I am not sure you quite understood what I meant. Your current setup involves running everything on the laptop at the telescope and then using VNC to connect to it from inside the house. I have done that before and you could do that with many programs and of course you can do that with KStars as well if you prefer. In fact, I did that all the time when I first started using KStars since there was no Mac version. The real power with KStars and INDI and the thing that makes it unique though, comes from the fact that you can connect to the devices on a remote computer in a similar way to ASCOM and then control them over the network. So basically, you could run the INDIServer and PHD2 on the computer that is at the telescope, but then run KStars on the computer inside the house.

This method has a large number of advantages over running everything on the computer at the telescope and just using VNC. It is for these advantages that I and several other people worked for a year to port KStars to Mac. By doing it this way you can put an inexpensive computer like a raspberry pi at the telescope so you don't care if it gets damaged and in fact mine is attached to the side of the telescope. The wires are also shorter running between the devices and computer because they never have to come off the scope. Your more powerful (and expensive) computer can be inside the house running KStars, not on the remote computer. This will also distribute the load between computers. The more powerful computer can be doing plate solves, downloading files, running the planetarium software, and managing sequences. The less powerful computer at the scope just has to handle the INDIServer and guiding.

But to be honest, those aren't the main reason I did it. The main reason I abandoned the VNC approach and spent all that time porting KStars to Mac is because VNC can be quite laggy. It is a lot more pleasant to be controlling a piece of software on the computer you are currently sitting at, rather than trying to control it over a VNC connection. With the approach I am outlining, the only thing you need to use VNC to do on the remote computer (at least with my setup) is to change some settings in PHD2 and to shut down the remote computer.

I have not completely abandoned the approach you described, however, since it also has advantages sometimes. I keep that as an option for when I go to star parties. So then I can have the raspberry pi run the whole show and I can put my laptop to sleep and just use VNC to check on the system every now and then. This will save significant power since my laptop draws about 2.4 amps at 12 volts. The other way this could be used would be to have more than one scope setup, each with a raspberry Pi strapped to it, and have them set up to run using the scheduler. So this way you could have a robotic telescope basically.

Thanks for your thoughts on this. I think it's helpful for others to understand the intentions of the programs, and various use cases so that others don't have to learn everything on the fly.

I had read, and understood that this is the way INDI worked, and have connected from a desktop client install to the version on my laptop out by the telescope. But it was just a second full EKOS/Kstars install. And I just realized by reading your post I could have just put the server. In fact, I would love to support Stellarmate and have a PI version running at the scope, but didn't make the effort to explore it since there have been so many bandwidth issues reported with other software (not specifically INDI) in running the two cameras I have, which are both USB3 and tend to eat up lots of bandwidth.

I don't have any issues with power since I've got electricity out to my scope, but do like the aspect of running an inexpensive PI unit on each scope since I have three currently. I do experience some issues with lag but in general it's not been a huge issue. I think Apple's screen sharing approach might be a little more robust than VNC. Since I'm still connected wirelessly, I wonder what it's like transferring 32mb images across every minute. Seems like it should be able to do that without much issue if I'm imaging 60s or longer per image. It should be enough time for it to get over the wire without any issue.

Well if you want to try out using the Raspberry Pi's, you can use my script to get it all set up. It won't cost you anything but time since you already have Raspberry Pis (and maybe an extra SD Card):

github.com/rlancaste/AstroPi3

Then you can see what you like better. I specifically made that to support both major use cases. As I said, sometimes at star parties, I think it might be nice to turn off the laptop and let the pi do everything, but at home I definitely prefer running KStars on my laptop. I like to keep my options open.

I'm not sure what "Auto Routine" you're talking about exactly here? For your mount, you need to perform the 2-3 stars alignment using the hand-controller before connecting to Ekos.

How did you set park position? To set parking position, just right-click anywhere on the sky map, but not TOO close to Polaris, and then from the menu go to Celstron and then -> Set As Parking Position. Next time you park, it should go there.

Yes! This is the correct procedure.

I've had several issues with getting my ZWO ASI120 to guide correctly as well. Were you able to select "LUMA" in the ASI driver? You probably don't want to guide on color frames due to increased noise. Ideally, you don't need to use filter. I will try today to test my ZWO camera again and check what settings were used to make it guide properly and I'll report back.

Absolutely! I'll try to check these issues today with my observatory. I usually use my faithful Lodestar X2 for guiding, but I'll mount the ZWO ASI today as well and see how it goes. Thank you for your patience!

[/quote]I've had several issues with getting my ZWO ASI120 to guide correctly as well. Were you able to select "LUMA" in the ASI driver? You probably don't want to guide on color frames due to increased noise. Ideally, you don't need to use filter. I will try today to test my ZWO camera again and check what settings were used to make it guide properly and I'll report back.[/quote]

I've got the ASI120mm and haven't had any issues with it after updating its firmware when I started using Stellarmate. The thing that just occurred to me and that I find strange is I see weird colours too even though its a monochrome camera! So something not right there :-S

Hmm i am not sure I understand the zwo issue. i have been using the usb3 zwo asi 120 monochrome with KStars since last December with no problems (so about 15 months?). It doesn't show colors? It has worked very well as a guider. I have tried it on the mac but usually it is attached to my raspberry pi. I Have always been using the latest version of kstars and indi.

The auto routine I was using was the Mount Model settings under the align tab. I added three stars that were visible, hoping it would slew to them automatically and solve each one, then sync. But I think it didn't because of the issue you addressed above that with my mount I have to perform a hand control 2-3 star align before I connect EKOS.

For setting the park position I moved the mount to it's home position, which is just to the side of Polaris, went in to the INDI driver control panel for my mount, and under the park options selected use current, then write data. I have not tried what you suggested, but will attempt it the next night out.

As for the guiding camera. I believe I tried LUMA, I think I pretty much tried all the options with no luck. I got out for a second night last night, and used PHD2 from the beginning with very little issue. But I need to make another attempt with EKOS for guiding.

I haven't attempted it again, but maybe I'll hook it up and make a screen recording, so it can be seen what is happening.

I see the colours when doing polar alignment. For guiding I use PHD2 and haven’t seen colours there nor noticed if they are in the kstars status of PHD2

Good point gbeaton. I have used PHD2 the last few months, so I might not have noticed a change in the INDI driver or KStars. But when I used it in the internal guide configuration before, it did not have colors. Maybe I will do a quick test and see.

So today I hooked ASI120MC to my Orion Guide Scope (50mm 162m FL) and connected the ST4 cable from ZWO to my EQ8 mount.

When I captured first, I also got the pink-color, and then I went to ZWO control panel and changed it to Luma

Then it worked fine. I spent a bit of time to get it focused and used looping for that, but once focused, I set it binning to 2x2 and then started guiding and it worked flawlessly afterwards with absolutely no changes.

This is after 20 minutes with bin 1x1: