[The_bluester (Paul)]

Has anyone considered using something like an Intel NUC for driving mount and capture software rather than a laptop? If you are not familiar with a NUC it is a small form factor PC. Basically a ready to go PC neeting only memory, a drive of some sort and an OS, in a box about 100mm square by 50mm tall. we have a number of them of varying spec levels operating as home theatre PC's.

I am just moving into low end AP and the camera I have bought is somewhat limited due to age as to what OS would support it (I knew that before buying it) basically I need 32 bit Windows 7 or earlier.

I currently have a spare Intel NUC Celeron that I was considering installing a copy of W7 32 bit on to run some capture software and eventually, guiding. I decided to look at that to avoid downgrading the OS on my laptop to a 32 bit version. The NUC is reasonable performance wise and quite low power (In previous use as a HTPC they draw approx 15W decoding and playing video) In the case of the Celeron they also run from a 12VDC power supply so I could feed it via my power box for the mount)

Any imaging I would do would be at home so the plan would be to install remoting software such as VNC on it and run it headless (no monitor or keyboard) and drive it via Wifi from my Ipad, or potentially even from inside the house from another PC.

Can anyone see any great holes in the idea?