaging targets (those pretty pictures you see).

The alignment module in kstars is very powerful, it has found every target i have asked it to find!!! Awesome.

See attached images and one image taken through this setup.

[lazjen]

Nice setup.

What power do you run into the Asus Tinker? Does it come from the PC Power supply pictured? 12v?

I'm using an Intel NUC with indi/ekos/kstars (and PHD2), powered by a 12V to 19V DC converter. I'm still ironing out a few things, but I hope to get it all on to the mount sometime similar to what you have done. Cables everywhere are annoying.

[petarm]

Yep, everything runs of the 12VDC PC power supply, I use one of these to bring the power back to 5VDC to the tinker board:

https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/DC-Buck-Step-Down-Power-Converter-Board-5-16V-To-1-25V-1-8V-1-5V-2-5V-3-3V-5V-3A/382316163635?hash=item5903d1b233:g: h3sAAOSwUoNaPIJX

Runs the tinker board perfectly through micro USB plug, or you could just connect to the GPIO header.

Yep i know what you mean, i hate cables as well.

[petarm]

I also have a home built blue-tooth moonlite focuser which works perfectly.

I still have not had time to install it properly on my imaging scope. Just manual focusing for now until i work out a clean way of installing.

https://sourceforge.net/projects/arduinofocuscontrollerpro/

[ChrisV]

Very, very nice. What are you using for wifi? Asking as I've used a PC stick for something similar - but the wifi on it is terrible, drops out all the time.

[petarm]

So the tinker board is setup to run as a WiFi hotspot. I then remote to it via my laptop with remmina. I run Ubuntu on all my computers and remmina is the default RDP. Works great. Never had a wifi drop out. Even if it does it doesn't matter cause the tinker board is doing all the work. My laptop is just my monitor, keyboard and mouse.

I don't use my home WiFi but if you need greater wifi range you could if you wanted to. You could also use ethernet cable instead. With kstars you could easily remote via the Internet to your remote observatory if you want to.

I also use a raspberry pi zero w on my big screen tv. Once I have an imaging session going, I can then monitor what's going on without the laptop. I just switch channels during commercial's to keep an eye on things instead of sitting outside in the cold.

:thumbsup: