When last Calamity Steve disturbed this esteemed community's serenity ( for those interested in gory details, see here ), I was stuck with a seemingly unfocusable telescope, either with eyepieces or a computer (Astroarch/KStars). Last weekend, I schlepped the rig 300 miles to visit a friend who had more experience than I. We quickly got the thing in focus with eyepieces, then connected the Raspberry Pi and quickly obtained focus in KStars. Hooray, I was now back to where I was four months ago. Taking images. Playing with settings. Doing SOMETHING with my rig.

Well, not quite. Getting the Pi set up there revealed a flaky WiFi connection. We attributed this to poor Wifi signal. from the router. My buddy was prepared for this eventuality, having brought a long Ethernet cable to his AirBnb. With that connected, we were able to get KStars running on my Pi, taking images, etc., feeling good again.

Now I'm back home, trying to get KStars 1.8 loaded.

<strong>Alas and alack, I find I cannot even connect to my Pi!</strong>

Not by Wifi.
Not by Ethernet.
The Pi is running. I can ping it when connected via Ethernet cable to my router..

<code>$ ping astroarch.local
PING astroarch.local (192.168.86.252) 56(84) bytes of data.
64 bytes from astroarch.lan (192.168.86.252): icmp_seq=1 ttl=64 time=3.95 ms
...</code>

But I can't get to it with noVNC. Connection is refused. Why, when it worked just last weekend?

Removing the Ethernet cable, I find I cannot even ping the Pi.

<code>$ ping astroarch.local
ping: astroarch.local: Name or service not known
</code>

The AstroArch WiFi hotspot does not show up either with Ethernet or WiFi connection.

So, I'm thinking something is wrong with my Pi's networking capability. What might that be? What diagnostics are available on the command line? With an Ethernet connection I can even ssh onto the Pi. But I don't know what to do once I have made that connection.

Or should I just buy myself a new Pi? Maybe a Pi 5? Are there any reviews of Astroarch on a Pi 5 vs. 4?

I'm sorry but I can't help.
But I can sympathise ! Trying to fix IT problems when it's clear and photons are tumbling from the sky is the absolute worst !
The best you can do is try to fix these problems in daylight, or if it's cloudy, or stormy.
I also have many problems getting my system working properly, but I try to keep a non-optimised system at least functional in the observatory, and play with getting things improved on a duplicated system (with simulators) in the house.
Concerning Pi's: I dunno. I've got quite a lot of them, from the originals through to one Pi5 (which I'm using to experiment in the office). It's because I use them to embed in working systems, So I've got a couple of Pi4's which have been running for years, non-stop in my observatory control system and its duplicate in the office (I recently stopped the control application on the observatory one to update it and it had an uptime of about 480 days). I'm not sure if I have any 2's but I've 3 or 4 R-Pi version 3 laying around and I've decided to put them to work running little things like local web servers.
This is probably a long way of saying that I haven't come across an R-Pi going bad. Not saying it can't happen of course. but I've not spotted one.

As for Pi5 -- what are you using now? The Pi5 I have is really powerful. I've got it running in the open on my desk (no case) and it gets pretty hot. But it is really smooth and cool. I have built INDI/Kstars on it the other day and it all went great, but I've only used it with simulators and a few local Arduino things.

Good luck,
Richard

I currently use a Pi4 from CanaKit. 4GB.
And it is still daylight where I live.

And my next move will be to flash 1.8 onto another microSD card and see if that helps.

So Pi4->Pi5 is not as dramatic as Pi3 -> Pi5, but it's still a notable change.

There's a new OS as well, with a new desktop system. All very smooth. But the required amperage of the supply is duly increased (as is the watts a dissipated heat).

Which makes me think: one thing you might check by the way: does your power supply give enough amps for the Pi? For a Pi 4 you need about 3 amps capacity to be on the safe side (ie 15W, as it's a 5V supply)

Update, now I CAN connect via a wired Ethernet connection, though still not with a WiFi connection. Does the Pi have a WiFi chip that could have gone bad? The pattern in this ordeal is that with two different routers I can SOMETIMES connect with a wired Ethernet connection, but have not been able to connect with a WiFi connection.

I am now about to try with a newly flashed 1.8 microSD card.

>> I am now about to try with a newly flashed 1.8 microSD card.

And again, this, too, fails with the WiFi connection to the Pi, succeeds with the Ethernet connection to the Pi. (The new 1.8 screen is lovely).

There is nothing wrong with my router. My computer is connected to it via WiFi and the Pi is even closer to the router than the computer is.

Looking more and more like I need to try a new piece of Pi.

Go for it ! The Pi 5 is a nice machine and you can always find a use t=fir the pi 4 even if it only works with Ethernet (eg a WeeWX server, an INDI AllSky server, etc)

I think I will! There's just too much flakiness here. No matter what I do, the WiFi connection never works and the Ethernet connection sometimes works.

I also tried a different power supply in response to your last post. The earlier tests were done with the AC adapter. But my power supply didn't work any better nor did I expect it to.

Hey Steve,

When you say it doesn't respond when on wifi, are you attached to the access point it makes? Or do you have the pi connected to your router WiFi network?

In the first scenario, are you using the astroarch.local address? If so it won't work likely

You can still try to use the raw IP to have a double check.
maybe when on WiFi bonjour doesn't broadcast for some obscure reasons, but if it is ok the network and port 8080 and 5900 are open on that IP it should be working

Steve,
You may consider, instead of Pi, to go with a mini PC path.
I ditched my both Pi4 in favor of Mele Quieter 3Q.
The power consumption is about the same if not better.
But Mele is so much more potent! Not expensive either.

You would have to buy Stellarmate X OS for it though.
(Replaces Mele's Windows).
Well worth it.
Or install some flavor of Linux and astroarch on it.

I have two of them - one at home location, one for travel.

hey Max, just FYI - AstroArch packages work very well on PC/mini PC and people use it wit no issues, additionally, you may pick few distros.

there is no hard need to switch OS