Raspberry Pi 3 remote setup

[tileys]

I have been playing around with a Raspberry Pi 3 I recently bought with the intention of setting up my imaging setup and controlling it remotely from the warmth of the house

I realise that others have posted threads on what they are doing and it's not really new as such but I thought I'd post on my intial feelings.

Bear in mind that my experiments so far have been house-bound (due to cloud cover and lack of time so far).

Previously I have used a laptop next to the scope with my EOS 40D running through Backyard EOS, my guide cam running through PHD2 and using Cartes Du Ciel to navigate and control through the standard windows ASCOM drivers using an EQDIR lead to connect laptop to mount.

For this new setup I am using a Raspberry Pi 3 model B (the latest) running Ubuntu Mate which is a good way to get full INDI control (ASCOM driver equivalent). Just after installing kstars (open source all-in-one workbench/planetarium s/w) and tightvnc remote control s/w (using Gnome to get a good remote desktop GUI view) I straight-away got my EOS 40D connected and imaging through kstars and also got my QHY5LII guide cam working (have not tried out alignment in anger yet). Last night I set up my NEQ6Pro mount in the lounge room and connected to that and also set up my hand controller (an Xbox 360 wired controller in a rather fetching shade of pink) - the last bit was the only hiccup I found - you need to carefully order the startup of the mount and joystick instances otherwise even though the s/w can see them both the joystick inputs do not register through to the mount.

I have used the planetarium s/w to go from unparked to slew to some random objects to verify comms but next step is to see how it all works together with me sat in a different room.

I do not have a focusser for my reflector and that is the one thing that will see me having to run outside to do from time to time, as well as setups and alignment duties (I have no fixed pier but have a casual setup).

Really surprised how easy it all was (mind you, I do work in IT so am happy to roll my sleeves up if needed).

Next steps:

Obviously do a full outside setup and hopefully image remotely (well - backyard at least .

Think about an option for focusing - maybe a stepper motor controller either with the Raspberry or with the Raspberry Pi Zero W I have not used yet.

Happy to answer any questions and would be keen to hear what other people are doing in this area.

[that_guy (Tony)]

Im trying something very similar to yours by observing and learning from a similar set up at astrofest. Richard, the owner of the set up, used an intel stick instead of the pi which runs windows. Might get better software compatibility. Got uVNC for remote control and has APT and Phd running simultaneously. He also set up a local network to transmit the photos directly to another computer for processing/checking. When I run mine, I'll also be running EQmod and cartes du ciel to remote control my mount.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Just one question (As I have been looking at similar ideas)

What are you using for comms to the Pi? I was not using a proper remote setup on the weekend (Later!) but when I posted a somewhat similar question recently (In my case using software on a Pi to extend it's USB ports over a network and run the software on another PC) The issue that was raised was that Wifi connectivity may not be reliable enough to make it work.

On the weekend I was playing around with doing a time lapse using Backyard EOS on a laptop out where my camera was, apart from being almost completely clouded out all weekend (And Windoze deciding to update and restart itself halfway through one of the nights) I had BYE saving the images direct to a share on my home NAS that is mounted on startup as a network drive. I was getting images corrupted and it turned out to be the wifi performance dropping off. When it got to a certain point the image files were being corrupted. I worked around that by having BYE save the files locally on the laptop and then copying them across to the NAS using Teamviwere to do it fro inside the house.

The upshot is if you are planning to do it all via wifi you might run into trouble. I am hoping to have another crack this weekend and if so I am going to buy a long enough ethernet cable to plug it in directly. While it lasted it was nice to see the files appearing on my NAS share every 30 seconds or so.

[tileys]

I am just using wifi at the moment. My experiments of image capture were only of test shots (Large JPG - not RAW) and they were being stored on the micro SD card local to the Raspberry Pi itself. I have not looked into the USB sharing option but that did sound like an option - basically using the Raspberry Pi as a gateway. But - I would like to try the RPi as the server and just access everything via VNC Viewer via my laptop on the same wireless n/w if my wireless throughput holds out.

I can upsize the micro SD card (currently 32GB) I guess and continue to store local to the RPi and just preview over VNC or maybe I'll try a n/w fileshare or FTP

It's a bit impractical for me to connect via Ethernet but I do have a Ethernet over Power option I could try if the wireless doesn't come to the party.

What router are you running ?

[NeilW]

Hi tileys,

I tried exactly the same setup a while back, but found that K-Stars was way too slow and clunky to be really useful compered to Stellarium on Windows. I tried Stellarium on the Pi, but it wouldn't load. Interested to know how your setup works in practice.

[tileys]

What Pi version were you trying it on Neil ? Maybe the 3 gives a quicker platform to run it on ? (here's hoping

I'm intending to use the setup for imaging mainly so I can live with a little clunkyness between objects. Quite how it works out in practice I will soon find out.

I will update with my findings.

[ChrisV (Chris)]

Originally Posted by that_guy

Im trying something very similar to yours by observing and learning from a similar set up at astrofest. Richard, the owner of the set up, used an intel stick instead of the pi which runs windows. Might get better software compatibility. Got uVNC for remote control and has APT and Phd running simultaneously. He also set up a local network to transmit the photos directly to another computer for processing/checking. When I run mine, I'll also be running EQmod and cartes du ciel to remote control my mount.

Tony, I use a PC stick for live imaging. The PC stick sits on the scope and runs sharpcap, PHD2 and occasionally stellarium. I control this remotely using RDPwrap from a computer inside via wifi.

The only trouble with the PC stick is that it has lousy built-in wifi - so I use a small external wifi usb-dongle on the PC stick.

[The_bluester (Paul)]

Originally Posted by tileys

What router are you running ?

Actually no wifi via the router in my case, I use an Ethernet only Dlink enterprise grade one. I use Ubiquiti access points. The nearest one being about 25M away inside a tin shed.

It might be doable over wifi but historically I have found it so unreliable that I would be leery about trusting to it unless I had a dedicated AP within a couple of meters.

[tileys]

Thanks Phil. Not had the chance to follow up myself and will be busy this weekend but will update this post with any findings and experiences I get with this wifi based setup.

[Astrofriend (Lars)]

Hi,
At the moment I have a windows server at the telescope, but with a more compact and power efficient Raspberry Pi3 I thought I could make it much better.

I could have the small Raspberry mounted on the telescope and get very short cables, no need of a separate USB Hub anymore, Raspberry already has four USB ports.

I don't want it to be dependent of 100% perfect connection between the telescope computer and the terminal. I use the Raspberry as a server, then it's not dependend of the inhouse computer and the connection to it, it handle everything loclay. Looked good but experience from it show that it's too slow.

I have wrote all down how I built it on my projectpage:
http://astrofriend.eu/astronomy/proj...ndi-linux.html

The project is in pause now, but will restart the project later again, then maybe we have faster Raspberries.

I like the concept!

/Lars

[tileys]

I had a very disappointing session last night - VNC and ssh session kept dropping (setting up a bridged router to get a better wifi signal out the back of the house - hopefully that helps). And when it was running I had terrible trouble getting my wired gaming controller playing nicely with the mount. I know you have to start them at the same time and it worked the other day but it kept ignoring my rate setting for the controller - kept reverting to "custom" and wouldn't let me actually change the ra dec settings. When it did slew at 800 the controller axes seemed to lead to the same mount movements for up and down than it did for left and right - maybe I was trying to skew to a target that caused the mount to want to flip over ?

Kstars a little slow but still usable. Running the mount, gaming controller, qhy guide cam and canon eos to account for the 4 USB ports.