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  #41  
Old 03-01-2021, 02:25 PM
kens (Ken)
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Is your Pi connected to the internet or does it have a Real Time Clock? If neither then its internal clock will be wrong every time you boot it. That would mess up the mount coordinates and plate solving
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  #42  
Old 03-01-2021, 04:41 PM
vin_ap (Caleb)
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Ken,

Makes complete sense, even though I can connect it to the internet I don't purely to keep the system setup to take to remote sites. As part of my work flow I change the location and time in kstars after bootup. Yesterday I was trialing with GPS simulator and that could have stuffed up the clock settings.
I have got a gps dongle on its way so that should fix the problem in the future. Alright, I feel so close to getting this setup running good... thanks heaps for your help.
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  #43  
Old 03-01-2021, 10:25 PM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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I thought there was a driver to allow the use of the mobile phones GPS for updating. The only way it will be a problem in a fully remote application, but for personal use the Mobile driver, I thought addresses the method of location.

I will be looking into this more as I wait till i have completed building my hardware.

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Originally Posted by vin_ap View Post
Ken,

Makes complete sense, even though I can connect it to the internet I don't purely to keep the system setup to take to remote sites. As part of my work flow I change the location and time in kstars after bootup. Yesterday I was trialing with GPS simulator and that could have stuffed up the clock settings.
I have got a gps dongle on its way so that should fix the problem in the future. Alright, I feel so close to getting this setup running good... thanks heaps for your help.
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  #44  
Old 04-01-2021, 03:39 PM
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Direct cable connection for me also has been pernickety. Ethernet and wireless through the router is fine.

I think have this working fine now and connecting through RealVNC with all of the laptop settings on auto and only the SBC ipv4 settings set up to manual address for either direct cable or network .

It will be interesting if the wifi hotspot on the laptop will work as a connection method.

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Good point. I have one I can try.

Just tried to direct-connect via ethernet cable. No joy so I'm going to have to go back to the proverbial drawing-board.
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  #45  
Old 05-01-2021, 07:43 AM
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The_bluester (Paul)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vin_ap View Post
In the Astroberry the Indi server is running separate to kstars-ekos. So in the ekos profile setting you have to select remote host not local and press the scan to find the IP of the Indi server. If you have it set to local and start the connection it will ask to terminate the Indi server that is already running and ekos will start a separate local Indi server.

I will have to do a bit more digging in ANdy's setup to see if it behaves the same way and needs a "Remote" profile on the local setup. After we get his working self contained I will look in to splitting the work with the Pi just providing an Indi instance to connect to the equipment and the rest on the Mac. But the totally local setup has the advantage of being self contained, once we build/sort him a battery backed up power system at the mount it would image on through power outages like mine does.
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  #46  
Old 05-01-2021, 10:17 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester View Post
I will have to do a bit more digging in ANdy's setup to see if it behaves the same way and needs a "Remote" profile on the local setup. After we get his working self contained I will look in to splitting the work with the Pi just providing an Indi instance to connect to the equipment and the rest on the Mac. But the totally local setup has the advantage of being self contained, once we build/sort him a battery backed up power system at the mount it would image on through power outages like mine does.
I’d be interested to learn what sort of battery setup you use. I recently bought a power backup thing from Jaycar just to run a Pi Stellarium setup. It had a USB C and 2 USB 2 outlets - the former supplying 3 Amps and the others 2.something. The Pi4 with 4 GB has a SSD boot drive and it will generally but not always start and usually runs. But my Pi4 with 8 GB will not start at all. It is in a case with a built-in M.2 SSD so maybe it demands a bit more juice than my 3 Amp outlet can supply. So please post your own solution when you have one.
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  #47  
Old 05-01-2021, 12:53 PM
vin_ap (Caleb)
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Hi Peter, Iam told the RP4 requires a constant 5.1V and 3 A available to run kstars properly without errors. I power my pi using a 5V 2.1A powertech battery jumpstart system and works really well, haven't seen drop-outs yet, I use this to run my entire system mount, cameras, heaters and the Pi . Some powerbanks that I have tested tend to drop voltage below 4.8V when the charge drops below 80% and this affect the RP4 from running or booting properly.
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  #48  
Old 05-01-2021, 01:02 PM
vin_ap (Caleb)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester View Post
I will have to do a bit more digging in ANdy's setup to see if it behaves the same way and needs a "Remote" profile on the local setup. After we get his working self contained I will look in to splitting the work with the Pi just providing an Indi instance to connect to the equipment and the rest on the Mac. But the totally local setup has the advantage of being self contained, once we build/sort him a battery backed up power system at the mount it would image on through power outages like mine does.
Absolutely! The being self-contained system is where I am going with mine. I can run mine without any connection to AC power, only need to get kstars and imaging workflow to work for me. Eventually would like to upgrade to a 100Ah deep cycle battery, currently running off 17Ah which works for 4-5hour without significant voltage drop.
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  #49  
Old 05-01-2021, 01:06 PM
vin_ap (Caleb)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by mswhin63 View Post
I thought there was a driver to allow the use of the mobile phones GPS for updating. The only way it will be a problem in a fully remote application, but for personal use the Mobile driver, I thought addresses the method of location.

I will be looking into this more as I wait till i have completed building my hardware.
Will have to look into this as I haven't seen this solution but would be easier, not connecting to the internet is a pain sometimes with the pi as it can and I have run into this where different times and dates are read between different devices.
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  #50  
Old 05-01-2021, 02:28 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by vin_ap View Post
Hi Peter, Iam told the RP4 requires a constant 5.1V and 3 A available to run kstars properly without errors. I power my pi using a 5V 2.1A powertech battery jumpstart system and works really well, haven't seen drop-outs yet, I use this to run my entire system mount, cameras, heaters and the Pi . Some powerbanks that I have tested tend to drop voltage below 4.8V when the charge drops below 80% and this affect the RP4 from running or booting properly.
Is your Pi a 3B or B+? That might account for the 2.1 Amp connection. It doesn’t look like a Pi 4 would start at all under 3 Amps.
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  #51  
Old 05-01-2021, 05:37 PM
vin_ap (Caleb)
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Mine is a Rpi 4 4GB ram...
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  #52  
Old 05-01-2021, 08:19 PM
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mswhin63 (Malcolm)
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Quote:
Originally Posted by pmrid View Post
Is your Pi a 3B or B+? That might account for the 2.1 Amp connection. It doesn’t look like a Pi 4 would start at all under 3 Amps.
The RPi 4 8G has a maximum 3A required, it does not necessarily need all 3A to run as it will depend on the application, I believe mine runs at approx 1.2A @ 5V. 3Amps is a buffer for some really intensive clocking and tasks.

While I was testing before i got my RPi 4 I used my Raspberry Zero W. It worked well in the remote application but failed on PHD2. For some reason PHD2 wouldn't start and was not from the power supply either.

RPi Zero also couldn't work well with Ekos and Kstars running.
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  #53  
Old 06-01-2021, 11:42 PM
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The RPi foundation recommends a 3A power supply for the RPi 4. However, 1.2A is reserved for the various USB peripherals (see this). That leaves 1.8A as the maximum consumption of RPi 4 itself. This is consistent with the maximum power consumption tests that can be found on the net (see this one for example).

In other words, RPi 4 will never use more than 1.8A and so it will happily run from a 2A power supply. But, if you start attaching cameras etc to its USB ports you may need a larger power supply.
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  #54  
Old 07-01-2021, 10:03 AM
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Originally Posted by luka View Post
The RPi foundation recommends a 3A power supply for the RPi 4. However, 1.2A is reserved for the various USB peripherals (see this). That leaves 1.8A as the maximum consumption of RPi 4 itself. This is consistent with the maximum power consumption tests that can be found on the net (see this one for example).

In other words, RPi 4 will never use more than 1.8A and so it will happily run from a 2A power supply. But, if you start attaching cameras etc to its USB ports you may need a larger power supply.
But a Pi 4 won’t even boot unless it has the power it needs 5.1 volts DC. at 3 amps.
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  #55  
Old 07-01-2021, 11:34 PM
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Not quite Peter, RPi 4 will boot and work with less than 3A. The early versions of the RPi 4 had a design fault (incorrect pull-down resistors on the USB-C socket) and would not work with some power supplies even though the power supplies were more than adequate. Maybe that is the reason why yours would not work with a smaller power supply.

The link I posted above is by the RPi Foundation, i.e. the people who design and make Raspberry Pis. They say that 1.8A is the maximum power used by the RPi 4 (without extras). Interestingly you don't even need the recommended 5.1V as the voltage has ±5% tolerance. The undervoltage warning icon will show only if the voltage drops below 4.63V.
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  #56  
Old 08-01-2021, 09:56 AM
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Hi Peter ,

I don’t know if this helps but in order to get my direct Ethernet cable to laptop connection to SBC working I need to configure the direct link Ethernet connection with a different address from the network Ethernet, so rather than ending in 11 say, I created a different manual ipv4 address in the SBC for the direct link ending in a 12.

VNC then connects once the connection is established using the configured name option, in my case Rock64:0 I do not understand why this is, some others more knowledgeable might know, but it appears to work.

R.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pmrid View Post
Good point. I have one I can try.

Just tried to direct-connect via ethernet cable. No joy so I'm going to have to go back to the proverbial drawing-board.

Last edited by Sunfish; 08-01-2021 at 10:01 AM. Reason: Spelling
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  #57  
Old 10-01-2021, 11:28 AM
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Andy01 (Andy)
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Progress report:

I have a RPi4 running Stellarmate 3.5.0 and a macbook pro (2011HighSierra) Got everything working using the pi & vnc on the mac direct connection via ethernet.

Plate solving, flipping, calibration & guiding (phd) auto focus & filter changes all good.

Unfortunately I made some guiding & sequence adjustments (aborted a sequence, reset then checked dither& settle) later on the fly which upset the system and it stalled out after the first sub post flip. 😔

Nevertheless, progress! Was pretty cool watching it auto flip, re-solve, lock on target, guide & image again 😎

Next night ekos remembered my dither/settle settings & kstars remembered my location on startup - a port issue remains unsolved, Keeps ‘forgetting’ port settings on startup- Every time I start it up, it connects camera, FW & mount, then looks for ports and reckons there’s only one available for both the focusser & mount. I can manually fix this with the web serial port manager, so it sees an additional port, but it’s time consuming - any thoughts? (it still requires manual slot mapping with the serial port assistant each time.)

Post flip though, the sequence aborted again, “cannot capture while focus module is busy” which was odd, as I didn’t set it to refocus post flip. Did I get that wrong?

Anyway, I then manually set it to refocus, then restarted the guider (PHD2) & restarted the sequence- all seemed ok after that.

Nearly there now
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  #58  
Old 12-01-2021, 10:07 PM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Beware the power supply.
I recently bought a Powertech MB3806 - a 15600 mAh supply to run a new Pi4(8GB) board with Stellarmate. It purports to supply the USB -C with 3 Amps. I use it with a Pi 3B and a Pi4(4GB) with no issues. The Pi4(4) is in a sexy case with dual fans and is booting off a SSD. But I bought a sexy special case to go with the 8(8) - one with a good fan and a built-in M.2 SSD. ARGONone M.2. It’s a great case and the Pi runs beautifully on it BUT when I try to run it on the Powertech, it refuses to boot. After much backward and forward with Core Electronics, we have isolated the cause to the active cooling fan which seems to draw an unacceptable amount of power from the Pi at boot. As Core told me, the Pi will settle to run on less once its booted but it needs the whhole bag at boot.

Pity because I wanted to run this as a remote system at the scope and do the whole thing on battery. So read the specs on your powervsupply closely.
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  #59  
Old 13-01-2021, 08:38 PM
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The ArgonOne M1 and M2 use a softswitch to power on the Pi. The Power bank usually does not turn on when it up against a minimum load at startup. I have the ARGONone M1 and will be upgrading to an M2 later. The soft switch will require a constant voltage current sink of a minimum current level to run it and I don't think the power bank can sense it, so it effectively think there is nothing connected and turns off or never turn on the 5V properly.

I am consider getting a QC or PD Power Bank and buy a trigger that senses the voltage required and immediately switches it to the right voltage and current. I can then supply up to 20V when needed.

There are 20Ahr/20000mAhr that have QC 3.0 or PD so for me I hope to run everything of the power bank. Still investigating it though, looking for any issues before spending the dough.

You might be able to disable the softswitch and start it up. I have not checked but it may have a way of disabling the softswitch.

Quote:
Originally Posted by pmrid View Post
Beware the power supply.
I recently bought a Powertech MB3806 - a 15600 mAh supply to run a new Pi4(8GB) board with Stellarmate. It purports to supply the USB -C with 3 Amps. I use it with a Pi 3B and a Pi4(4GB) with no issues. The Pi4(4) is in a sexy case with dual fans and is booting off a SSD. But I bought a sexy special case to go with the 8(8) - one with a good fan and a built-in M.2 SSD. ARGONone M.2. It’s a great case and the Pi runs beautifully on it BUT when I try to run it on the Powertech, it refuses to boot. After much backward and forward with Core Electronics, we have isolated the cause to the active cooling fan which seems to draw an unacceptable amount of power from the Pi at boot. As Core told me, the Pi will settle to run on less once its booted but it needs the whhole bag at boot.

Pity because I wanted to run this as a remote system at the scope and do the whole thing on battery. So read the specs on your powervsupply closely.
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  #60  
Old 14-01-2021, 03:25 AM
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pmrid (Peter)
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Malcolm, that’s really interesting. I just switched the jumpers on the M.2 from the default to the “always on” setting and now the Pi/M.2 boots and runs just fine. The jumper controls the softswitch it seems and this lends strong support to your analysis.
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