Willem Jan,
I've been using EKOS since 2016 fully remote. The observatory is about 50min drive from where I live.
ballyhouraobservatory.github.io/
I can give you my experience of remote observing with EKOS for the last few years as well as answer your questions from my point of view.
Reliability. How often did you experience interruptions, due to.....
For me, this depended on equipment more than INDI/EKOS. I used to have a cheap celestron mount but in 2019 I bought an iOptron CEM120 and its very very reliable and rock solid. Also my home-made focuser was unreliable at the start but its good now. On the INDI/EKOS side. One thing that caused reliability problems was doing updates. Now I *never* do updates if the sky is going to be clear. I only update indi/kstars on days where I can retest during the day (all remotely again). Updating has caused me some pain and lost time when I did an update in the evening before a clear sky. Recently, I don't update kstars for maybe 6 or 9 months. I use a desktop PC to run Kstars and everything is plugged into that. It was a cheap second-hand office PC that I wiped and installed Ubuntu on. I think a desktop may be more reliable than a small SBC like a raspberry PI but I can't say for sure. I just went with an x86 desktop because I knew it would be cheap and reliable.
Robotic scheduling. What is your experience with the scheduler? How well does it work in ‘robotic’ mode,
I am pretty happy with the scheduler. I use my scope to do photometry of variable stars and have a script that downloads the observing alerts and objects that need observation from AAVSO. This generates a schedule file for the scheduler. The schedule may have 20 or 30 targets in it. Depending on weather I can usually get to collect data on close to 20 targets a night.
My workflow with the EKOS and the scheduler is as follows
1) I ssh into a raspberry PI which is running 24/7 in the observatory.
2) I power on the main desktop PC and all equipment with a script
3) Then I use teamviewer to log into the main desktop PC. Open Kstars and open the generated schedule file.
4) I click start and monitor it for a while. Sometimes I start it in twilight and EKOS will wait until it gets dark.
4) EKOS starts up the observatory. Opens the roof, unparks the mount, slews, focuses on the first target, starts guiding etc etc.
5) I watch it work for a while and once the first couple of targets seem ok i close the PC and go to bed. Sometimes the first focus attempt can be a problem and may require manual intervention but other than that, Its very good.
6) EKOS works through the schedule and monitors the weather while I sleep. If it rains or gets cloudy or dawn, It runs the shutdown procedure. Parks the mount, closes the roof. Warms the CCD and then powers off all the equipment.
7) I wake up and check the security camera inside the observatory to make sure all is ok. There has never been a case where I needed to phone someone (yet)
You mentioned that 'writing scripts would not be an option for me.'. I recommend learning some basic scripting. The scheduler can call a startup and shutdown script. You can do anything you need in there too.
You mentioned that you are planning to use a remote telescope hosting. This would reduce some of the reliability problems related to a roof and weather monitoring as it will be managed by the site. I haven't used one of these but I assume they just close the roof when conditions are unsuitable. They probably have some notification system that you could hook into with an INDI weather scripting gateway but you will need to learn how to write scripts here
I'm sure people here can help though.
Derek