Question: I had the idea that managing KStars, eKos and all the INDI drivers would be better done direct on Stellarmate as a local setup than remotely, via the VNC web browser on my Win 10 laptop.
Rationale was everything is done locally and stored locally (on a USB dongle) than having to worry about sending data via the home network. Does this make sense? Also because my laptop is running Windows and not Linux there would be less of a comms issue.
I would like to know what setup you guys (and girls) use when using your Stellarmate setup and why.
Do you manage everything remotely and use your Stellarmate to manage the hardware connected to it and everything is sent to/from Stellarmate to your PC or like me keep running everything locally?
My setup is perhaps not as vast as some of you power users. I just have a Camera, Guide Camera, Focuser and Mount to manage.
I use my iPad, iMac, Windows laptop and VNC to connect to a RPi4. Since the iOS app was tied to the RPi3 that I purchased with StellarMate, it will no longer sync with it and I could never get it to work as expected.
I much prefer using my Windows laptop or Mac desktop to interface with KStars / Ekos.
I am not a Stellarmate user but when you write "VNC web browser" I wonder if you really need to open a browser (firefox, chrome, edge) in which the desktop of the Stellarmate is displayed and which then stores all images directly on the hard disk of the computer where the browser is running. In my experience, VNC is a mechanism to display the desktop of a remote computer (the stellarmate raspberry pi in this case) and everything that happens on the desktop is done locally FOR THAT DESKTOP, meaning that everything happens on the raspberry pi. Does the "VNC web browser" really work differently?
Because I use Kstars and Ekos on a Linux mini-pc to which I connect from my iPad or MacBook via VNC. Everything happens on the mini-pc, including storage of the images taken with my camera. If I want to process the images on my MacBook then I need to transfer them first to the MacBook (for instance via a USB disk). And apart from some minor differences in the way the keyboard works on Mac and Linux (mostly to do with the CTRL and CMD keys) there is no compatibility issue at all and I doubt there would be one when Windows is used instead of macOS.
I access the Stellarmate via my web browser (Chrome) and access the Stellarmate VNC (stellarmate.local:6080/vnc.html). I was hoping to store all captured images on the Stellarmate directly on USB dongle. I use the web browser to setup everything on the Stellarmate and it is hooked up to everything on my scope - albeit, not very well as has a load of bugs with the camera (Altair Astro Hypercam 183C ProTEC) - bottom line is it is incompatible, so my whole setup is a waste of energy.
RPi4 running Stellarmate, everything controlled via kStars on my laptop (ethernet, no wifi) - works like a charm, no reason to use VNC (been there, done that).