I am still getting my Astroberry RPi3B+ set up to see if it works with all of my hardware, and if it suits my needs. If it does, I may upgrade to a RPi4.
My question - what case/enclosure do you use and/or recommend?
This I'm using with astroberry/stellarmate since october 2020. Wifi works with that setup, in my pc room (one wall between raspi and wlan repeater) I have 10Mbyte/s download speed...
What I observed is that when I'm using the raspi in house at 25°C sometimes the temperature goes up to approx 80°C (e.g. when updating), with thermometer icon blinking... Maybe for summer it will be better to get a better cooler...
The following user(s) said Thank You: Troy Piggins
It keeps the Raspi much more cooler, about 20°C less than with the other case/cooling element.
The removal of the old cooling element was no problem. I "stressed" my raspi to a temperature of 70-80°C, than the element was very easy to remove.
I changed it because I was wondering if I can use this setup in summer. Even at temperatures below 0°C the temperature of my Raspi was about 50°C. Now its about 25°C at -2°C (checked it last night)
Cheers for the update. I've seen those and read reviews - was bit concerned about the "open-ness" of it in the dew at night, but I suppose the heat generated negates that issue?
My biggest concern about the open-ness of that case would be accidentally touching the GPIO pins (doing that has a really high possibility to fry the pi from even small static charge on your fingers). You'd want some sort of GPIO header cover.
I use it as it accepts a M.2 SATA SSD, which were particularly cheap at the time, and it improves performance quite a bit over a normal SD card. I also like it as all ports now go to one side, which helps with cable management.
Sorry for the late response, I was out of business some time
I had the Raspi with the changed case in use now for several sessions. I also had some concerns regarding the open GPIO pins. I solved that with a piece of foam which I just put on the pins.
Last week I had about 15°C to 20°C in the night and the Raspi was working with kstars and PHD2 guiding at 51°C. This I had with the old case during winter
Till now I had no problems also during at least two foggy nights, where the telescope was wet afterwards. I think due to the "heat" of the big heat dissipator (which coveres the whole Raspi) there was no fog on the raspi (dew heater).
I run two Astroberry rigs each in Flirc metal cases. Just make sure to put the case top towards the metal elements of your mount to give the WiFi the best chance to work through the case plastic bottom. The case acts as a heat sink from the RPi processor chip and does get a little warm but outdoors in the dark has never overheated and resulted in throttling.