Pi(e) in the Sky

[pmrid]

OK. I’ve given in and bought a Raspberry Pi 3 B. And now I’m wondering why.
Raspian is all very well but what next?

What are you doing with your Pi? It doesn’t seem to have the grunt needed to run a decent planetarium. Perhaps some sort of autoguider? Anyone got any clever ideas?

Peter

[StuTodd]

Google is your friend...
For example - https://www.cloudynights.com/topic/604969-my-new-pi-for-the-field/

Stu

[pmrid]

I found aUbuntubased OS loaded for Astro. It’s called Astroberry Server. It’s a big DL at nearly 4 GB. But although it is an image file, it’s got an unusual suffix XX or something. And I’m blowed if I can figure out how to flash the SD card with it since the SD has to be able to run Raspian in order to open the Pi.

Peter

[kens]

You can flash the SD card from another computer. First unzip the download to get a .img file.
If using Windows you can use Win32DiskImager to burn the SD card.

[pmrid]

Ahhh, 7-ZIP will convert these .xz files to an .img file. Slow, but it works. I have now done this and used Etcher to flash a USB thumb drive with the image. So what remains now is to convince the Pi that it's OK to boot from USB. I always found Linux OSs a struggle but that's probably because of my ignorance more than anything else.

Peter

[phomer]

Peter,


That should be Raspbian.


The Raspberry Pi 2 is powerfull enough to run PHD2 and INDI software, the 3 and 3+ are even more powerfull. Neither of these is available without compiling the software yourself so unless you are capable someone will need to assist you. Although not a trivial exercise the you can set up VNC to remotely control your equipment.


An alternative for INDI is to buy a version already set up.


https://www.stellarmate.com/


Paul

[lazjen]

Wait a sec - you don't have to compile INDI or buy it. Just install a Debian style distro, e.g. Ubuntu, Kubuntu, etc, and then install it via packages.

E.g. https://ubuntu-mate.org/raspberry-pi/

[pmrid]

Glad to report that I have managed to flash AstroBerry onto an old SD card (only Cat 4 but at least it works) and it looks very good. And it’s free. It has KStars loaded, PHD, an imaging app and heaps of other stuff. I’m going to have some fun with this, I can tell. Stellarmate looks very polished and no doubt it a great package but I plan to walk before I run with this. Can I bully another body to give this a go?

The DL site lists these as included features:

Ubuntu Mate 16.04 Desktop
Virtual Access Point (VAP) allowing to access the system without external wireless network
Remote desktop accessible over VNC at astroberry.local:5900 or a web browser at https://astroberry.local
KStars and Ekos with all available device drivers
Astrometry with basic index files
PHD2 for autoguiding
Gnome Predict for satellite tracking
StarPlot for 3-dimensional positions of stars in space
oaCapture and wxAstroCapture for planetary imaging
Astroberry PiFace drivers for a relay and focuser control
Samba server sharing Pictures directory for easy access to captured images

https://github.com/rkaczorek/astroberry-server

Peter

[pmrid]

G'day Stu.
Google is indeed your friend.
I've followed that thread as far as getting a real-time clock and RS232 board but whereas that writer seems to be using Stellarmate, I am having a play with AstroBerry which is free and seems to offer much the same functionality.

I've got the clock going and the system time set (some mods to the config.txt file) but not the RS232 - yet. I'm still figuring out the pinout on the R232 board and the connections to the GPIO. The serial board has a male 8-pin connector with 2 banks of 4 pins. Both banks are marked VCC TX RX GND - i.e. identical on both sets of pins. I'm not sure how I should be connecting this - trial and error I suppose.

Peter

[phomer]

You do currently need to compile it yourself if you run Raspbian, unless someone is providing a ready to go solution. I was unhappy with Ubuntu Mate so decided to go the more challenging Raspbian route.


Paul

[pmrid]

Because I am a Linux luddite, compiling this and that are not in my resume. So I have opted for the cowards way out and bought pre-packaged.

The Raspberry thing has wiggled under my skin a bit and I have surrendered to the temptation to buy a second Pi (a 3B+) and also StellarMate. If I can get my head sufficiently around these devices and OSs, I plan doing a comparative review of them all.

So far, I'm not all that blown away by StellarMate. But it's early days yet.

Peter

[GC - South Aus]

G'day Peter

I look forward to your review, as I have been researching and I am tempted by Stellarmate.

I have been thinking about building a RPi3B+ and then buying the $49 zip file to install/download on to an SD card with etcher.

:thanx: