I have recently started using Ekos tools on my Stellarmate device.  I decided to start easy by just using the DSLR tab.  I am not yet trying any other remote actions.

My thoughts are to save the necessary FITS images on a USB Flash Drive which is connected to the Stellarmate device.  I also am saving the SD images as RAW to my camera.

I have tested this setup successfully from inside my house, but when I take the unit outdoors the download phase of the Flash drive capture always fails.

I have to change the settings back to saving the FITS directly on the Stellarmate device or the capture doesn't work, it gets caught in a loop.

My capture settings are identical to another individual's on the Cloudy Nights forum.

Any thoughts of how I might know what might be causing this issue?

I will attach the main capture settings that I've tried to use.

        

Is /media/stellarmate/Astrophotography mounted and read/write ? That would be the first thing that comes to mind.

Jasem,

Yes this would be mounted and read/write.

Below shows how the test images I took inside the house did register correctly.

 

Any ideas what might be causing the failure of saving images outdoors on a USB flash drive. It will save off to the flash drive when I am indoors but not outdoors. On the other hand it can save images properly to the Stellarmate device.

It's odd, why would it be different if it is outside? There is no network mount. Did you login via VNC when you were outdoors and double checked the USB drive is indeed mounted correctly?

Yes, everything works fine when indoors and plugged into a wall outlet.  It didn't complete the upload when on battery and away from the house. If when outdoors I switch save location to the Stellarmate device it saved the images to it's internal drive and my SD card.

I will say that it periodically wasn't super fast when going from one snapshot saved to the next.

My best guess is that there might be a WiFi range issue, yet it does always successfully save to the combination of SD card and Stellarmate internal drive.

Today I finally (with the help of someone with a grasp of Linux) got my other setup up and running. I wanted to do the same test with this setup with different devices and see if anything within the other setup was an issue.

I took a couple snapshots on it's USB flash drive inside the house with no issue. When I set this up in the same location outdoors as the other setup I ran into an identical issue of the images not saving off on the USB flash drive, yet I'm sure they could save on the Raspberry Pi internally.

This has me believing that this is a WiFi network issue, where the setups are just outside of the reasonable range of my WiFi signal.

I'm not sure what the best way of attacking the WiFi extension issue. I would prefer not having a ethernet cable going all the way across the yard or using a TPLink plug into household outlet ethernet extender and having the same type of thing with an extension cord all the way across the yard.

Also I have already tried the TPLink household outlet extender inside my house and it greatly messed up the Ekos setup that I had.

It would be nice to have a wireless solution (minus all the extra cables) but I've heard that wireless WiFi extenders aren't that good.

Are you VNCing to StellarMate or using a remote laptop to access it?

Jasem,

I am VNC'ing over my MacBook using Real VNC.

Generally speaking it's speed seems pretty decent.