Hello Everyone,
I recently got a Raspberry Pi 4 and installed stellarmate OS on it. I did setup the system at home first, and made sure EKOS and everything worked as intended with my GEM45 as well as Sony A7S. I decided to use my laptop for polar alignment using iOptron App as various posts on the forum said it may or may not work. Since I would need my laptop anyways for VNC, I thought not to bother with that.

During the home setup, the biggest challenge I faced for for the Kstars app to not crash after taking a few images. I tried the generic driver as well as Sony DSLR driver. Camera in "PC remote mode". Then I finally figured it out. If I select "NATIVE" and also "SD CARD" it does not crash. However, even with "SD Card" the photo is not saved on camera SD but on the R-Pi SD card. But no worries. Its better to a have images that way

Fully successful, I went out to field and discovered that it would not plate solve. For an hour I tried focus etc., but I was barking up the wrong tree. The issue was the time. When at home, I had my internet connection, so the R-pi got correct time. But on the field I was connected through LAPTOP. Even though my mount has GPS, Stellarmate could not get correct time (though location was accurate). Only weird thing in location was that instead of -121 it appeared as +238 or something like that.
Connecting R-Pi to my phone fixed this problem as phone can get the time from internet through LTE. I have ordered that GPIO based RTC which should solve my problems when there is no network.

Once done, I was able to take images, but I did find the following issues

0. The screen resolution of 1600x900 is a bit of a problem as EXOS window has too much information. I could not increase resolution, but a verticle resolution of 1280 or so would be nice. Even 1080 would give that buffer
1. The focuser is a bit of pain to use. I finally shifted to highly magnified camera LCD screen for focus as opposed to using the in built HFR assistance.
2. EKOS covers K stars. If I want to right click and slew to target through Ekos itself it would be great. So I had to close EKOS window. Slew to target and then reopen Ekos window to put in my shooting parameters. Not a blocker, but a but kludgy. I have used ASIAIR, and if through the APP itself there was a way to just aim and shoot on any object, or just through EKOS there was a dialog where I could aim at any object without right click etc., on K-Stars it would be great. I did not find such a tab
3. Guiding is very good. Auto Star is nice. But in the latest version where is dithering enabled? Is it enabled by default? I use 2.5" exposure. Is this good enough not to chase seeing.
I think I got good guiding. It started rough and then stabilized as captured




During guiding and acquisition, I also saw that its running pretty light on the Pi 4. No stress


Overall I am glad I got this instead of ASI-AIR route. The brand locking which ASIAIR does is simply not my cup of tea. I may use QHY camera in the future, so ASIAIR was a no go, and I really wanted this system to work, and it does. I am still a newbie, so many things I may be doing wrong. So any tips and advice you can offer, please do so!

Thank you for your valuable feedback!

1. For the time, you can also just connect the App to StellarMate and it would automatically sync the Time & Location from your phone/tablet GPS. You don't need to use the App, just connect one (get greed LED) and that's it, should be synchronized both location & time.
2. You can use Ekos Mount Control Panel (the "T" icon in the tool bar, or if you go to Mount tab in Ekos --> Control Panel). Then you don't need to right-click anyway, just use that window.
3. Location is correct, don't worry about the longitude.
4. Dithering is not enabled by default, click on "Options" and then enable it from Guide.

The good news is that we're working on re-designing the Ekos tab in the StellarMate App completely after listening to the user feedback. We are working hard on this and should have a release in 6-8 weeks. In this release you would be able to do the majority of Ekos functionality right from within the App.

If I connect via iphone I get the proper time, but not via iPad. Iphone has network LTE connection though. Somehow It does not take time through ipad.

IS there a commandline option where I can set time to a value when not connected to the internet?