I've recently retired and one of my big retirement projects is to get my astronomy equipment back into service and taking data. I'm almost exclusively interested in photometry of eclipsing binaries and exoplanet transits. In the past I have done sessions entirely manually and I am quite excited to take advantage of all the planning/execution features in KStars/Ekos. I have a Raspberry pi that I plan to use as the main controller, but I have a question: what are the considerations in choosing to use the pi as a Indi server and running KStars on the laptop vs running everything on the pi and using the laptop as a remote display? I had assumed that the less the pi has to do the better, but does that actually hold true?
I have a GPS dongle and want to set the time and location from it. If you are running Indi server on the pi and KStars on the laptop which computer should the dongle be on?
There are many pros and cons to both approaches, however in my opinion there's a major pro in favor of all-on-rpi approach - any problem with network connection between PC running KStars and RPi running INDI server will terminate the session (which is managed on KStars side).
GPS dongle should be connected to a device running INDI server i.e. Raspberry Pi
I second Radek's recommendation. Please note that particularly plate solving can be quite slow on a Raspberry Pi mostly due to only 1 Gb of memory. If this is a limitation then you may want to consider buying a mini pc or other small computer with at least 4 Gb of memory. Make sure that it can run Ubuntu Linux though.
I disagree with running it all on the rpi, as it’s must not fast enough and that alone will give issues, with just 1gb of RAM, it will struggle...I have tried it..
I now use the other option and must use the rpi an a server, and remote into it from another PC, but I also use something use an network cable between rpi and my PC so no wireless connection to worry about, but I find the hotspot on my rpi fine and get no issues that way either...
Thanks for the feedback from everyone. I will definitely try both ways, but I am leaning toward running running the pi as an INDI server. Since I have to luxury of being able to make hardwired connections (at least in my home setup) I will try to take advantage. Sorted out some astrometry.net issues yesterday and now I just need some clear skies to start collecting some real photons.
There are ways to get around the memory limitations or the Raspberry Pi. The first is to create a swap partition on the SD card. Second, I also use ZRAM. ZRAM uses a little processing power to effectively increases memory capacity through compression. I have not experienced any insufficient memory issues since making these changes.