I got my new Stellarmate up and running and so far am happy with it. I opted to run it off a 2GB RPi4 rather than the Stellarmate gadget. So far been in hotspot mode and running VNC on my iMac. I want to use the desktop Ekos/kStars instead and connect it up to my home wifi. How do I do this? The only info I can find says that you connect to wifi with the app. Don't I need to have bought the SM gadget to use the app?
The way I do it: Use my MacBook to VNC onto the StellarMate OS and use "Connect to Hidden Network" in wifi options in the control panel at the top. Then I enter in my wifi info and connect. It always works for me but I'm not sure if this is the "preferred" way. After I get connected, I edit the connections to make sure the home wifi auto-connects instead of the StellarMate hotspot. If for some reason I doesn't see the home wifi because I'm in the field or away from home, it will alway revert back to the StellarMate hotspot.
I'm fortunate to have a fixed pier, so I ran an ethernet cable. 11mb/sec transfer rate vs my wireless was <4mb. Makes a big difference when moving 16 gigs of images to my PC.
But for a year I used wireless. When I did it, I had to use the ethernet to first connect, then go in to the connection icon (top right) and configure my wireless. Then you can unplug your ethernet cable.
Now others have had luck using the hotspot instead of the cable. I never did.