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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Raspberry Pi 4 8Gb and Stellarmate 1.5.3

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On Stellarmate Facebook group

"Announcement: We have pushed the release date for SM OS v1.5.3 to July 21st as we work on polishing the OS and documentation."
3 years 8 months ago #57067

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Hello,

This is my first question on that forum :)

I purchased Stellarmate and borrowed Pi 4 Model B 4 GB from a friend. After few minor hiccups while connecting my equipment I managed to get everything to work on both Pi itself and on my MacOS.

Since I have tested it and I am very happy with Stellarmate as a whole, I would like to buy my own PI and now finally the question:

How stable Pi 8 GB is with Stellarmate given the previous posts in this topic ?
Will I gain anything from buying 8 GB version, or perhaps I should go for 4 GB ?

Thanks in advance !
3 years 6 months ago #59008

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It's very stable IMO but I do know how to crash Kstars/Ekos. Get the 8GB for the slight extra cost.
3 years 6 months ago #59010

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Haha :)

Thanks for quick response :)

Is it "easy" to crash it or one must really try ?
3 years 6 months ago #59011

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When you're in the FITS viewer and use a mouse scroll wheel to zoom-in, if you're not careful and scroll it too much, which is easy to do with Apple's POS scroll mouse it will ultimately lead to a crash. It zooms too far and appears to causes a memory leak as I've seen memory usage spike.

I've accidentally flicked the mouse on that screen, it would zoom way in or out then Kstars became unresponsive at first followed by a crash some time later. The solution is to not use that mouse and it works fine with another one. The mouse seems overly sensitive and possibly the software needs to ensure it doesn't accept input past a certain point.

I hope that helps.
3 years 6 months ago #59015

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I will order 8 GB then with some good case and use regular mouse instead

Thanks for the advice
3 years 6 months ago #59016

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I use Raspberry 4 with 4GB managed via VNC and a smartphone, with RaspbianOS and all the tools. Memory usage during capture procedure is about 650MB in rare case grow up to 850MB
3 years 6 months ago #59043

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Thanks

I anyway ordered 8 GB with Active Cooling Case :) in case I will use this pi for something else
3 years 6 months ago #59057

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Metallic case are not good for the poor Wifi and Bluetooth. I use ABS case with a fan and internal heat sink on the chips
3 years 6 months ago #59060

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That I am aware of and therefore I will order an external WiFi antenna (usb) :)

Also I have few repeaters at home that I can plug outside
Last edit: 3 years 6 months ago by Perunwit.
3 years 6 months ago #59062

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Perhaps my experience on the Raspberry Pi 4B 8GB will be of some use to others. FIrst, I had wanted to use a passively cooled case (aluminum) without a fan to conserve battery power in at remote locations that could also be mounted to my dovetail bar. That worked fine. Then I wanted to use USB 3.0 thumb drives and SSD. Bad combination. The metal case weakened the signal, then the USB 3.0 port completely jammed whatever signal was left. I got it to work using a USB Wifi Adapter (Panda PAU06 or PAUO9) in the 5GHz band, but the range was still limited to less than 50 feet through one exterior wall, and was somewhat unreliable. You may need to disable the Raspberry's on-board wifi, or at least use the network configuration tool to specify which adapter should be used. I was able to run the wifi adapter from either the USB 2.0 ports on the Raspberry Pi, or from a powered USB hub. It seemed to work better plugged directly into the Pi, perhaps because there was less 2.4GHz interference on the USB 2.0 ports. Now I'm thinking to ditch the aluminum case in favor of plastic one with a fan so that I can get better wifi performance.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
3 years 3 months ago #64303

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I have pretty decent Wifi performance with the internal Wifi AND with an external Wifi adapter SIMULTANEOUSLY. The external adapter is connected to my Wifi router, the internal Wifi creates an independent hotspot and all peripherals including SSD are plugged into a powered USB3 hub and that is the only cable that is running to the Pi. Everything is routed through the hub.

I 3D-printed a case for which I found an STL file on Thingiverse and which I modified so that I could fit it with a larger fan-operated internal heat sink.

This heatsink works quite well and does not seem to affect the Wifi: smile.amazon.com/gp/product/B07PCMTZHF/r...e=UTF8&psc=1&fpw=alm

It keeps the temperature of the Pi4 at full load at ~ ambient + 15C. Even during a hot summer night, it never got hotter than 46C in my experience.

Attached the zipped STL file for the Pi4 case, if anyone wants to 3D print it. The heatsink will fit in there snuggly.

Jo

File Attachment:

File Name: TopAndBott....stl.zip
File Size:389 KB
Last edit: 3 years 3 months ago by Jose Corazon.
3 years 3 months ago #64317
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