I am new to this forum and Raspberry Pi and am in need of some sage advice.  I have a rather basic question that I am sure some of the more expert members could answer…here goes..

I just purchased a Raspberry Pi 4 8 Gb and thought I could try to use it as a way to astro image in my observatory.I am new to the RPi4 also.   
I presently use a Windows 10 PC to do astrophotography but it’s rear usb3 ports are too far away from the scope to reliably connect using a max 3 meter usb extension. I was considering a Pegasus Powerbox for its USB but but it’s rather pricey.   I’d like to use the RPi 4 on the scope if possible. That would be a great alternative if I could figure out how to configure such a setup. 
i realize the QHY268C is a large sensor and may not be suitable for RPi4.  However I also would like to try it with my  QHY5III485C which is smaller.  Maybe I could use that only. 
Can I use the RaspberryPii with its built in usb 3 to image with my usb3 qhy 268c camera perhaps through my windows pc? Can the RPi be used stand alone? Or, does it need to transfer something to my Windows PC?
Sorry for the simple minded question.  
Would certainly appreciate different solutions. 
jim
 
 

I have used an rPi4 with a Canon EOSR which has a 30 Mpixel full frame sensor and it works fine.  I just purchased a QHY600 which has a 60 Mpixel sensor with 120 MB FITS files.  It takes 5 seconds to download via USB3 to the rPi4 which isn’t too bad.  I wound up switching to a mini pc which reduces the download to 0.5 seconds.  I didn’t switch due to the download speed however, it was so I could run firecapture which struggled with the speed of the rPi4 even with an SSD vs microSD card.  The rPi4 was fine for long exposure deep space imaging.

You can use the rPi4 standalone and access via its own WiFi hotspot and vnc or you can run it in client server mode from a PC or Mac.  If the onboard wifi is too flakey you can direct connect via Ethernet which has much longer cable length than usb3.

That’s encouraging to hear. What OS do you have on the Pi, Astroberry, Buster? Do you use with Ekos?

Also is there any way to connect the RPi to my Windows PC to use the imaging apps I used in the past like TheSkyX?
 

I use Stellarmate which I think is basically the same as astroberry but with support from Jasem.  It is a lot of work to maintain and support so I think the cost of stellarmate is reasonable but you can also go FOSS.  Stellarmate runs kstars/ekos.  I don’t know anything about TheSkyX.  Kstars/ekos uses indilib so should support any indi client including the windows version of kstars/ekos.  I ran kstars/ekos client on my iMac connected to indilib on the rPi4 which can be initiated from the client via the web interface.  It all just works with Stellarmate.  I have now setup an Ubuntu mini pc and it was a little more work to get going than stellarmate but provides the same functionality, you could put kstars/ekos on the rPi4 running Ubuntu if you chose.  If you are new to rPi4 Stellarmate is probably easiest,