Hi, I'm new here (both in the forum but on astrophoto as well) and thought I'd share my experience using Stellarmate on Raspberry PI4 and MacOS.
I've tried several combinations to try to find a stable one that doesn't crash or freezes.
My current setup:
Software:
- Stellarmate 1.5.3
- MacOS Catalina 10.15.5
- VNC Viewer 6.19.107 (over WiFi)
Hardware:
- Raspberry Pi 4, Model B, 4GB
- Official Raspberry Pi 4 Power Supply / 5.1V / 3A / USB-C
- FLIRC Raspberry Pi Heatsink Case
- Adafruit PiRTC DS3231 RealTime C
- Ethernet cable to home LAN
- USB-HEQ5 PA Interface (USB to serial cable)
Astrophoto stuff:
- HEQ5 PRO Mount (connected via EQMod Mount)
- ZWO ASI294MC Pro
- ZWO ASI120MM-S (as guiding cam)
I tried KStars 3.4.3 for MacOS (recommended by Stellarmate) but when connected to Stellarmate via Ekos it was quite unstable. If I left the computer for a couple of minutes it seemed it kind of lost the connection for a while and then sometimes managed to reconnect again when I did something like trying to click another tab in Ekos or so. I could not really be sure if an ongoing capture sequence was working properly or not. Sometimes it never reconnected an I had to restart everything. When I tried looping captures or running video it crashed immediately.
It's a pity since the user interface felt better in MacOS KStars than directly in Stellarmate (via VNC). It was somewhat more stable when connected via Ethernet (cable) but not entirely stable.
Anyone else has the same experience?
The only stable setup so far is as below:
- The Rapberry Pi connected by ethernet cable to my home LAN.
- Running VNC from my MacBook (connected on my home WiFi) to run Stellamate's local KStars and Ekos.
- The ASI294 connected directly to the RPi's USB 3.0.
- The ASI120 guiding cam connected to the ASI294's "USB2.0 Out" connector.
- The ASI120's ST4 cable connected to the mount.
- The mount connected (via USB-HEQ5 USB/Serial cable) directly to one of the RPi's USB 2.0 connectors.
This setup has been really stable. When I try to use the RPi on WiFi it randomly freezes. I have only tried on 2.4GHz though since I though that should be more stable, but I now read in this thread that 5GHz might be more stable? I'll definitely try that, since using the extra ethernet cable is a bit of a hassle.
EDIT: I can confirm that after about 24 hours of testing it seems really stable over 5GHz WiFi as well!
I've also tested using a couple of USB 3.0 hubs (with external 2A power) since I thought that was causing instability, but it seems equally stable to connect the ASI294 directly to the RPi's USB 3.0.
// Åke