I want to have plenty of screen room to operate KStars and EKOS well, while working in the field far from commercial power.
Stellarmate uses little power, so that seems ideal. What are some ideal ways to control Stellarmate in the field?
Should I just stick with screen sharing on an iPad, connect to a Macbook Air, or just buy an HDMI LCD screen, keyboard and mouse and use only the Stellarmate?
Please share your thoughts and experiences.

Peter

Are you using VNC from iPad to connect to StellarMate? like RealVNC?

yes, VNC Viewer. I like it, but I need to learn how to change Stellarmate's display size so I can utilize the extra space.

I use a MacBook Air. Works great because it will easily run all night on battery. In fact, I can run all weekend on its battery! Its very easy to handle and comfortable to use from the car, and I can bring it outside for the 2 minutes it takes to adjust the polar alignment while I look at the real time image on a big screen. I run Kstars on the Mac with remote connection to stellarmate which runs the drivers - I don't use VNC except to shut stellarmate down at the end of the night.

Thanks! Any thoughts on solar charging the MacBook Air? I operate far from power on weekends, and would need to charge the Macbook Air.

Interesting... I think the laptop recharge would not be an issue but I use a fairly large Eliminator 1600 powerbox (Canadian tire) to power the mount. I recharge at home or by running my car. But recharging takes a really long time because its a trickle charge - less than 1A, but this would be good with a solar panel. It takes the whole day tho. I would say, you would need about 40 watts from a solar panel to recharge and lots of sun!

EDIT: you can draw power from your car long term and recharge the car fairly quickly but just got to keep an eye on your car battery level. Last time I went out and was using power from the car battery for about 6 hours and drained the battery. Fortunately the PowerBox doubles as a booster and I was able to start the car with it! I love it when a plan comes together!

My remote sites are way off the grid in Uganda, so solar is my only option. I am not able to import any lithium batteries, so I need to just have solar panels to charge everything during the day. My current solar charger is 60 watt, so that would work, but I heard that the Mac would recognize if the power was not exactly the right voltage and stop the charging. So I need to build a regulator I guess.

I like the new 2.2GHz dual-core Intel Core i7 Macbook Air with 512 Gb storage. It's real temping to press the button on this...

You really need this PowerBox that I have. Has AC, DC and USB power outlets and will charge off AC or DC, sounds perfect for your solar panel.

There’s all kinds of power conditioning and management in these devices. The only problem I’ve seen is when your power source can’t deliver the watts. Spec voltage levels are nominal and can be varied greatly. The typical AC to USB power adapter will run on any voltage from under 100 for NA to over 200 for Europe.

The problem with a laptop is that it can draw a lot of power when charging. I have to double check what the charger output is.

Sounds nice. I only have 128GB and it’s a problem to keep from maxing out on the drive. Most of my files are on a server now. I only have enough space for a couple of evenings of capture and processing.

The power adapter for the MacBook Air is 45W. It’s close, or eep the air off while charging and should be good.

I don't use StellarMate but I do use a Raspberry Pi with VNC from my iPad and it works like a charm. I bought a lightning to eth adapter to connect my iPad directly to the RPi3 via a fixed ip address.

Have a look at the /boot/config.txt on the StellarMate to change the display resolution.