Hi,
I have been successful running Indi?Ekos as Stellarmate on my RPI which sits on my Pier in my Roll off shed. I then VNC in, either from the shed or from my house. All my devices connect via a Powered USB3 Hub: Eqmod,-HEQ5, DSLR, Moonlite Focuser, Joystick, Guide CCD. It works great. BUT I now want to use a CCD camera and am finding that the USB2 ports on the RPI with files stored on the local SD card are too slow. I tried using a ZWO ASI178MC (Not Cooled) and got very severe amp glow. There is no buffer on this camera. As an experiment I connected the ASI178MC direct to my Dell XPS laptop vis USB3 to a SSD drive everyting else still via the RPI and get virtually no Ampglow.

I am considering getting the ASI 294MC Pro which ZWO says " includes a 256MB DDR3 memory buffer to help improve data transfer reliability. Additionally, the use of a memory buffer minimizes amp-glow, which is caused by the slow transfer speeds when the camera is used with a USB 2.0 port." I posted on the ZWO site to ask if this meant I would get no Amplow on my RPI. They replied that it would help but USB3 is preferred.

So my question is what should my future INDI/EKOS platform be? Maybe the ASI 294MC Pro will be OK connected to the PI. if not will running on a ROCK64 with SSD be better, or will I need a much faster machine and just run INDi/EKOS under windows on my Dell XPS?
I am very interested in anyone who has practical experience of this.

A similar question was asked a few weeks ago. Please see this thread:

www.indilib.org/forum/ekos/5134-what-dev...nning-kstars-on.html


Wouter

I am currently seriously considering the new Odroid-N2 as an upgrade.

Wouter,
Yes, I looked at that thread, but it did not really address the AmpGlow problem.
I know that Indi/Ekos will run on the Rock64Pro which has USB3, however reading up on the subject I have learned that USB3 performance can vary considerably and a bottleneck might be the storage device it is writing to. So I wanted to know if the Rock has solved Ampglow problems.
Similarly the ASI 294MC Pro has memory buffers, so does anyone run it on the RPI/USB2 and is it OK?
I don't want to buy the Rock if it the RPI problem goes away with the buffers or if it not fast enough.
Max

OK just making sure. FWIW I run KStars on a MinisForum Z83-F mini-pc, which has USB3, and I use an ASI1600MM-Pro cooled. No amp glow whatsoever in my images.


Wouter

Which spec do you have? Amazon UK lists three: 2+32GB (£99.99) ; 4+32Gb ( £107.90) 4+64GB (£129.90) , so might look at 4+32GB. Do you run windows or Ubuntu? Attraction is cheap and no setup.

I have the 4x64 Gb because the pics of the ASI1600MM tend to be large and with exposures of 60 sec the disk tends to fill up rapidly. I run Ubuntu. No Windows in my house! Plus INDI doesn’t run on Windows haha I connect remotely via VNC from my iPad or MacBook.

By the way, with the latest BIOS the Z83-F doesn’t boot without an HDMI device connected. A simple cable will not do the trick so I bought a few cheap HDMI to VGA converters and that works. I filed a request for reversal of this change in the BIOS via the MinisForum support email address and they replied that their developers are looking into it.

When you guys run INdI on a device other than using Stellarmate or Astroberry on an rpi, so on the mini PC you mention, how do you get it to create a hotspot so you can connect to it in the field, (similar to SM hotspot) as I can’t find a simple way to do it..

I have been eyeing that as well. If you go for it, please let me know.

Thanks
Jerry

Hi astronerd, i just use this, it works like a charm. I just upgraded my compute stick today and everything works!!!

github.com/Patrick-81/NAFABox

I looked at that but really don’t understand it...