[AdamJL]

Originally Posted by Astronut07

Adam

Scope is WO132
Remote connection via iPad normally fine
I always bring laptop with me
Only reason I had on in shot was I was going to show other members software I have installed & running on both laptop & on the mini pc

Thanks. Beautiful scope Out of my budget, I'll look at the Astro-Tech AT130EDT instead.

Originally Posted by RugbyRene

Have you considered a Raspberry Pi instead of a windows PC? They're cheap & use little power. It will mean replacing some of the software you use but there's good alternatives like KStars for acquisition.

Rene

Yeah, but it seems way too fiddly.

Originally Posted by Camelopardalis

On the plate solving front, you can install ANSVR - that bundles up the astronometry.net tools and helps you install the right index files for local use.

Obviously, plate solving becomes faster on faster CPUs, but is mostly single-threaded, so if you have multiple cores it's typically only using one. And of course, CPUs consume power...but they don't consume much while it's just tracking, guiding and taking regular "long" exposures.

I found a big speed increase going from my earlier Atom-based NUC to the i3, so going from about 30-40 seconds to solve down to single digits, for a hinted solve (ASTAP, PlateSolve2). Blind solves always take longer because it doesn't have that hint about where it should start looking.

The flip side is that the i3 uses (at idle) 5x the power of the Atom. I see it as a case of horses for courses...my Atom NUC is now relegated to (mostly) DSLR stuff while the i3 is the general workhorse...which includes lunar and planetary, writing to NVMe SSD

Thanks! Hopefully NINA can talk to ANSVR.
I guess I could accept the higher power draw when plate solving seeing as it'll be done very few times in a session, then set the CPU to ramp down.

Originally Posted by The_bluester

I have a DC current clamp, I should take a reading sometime on what the i3 and i5 boxes pull current wise during the various stages of imaging.

That would be most helpful to me and anyone else interested, if you could do that!