USB3 may force me to move off of Raspberry Pi

Hi,
I have been successful running Indi?Ekos as Stellarmate on my RPI which sits on my Pier in my Roll off shed. I then VNC in, either from the shed or from my house. All my devices connect via a Powered USB3 Hub: Eqmod,-HEQ5, DSLR, Moonlite Focuser, Joystick, Guide CCD. It works great. BUT I now want to use a CCD camera and am finding that the USB2 ports on the RPI with files stored on the local SD card are too slow. I tried using a ZWO ASI178MC (Not Cooled) and got very severe amp glow. There is no buffer on this camera. As an experiment I connected the ASI178MC direct to my Dell XPS laptop vis USB3 to a SSD drive everyting else still via the RPI and get virtually no Ampglow.

I am considering getting the ASI 294MC Pro which ZWO says " includes a 256MB DDR3 memory buffer to help improve data transfer reliability. Additionally, the use of a memory buffer minimizes amp-glow, which is caused by the slow transfer speeds when the camera is used with a USB 2.0 port." I posted on the ZWO site to ask if this meant I would get no Amplow on my RPI. They replied that it would help but USB3 is preferred.

So my question is what should my future INDI/EKOS platform be? Maybe the ASI 294MC Pro will be OK connected to the PI. if not will running on a ROCK64 with SSD be better, or will I need a much faster machine and just run INDi/EKOS under windows on my Dell XPS?
I am very interested in anyone who has practical experience of this.

A similar question was asked a few weeks ago. Please see this thread:

www.indilib.org/forum/ekos/5134-what-dev...nning-kstars-on.html


Wouter

I am currently seriously considering the new Odroid-N2 as an upgrade.

Wouter,
Yes, I looked at that thread, but it did not really address the AmpGlow problem.
I know that Indi/Ekos will run on the Rock64Pro which has USB3, however reading up on the subject I have learned that USB3 performance can vary considerably and a bottleneck might be the storage device it is writing to. So I wanted to know if the Rock has solved Ampglow problems.
Similarly the ASI 294MC Pro has memory buffers, so does anyone run it on the RPI/USB2 and is it OK?
I don't want to buy the Rock if it the RPI problem goes away with the buffers or if it not fast enough.
Max

OK just making sure. FWIW I run KStars on a MinisForum Z83-F mini-pc, which has USB3, and I use an ASI1600MM-Pro cooled. No amp glow whatsoever in my images.


Wouter

Which spec do you have? Amazon UK lists three: 2+32GB (£99.99) ; 4+32Gb ( £107.90) 4+64GB (£129.90) , so might look at 4+32GB. Do you run windows or Ubuntu? Attraction is cheap and no setup.

I have the 4x64 Gb because the pics of the ASI1600MM tend to be large and with exposures of 60 sec the disk tends to fill up rapidly. I run Ubuntu. No Windows in my house! Plus INDI doesn’t run on Windows haha I connect remotely via VNC from my iPad or MacBook.

By the way, with the latest BIOS the Z83-F doesn’t boot without an HDMI device connected. A simple cable will not do the trick so I bought a few cheap HDMI to VGA converters and that works. I filed a request for reversal of this change in the BIOS via the MinisForum support email address and they replied that their developers are looking into it.

I am currently seriously considering the new Odroid-N2 as an upgrade.

I have been eyeing that as well. If you go for it, please let me know.

Thanks
Jerry

Hi astronerd, i just use this, it works like a charm. I just upgraded my compute stick today and everything works!!!

github.com/Patrick-81/NAFABox