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New Stellarmate

 

FYI it looks like there will be a new stellarmate coming soon. It looks like it is based on the MeLE x86 PC. I saw the post on facebook:??.?

I recently switched from astroberry on an RPI 4 to a MeLe with ubuntu running ekos/kstars/indi/phd2 etc. I couldn't be happier with the new setup. It runs beautifully, and I can still boot into windows for the single app that I need there: PemPRO (maybe there will be a linux version soon?). This should include the kstars/indi updates that I've been making for the GeminiII including but not limited to L6.?

Jamie
 

Yes it looks good and the MeLe will give it a power boost. It is a pity RPI 5/6/7/8 didn't happen as they were a great performant little unit albeit some time back.

I haven't looked too closely but interested if there are incremental updates to the iPad app features of Stellarmate as that had been a handy app too - save lugging a laptop.

Ken
 

One big advantage of raspberry pi are that full VNC licence is included, so remote access is really easy. I found this out recently when trying to set up a linux pc for remote use with kstars/ikos etc that VNC is not free, and has an annual licence charge. This makes a compelling feature to use raspberry pi since I really hate the "annual charge" model of software use.


On Thu, 16 Feb 2023 at 14:59, Oberon510 <ken@...> wrote:
Yes it looks good and the MeLe will give it a power boost. It is a pity RPI 5/6/7/8 didn't happen as they were a great performant little unit albeit some time back.

I haven't looked too closely but interested if there are incremental updates to the iPad app features of Stellarmate as that had been a handy app too - save lugging a laptop.

Ken

 

I do like realvnc on the raspberry pi, but I have to say that the built-in vnc on Ubuntu works faster on the mele. The only potential issue I see see is battery performance -- I haven't tested it yet, but I expect that the x86 will be worse than the pi4
 

I had a Stellarmate. Gave it a good honest college try for many months. I found it very unstable and unreliable. I tried and tried. Even reach out online for help. Still had problems.

Finally I gave up on it.

-----------------------------
Rick Paul
 
Edited

That's a good point! I did something similar, giving up on stellarmate because it was too slow, and switching to running astroberry on my RPI4. I will give this new stellarmate a try though, hopefully it has improved. Otherwise I will stick with my current setup which is ubuntu/ekos/kstars/indi on a MeLe -- with a windows boot available to to PEC training with PEMPro.?

Jamie
 

Looks like it's available for purchase now:?

Seems to be a Mele quieter2q, which is bit slower than the 3Q / 3C.?

Two other options that are coming are an OS image for your existing mele, and a very interesting version: the stellarmate pro. This is akin to the asiair pro. It has 4 12v dc output ports, 4 x usb 3, 2 x usb 2, 1 x usb c, i2c 1 wire, 2 x dew heater, hdmi, GPS, external antenna etc. Now if it would only come with a faster CPU, it's running the same processor as the RPI4, and ASIAir, which is OK, but getting a bit long in the tooth.?

I'll probably give the OS image a try once it's available purely for the mobile app, that now has live stacking. Otherwise I'm quite happy with my MeLe running the ekos/kstars/indi stack.?

Jamie?
 
Edited

I take back my recommendation. I tried it (rpi4) last night and had quite a struggle working around all the bugs -- mostly in the android app. It's a shame, especially since Jasem has put so much effort into the entire stack. The free part of the stack works great, but the pay part, not so much...?

Jamie
 

It hurts me to say this as an IT engineer, but Ekos/INDI caused me so many issues that I entirely stopped using it and moved back to windows and NINA.
I tried for about 2 years before I pulled the plug about 6 months ago.

NINA works flawlessly, its scheduler is much robust and can handle any given scenario. I also love the fact that you can edit the sequence while it is running. Last but not the least, NINA starts exposing next image as soon as the current one is downloaded whereas Ekos waits until it has streched it and analyzed what it need to. As a 6200 owner this was a big issue on the RPI4 I used for Ekos, overall I take much more images per night with NINA.
My current sequence in NINA is an all year sequence with 3 groups:
- Moon nights with moon down
- Moon nights with moon up
- New moon nights

My opinion is that Ekos suffers a lot from its multiple state machines architecture. Also I believe bringing it at Google summer camps to have it amended by students not knowing the first thing about it or astronomy might also add more issues.

I know you have been involved in the INDI driver for gemini L6 and that makes it even harder to move away. But I can only vouch for NINA. Since I switched to it I can concentrate on what matters, not making sure it works as expected.

Again as an IT an engineer I would have never thought I would have advised people to move away from Linux for increased stability.

Carl


On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 04:29 PM, Jamie Amendolagine wrote:
I take back my recommendation. I tried it (rpi4) last night and had quite a struggle working around all the bugs -- mostly in the android app. It's a shame, especially since Jasem has put so much effort into the entire stack. The free part of the stack works great, but the pay part, not so much...?

Jamie
 

¿ªÔÆÌåÓý

I tried StellarMate some versions ago. The tablet app was near useless cuz ultimately one needed to use Ekos to truly configure the system. It all looked so promising as one worked thru that bird¡¯s nest of software client/server modules. I needed near constant assistance from Jasen as the documentation wasn¡¯t specific enough or complete enough to stand on its own.?

In the end StellarMate/Ekos never fully worked cuz when it came to critical functions one needed to work for the whole platform to be useful Jasen gave up and referred me to write the Indi forum hoping some engineer who wrote the respective module would chime in with the solution. In the end NONE of my questions to the Indi forum were ever answered. Jasen should have given me direct contact to the respective engineer - if he actually knew who the person was that wrote the module. ?I mean I bought the product right. If the whole system was freeware I would have accepted the boondoggle.

StellarMate seemed promising til one found out ultimately it¡¯s not supported as far as I am concerned. ?I spent 16 bleak years in high-end IT systems of all sorts and some people enjoy tinkering with computers and software but I just want a system that works so I can focus on the astrophotography. ?StellarMate just consumed and wasted my time.?

On Mar 3, 2023, at 8:53 AM, Carl Bj?rk <carl.bjork@...> wrote:

?It hurts me to say this as an IT engineer, but Ekos/INDI caused me so many issues that I entirely stopped using it and moved back to windows and NINA.
I tried for about 2 years before I pulled the plug about 6 months ago.

NINA works flawlessly, its scheduler is much robust and can handle any given scenario. I also love the fact that you can edit the sequence while it is running. Last but not the least, NINA starts exposing next image as soon as the current one is downloaded whereas Ekos waits until it has streched it and analyzed what it need to. As a 6200 owner this was a big issue on the RPI4 I used for Ekos, overall I take much more images per night with NINA.
My current sequence in NINA is an all year sequence with 3 groups:
- Moon nights with moon down
- Moon nights with moon up
- New moon nights

My opinion is that Ekos suffers a lot from its multiple state machines architecture. Also I believe bringing it at Google summer camps to have it amended by students not knowing the first thing about it or astronomy might also add more issues.

I know you have been involved in the INDI driver for gemini L6 and that makes it even harder to move away. But I can only vouch for NINA. Since I switched to it I can concentrate on what matters, not making sure it works as expected.

Again as an IT an engineer I would have never thought I would have advised people to move away from Linux for increased stability.

Carl

On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 04:29 PM, Jamie Amendolagine wrote:
I take back my recommendation. I tried it (rpi4) last night and had quite a struggle working around all the bugs -- mostly in the android app. It's a shame, especially since Jasem has put so much effort into the entire stack. The free part of the stack works great, but the pay part, not so much...?

Jamie
 
Edited

It's hard to argue with fantastic results Carl, so I won't!!!

For me, overall I love and find the ekos system to be quite awesome, even if stellarmate leaves much to be desired.

Once ekos (not stellarmate) is setup it disappears. My normal routine takes about 3 min to setup the system, and I keep the telescope / mount inside. The ekos setup part generally entails plugging it in, starting a VNC client on my desktop or phone, choosing a target, platesolving, starting guiding, and then hit the go button. All of which takes a few min. I haven't found a need to build sequences since my routine is so quick, and I generally stick with one target for the night. I have found that the RPI4 is getting a bit long in the tooth, which means lower overall performance, that's why I've switched to a MeLe with a faster intel chip -- (I am keeping my eyes on risk-v developments as it seems like the future). I haven't timed it, but it seems to take just a couple of seconds between exposures, so it hasn't slowed my acquisition by much, and everything generally just works so I'm quite happy.?

I also have a computer background, but I've worked exclusively on embedded systems, from aerospace to consumer electronics. Mostly embedded Linux, but sometimes some an RTOS, or sometimes just an Ada runtime running directly on a chip:) Linux is where I feel at home, so that's what I use. I own one copy of windows, and that solely for running PEMPro:)

I consider tinkering to be part of the hobby, so I'm quite happy to do bug fixes or add features to the software stacks that I use. I even have tinkered with machining parts for the mount -- mostly unsuccessful machining attempts though...?

I do have my criticisms of the ekos/kstars/indi stack, but don't find anything to be limiting enough to switch. For one I'm not a fan of the kstars portion to tell you the truth. So I use skysafari for all of my planning and for slewing the telescope to a target. I could also use stellarium, but I'm quite happy with skysafari. I've also found that image data passing is slow, I suspect it's because of the very flexible networking architecture ends up copying data around -- it might be an interesting thing to look into fixing at some point, but it's not that big of a deal for me right now.??

Either way I say each to their own, enjoy the hobby how you like!

Jamie
 

Thanks for the compliment :-) Yeah, no, I believe it has nothing to do with results.
But I totally agree with you, more to do with personal preferences. Besides most of the work I am currently publishing has been shot using Ekos, so... :-D
Also I find it is, in any case, very hard to change acquisition software and routine (in the workflow sense).

Don't get me wrong I love Linux, and I find it more stable, better, faster and cheaper than Windows. As a company owner I have many servers and all are running Linux. Only two "servers" are Windows, my Telescope computer, and my Allskeye computer (I was running allsky on RPI and just switched for Allskeye, still running tests, but is so much better).

The RPI has caused me issues too, with a 6200 the images are 130MB each and the PI is just not able to tackle with this in a fluid way. I switched before those PC sticks started to get good enough. So I went the Intel NUC way, bought an older gen 8/i5 as it runs on 12V. Never regretted it.
I was exactly like you dual booting into Windows solely for PemPro. But I deleted the Linux partition last week as things have been running so smoothly for the past 6 months.

As I run big multi months projects I strongly rely on scheduling them. One thing I was lacking is the ability to schedule an automated flat session at the end of the night, no matter what. Had discussions with Wolfgang, I managed to find a way around it but it was very inconvenient.
One thing I really miss from Ekos is the Analysis module, that one as been brilliantly implemented.

I unfortunately never had it to run without issues. Updating was never done without backing up the entire partition because it broke so many times. If clouds showed up, focusing would fill up the root volume and when that happened, for some reason all the settings in ~/.indi were reset to factory. I had to setup my flat panel brightness per filter for flats so many times.

I 100% understand and agree with the tinkering part. I myself have fully automated my workflow, I launch the session at night go to sleep and wake up to fully calibrated and graded frames. INDI was really cool for being able to write bash scripts controlling the mount or other gear.
Under Windows it is not possible through batch scripts. Though it is as easy through python scripts.


I dream of machining. That opens so much possibilities! I have 3D printed many parts, nothing critical though. And had a friend of mine machine a custom adapter for my OAG.


In the end YMMV and it all comes down to personal preferences.

Personally, I started under Windows with SGP, switched to Linux Ekos/INDI for two years and got back to Windows with NINA. I don't think I will ever look back.
I hate Windows :-D I really didn't expect that to happen :')

Carl


We share this passion for tinkering. Here is the work in progress allskeye live website I am building, also showing where the telescope is aiming at :

On Fri, Mar 3, 2023 at 06:29 PM, Jamie Amendolagine wrote:
It's hard to argue with fantastic results Carl, so I won't!!!

For me, overall I love and find the ekos system to be quite awesome, even if stellarmate leaves much to be desired.

Once ekos (not stellarmate) is setup it disappears. My normal routine takes about 3 min to setup the system, and I keep the telescope / mount inside. The ekos setup part generally entails plugging it in, starting a VNC client on my desktop or phone, choosing a target, platesolving, starting guiding, and then hit the go button. All of which takes a few min. I haven't found a need to build sequences since my routine is so quick, and I generally stick with one target for the night. I have found that the RPI4 is getting a bit long in the tooth, which means lower overall performance, that's why I've switched to a MeLe with a faster intel chip -- (I am keeping my eyes on risk-v developments as it seems like the future). I haven't timed it, but it seems to take just a couple of seconds between exposures, so it hasn't slowed my acquisition by much, and everything generally just works so I'm quite happy.?

I also have a computer background, but I've worked exclusively on embedded systems, from aerospace to consumer electronics. Mostly embedded Linux, but sometimes some an RTOS, or sometimes just an Ada runtime running directly on a chip:) Linux is where I feel at home, so that's what I use. I own one copy of windows, and that solely for running PEMPro:)

I consider tinkering to be part of the hobby, so I'm quite happy to do bug fixes or add features to the software stacks that I use. I even have tinkered with machining parts for the mount -- mostly unsuccessful machining attempts though...?

I do have my criticisms of the ekos/kstars/indi stack, but don't find anything to be limiting enough to switch. For one I'm not a fan of the kstars portion to tell you the truth. So I use skysafari for all of my planning and for slewing the telescope to a target. I could also use stellarium, but I'm quite happy with skysafari. I've also found that image data passing is slow, I suspect it's because of the very flexible networking architecture ends up copying data around -- it might be an interesting thing to look into fixing at some point, but it's not that big of a deal for me right now.??

Either way I say each to their own, enjoy the hobby how you like!

Jamie

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