@ petarm and @turki_alamri,
Thanks for Your immediate replies and pictures.
I included these in an ad hoc joint presentation about the RasPi aimed at an audience that was not familiar with the differences between the RasPi and an Arduino.
I myself took Your pictures as a suggestion for a better and neat cable placement. (Don't dare to show my cable chaos at my stationary mount.)

rlancaste,
thank You for the pictures of Your highly sophisticated setup, especially the compact "OTA module" as I would like to call it. This is almost exactly what we have been discussing at our last "Astro Stammtisch" just 2 weeks ago! (Annotation: The German word "Stammtisch" usually describes a get-together of (exclusively male) participants gossiping about high level politics with mainly low level contributions having at least one beer to many. However, in our case it is more of a meeting of astro nerds in high spirits with more ideas than digestible within a live time.)

We are still debating about some kind of a compact unified power distribution for a mobile setup including 19V (Laptop), 12V, and 5V rails (maybe worth a new topic).

Sounds good,

For power distribution, I have a 100 amp hour battery box that I made myself with several cigarette style plugs for equipment. One outlet steps the 12V up to 18V for my mount. Obviously the mount gets plugged into that one. The other plugs are all 12 Volts One goes straight to my SBIG camera A third plug goes to my Dewbuster dew controller, which not only keeps the dew off the guide scope, it also has 12 V power outlets for other equipment. One goes from the Dewbuster to the Moonlite focuser. Another 12 V cord goes from the Dewbuster to my USB hub which accepts 12 volt input. Besides having 7 USB 3 Ports, my hub also has two 5V "power charging" USB plugs, which are really great for powering the Raspberry Pi with a really short USB cord.

I run my rpi3 of 12VDC. I just added a 2Amp 12V-5VDC converter with a 5.5mm/2.1mm 12VDC plug. i just connect to my 12VDC power supply or battery. See picture. Everything fits inside the pi box very nicely. Plus i added a push button that rund a python script for fast shutdown. Now my rpi3 is standalone, indiserver starts on power up, Dont have to remote to it.

Hi petarm,

Looks great - how did you connect the wires from the 12v/5v power supply to the micro USB port of the Raspberry? (The micro USB port does not seem to be used?)

Best, Helge

Just to share my ‘beautyful’ power supply, a converted beauty case...

The left switch is to switch on, the right switch is to combine both batteries (parallel) or keep separate.

Hi Helge, so on the bottom on the rpi3 board there are two round copper coloured terminals. I powered the rpi3 up via the micro USB and with a multimeter checked + and - and then soldered two wires which goto the converter. I powered up the converter and tuned it to 5VDC and soldered it. Works perfectly.

The other way u can do it is via the GPIO. Just find the 5VDC (PIN4) in and a ground (PIN^6) and connect to it. This is how i did my rpi0w. Works unreal. See image for GPIO headers.

regards

see image

I run my Losmandy Gemini 2, QSI camera, Lodestar x2 and Microtouch focuser from the four USB ports and if away from Home a Web Router from the Ethernet port.

I've been running a 350d with shutter release on serial port, Moonlite compatible Arduino based focuser (SGLPro) with a stepper driving the lens in manual mode with a belt. It all sits on a Losmandy GM-8 (Gemini 1). Running Ekos from a RPi3 on Ubuntu Mate which does everything - camera control, focusing, mount control, plate solves, etc. Wiring is in dire need of sorting out...!

With an 85mm lens I have taken some images lately from here in the UK which you're welcome to use with credits - see:

www.chromosphere.co.uk/2017/12/18/widefi...d-spaghetti-nebulae/
www.chromosphere.co.uk/2017/12/15/belt-sword-loop/
www.chromosphere.co.uk/2017/11/29/widefi...soul-double-cluster/

Very nice

This is set up inside as it is raining outside, again.

The usbhub (PiHut 7 port) is cable tied to the pi ontop of a dovetail bar. (It has an annoying red LED under the cable tie.)
The red object to the left the the main camera, ASI 1600 Mono cooled. There is a built in usb hub which is connected to the EFW. The long light grey USB cable is wrapped around the scope above its attachment to the mount. It is joined by the dark grey USB cable from the QHY guidecamera.
The next black this with the black wire trailing back to the USB hub on the ASI 1600 is the EFW mini.
Next is the OAG with the QHY 5 II mono. (ST4 cable not connected at present)
Nexit is the Flattner Reducer
Next the Moonlite focuser (nice anonised orange)
The scope is and 80mm ED refractor.

Due to the weight of the cameras and focuser, I had to put a counterweight ADM on a dovetail, round thing seen to right on the silver threaded rod.

Note the lack of attention to detail in neatening up the wires.

You could call this the spagetti setup.

Pi and Hub are powered from Voltage regulator

The Voltage regulators are in a weatherproof box hanging off the tripod beside the hand controller. This is fed with 12V.

The large bunch of cables snaking round the tripod include:-
Wired network cable
Two power cords - RPi and Hub
Moonlite focuser serial and USB cables
Mount cable Serial to USB. (White cable with Blue USB connector CE)

If it starts raining when I have set up outside, I throw a big waterproof bag over the lot, like the one used to store backgarden chairs or cover a BBQ.

The USB cables with the serial to USB converted usually like to be connected directly to the RPi.
The USB cable coming from the QHY5-II-M, really likes being plugged into the powered USB hub.
I could not get things working nicely by powering the Pi from the hub. So I connceted it via the micro USB connctor, I cut the other end off and soldered the 5V and ground wires to the Voltage regulator.

Now if the clouds/rain would clear, I could do something more useful.