I run Stellarmate on a Pi3 in my home observatory and after a few teething problems it works well. I have tried taking the same version on my travels with my AZ-GTi in eq mode and found the Pi too temperamental particularly when trying to connect over different Wi-fi or fixed connections . So I then need a screen/mouse/keyboard to diagnose. I need a laptop anyway so I therefore want to try loading Indi/ekos onto either an old laptop or perhaps dual booting my dell XPS. Has anyone done either of these? If so how ?

So I set my pi to have a fixed Ethernet IP address. When I get to my observing site, I directly connect it to my Mac laptop via Ethernet and control it over VNC. Then I either select a WiFi network or I create a network from the pi . Then I pull the plug and connect my Mac to the same WiFi network. And then I’m good to go.

I do the same thing except I don't use WIFI. The cabled network is good enough for me.