I’ll just echo what others have been saying. Having a stable wifi connection is everything. I don’t rely on the feeble RPi wifi and instead use a wired connection to a third party wireless bridge running at 2.45 GHz that has real antennae. This and setting up the connections at with static IP addresses ensures the most stable connection. A completely wired Ethernet connection would be best but is not always practical.

I''ve had good luck with ethernet over powerline adaptors. That is, I use this:
www.amazon.com/gp/product/B06WP2ZT5N

I love RPI’s, I have multiple boards of every version laying around here and there, but I personally prefer to have the best possible response, so that’s why I have a mini pc for my imaging and another mini pc for my AllSky camera. The second one is even cheaper than an RPI4.

Everything I need is on top of my scope, in my Beelink MiniS 12, connected via Ethernet. I use NoMachine to control it, available on every single platform. After powering on, in a matter of seconds everything is up and running, cause I have my sessions preconfigured. No it’s time to sleep or have a quality time with my family.

Next day all my data are saved on my Dropbox account and my observatory is fully off (power, parked, flat panel, roof top etc)

My setup is: Kstars/Ekos on my MacBook and Indi on a Rpi on the mount. I have a separate Wifi network for this and a router inside the house quite close to my usual mount position. I use the Rpi's built in wifi. People comment that the Rpi's wifi isn't very good; and there are probably more robust solution but it works OK in my setup. It doesn't have a very long range however, hence I have a router a few metres away.

As others have said Indi provides the device drivers. All the Astronomy logic is in Kstars/Ekos (Kstars is the planetarium and Ekos provides Astrophotography logic) so if I loose wifi connection or Ekos goes down then everything stops (except mount tracking).

So in the morning, the mount is often parked and the images are on my MacBook (I don't store them locally on the Rpi).

When I first started I tried PHD2 and the Ekos guider and couldn't see any difference. They both use the same engineering theory and whilst the implementations are different and they have sightly different tweaks, they are essentially the same thing. I use the Ekos guider as its part of Ekos whereas PHD2 is its own application. But either one will work well.

I have installed external WiFi U.fl connectors on several folks Rpi boards in my club. I plan on doing the same thing for my Rpi-5 since it has the same blank spot on the circuit board for the U.fl connector. There are many YouTube videos showing how to do this - it just takes magnifying glasses and a steady hand.
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Yes, I know it "violates" the FCC certification, but I've installed large nets around my house to stop the government black helicopters from coming to get me.
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I've gone ahead and installed Ubuntu on the NUC11 in dual boot mode. The problem I'm having now is the Ubuntu "keyring" keeps changing the Remote Desktop password so it won't start up in a useable headless configuration. I'm on the road this weekend, so I'll be wresting with it next week.
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Once I get the NUC able to boot straight into an RDP configuration from power-up, I should be able to start experimenting with kstars/ekos.
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John, Thanks for the info on Ekos vs. PHD2 guiding. Good to know they're essentially the same and I don't have to mess with a separate app.
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