I have a Raspberry Pi 4B running KStars/Ekos at the telescope and a Mac in the house running the same thing. Where is plate solving done? I do want it done inside on the Mac and not on the Pi. I could go to just indiserver on the Pi, but then if I change a setting on the Mac for the camera, does that update the configs indiserver uses?

I have KStars/INDI on pi and on laptop and run KStars/Ekos on the laptop with pi acting as remote indi server.
I run my Ekos profile and the alignment module on laptop, select Astro.net Offline (not Remote or Online) for Solver. I have clicked the icon just above
that for Options to configure Astronomy.net Index Files, and ensured I had the index files I need on my laptop in my preferred
Index Files Location. You can run the Simulator profile on your laptop to set things up and verify index files.

That makes perfect sense. Thank you!

Why are you not running Kstars and the whole shebang directly on the Pi4 and just control it via VNC? It takes you longer to transfer the images from the Pi to your Mac than solving on the Pi4 directly.

This all made sense on the older Pi2 and Pi3, where it was really not that practical to have the Pi do all the work, but the Pi4 is light years ahead in that department. Solving on the Pi4 for me on takes on average between 7 and 10 seconds. And that is with the Pi4 running everything, not acting as a server. I merely use my desktop in the house to control or monitor it via VNC, which is also very snappy.

That way, you are completely independent of potential WiFi interference by neighbors networks, WiFi communication breakdown, etc etc. Having an autonomous machine run your telescope takes a lot of variables out.

for me, even with pi4B+ 8Gb, the VNC desktop control is sluggish. Could be I'm on a 2.4GHz channel and also I learned using the
official pi case is the worst option for cooling the cpu. Hot cpu = messed up pi response: waiting for a brushless fan from amazon
and a dual channel wifi extender to boost my signal (or switch to 5GHz).

Yes, VNC on 2.4 GHz is VERY sluggish!

I am using the ICE Tower cooler for the Pi4 and with that the CPU temperature never rises above 38 deg C, even with all 4 CPUs at 100%.

And you really don't need 8GB to run the (current) Kstars versions. 4 GB is plenty. I use a 4 GB swap partition on an external SSD, but only for compiling from source and to reduce the possibility of the Pi4 freezing. Allows me to use more threads.

I'm not running the whole thing on a Pi because I don't want it to run on the Pi. It works for me just the way I have it.

That is perfectly fine then.