Rob,

I wanted to commend you on these scripts! I ran the setupAstroRaspbianPi.sh script and it work flawlessly. I had previously put together my Raspbian Astro setup manually, but decided to redo it, and wow--what a time saver!!

I hope you don't mind--when I like something I tend to want to make it even better, so here are a few small suggestions (nits really) for you to consider.

1) There are 4 questions that I needed to answer during the course of the script. The script takes a long time to run. Some of the questions were asked after quite a while. When there is a long running script, I have a tendency to go do something else, and the script stalls waiting for my response. Why not front-load all the questions? Ask them at the start and store the answers in variables and use them when the time comes.

2) A few times I really wasn't sure what to answer. E.g. is there a downside for a static IP address? (I wound up saying no static IP, but then realized I wanted it later, and manually executed your instructions). Perhaps add some more doc about the plusses and minuses of the answers, or better, a link.

3) This would take a little ongoing work for you, but why not have the Raspbian script compile the latest release, instead of the bleeding edge? In my case, after the script was done, I ran the following: cd ~/AstroRoot/kstars; git checkout 17dcb543a; cd ../kstars-build; sudo make -j 6 install
Yes, I had to figure out from "git log --oneline" that the commit for 3.3.6 was 17dcb543a. It would be great if there were tags for all the official release, but even in the absence of that, if you were willing, you could update a variable in your script pointing to the commit for each new release.

4) You say "Raspberry Pi 3" a bunch of times in the script. I'll bet pretty soon most people will be running Raspberry Pi 4's. s/3/4/ ?

5) First time I ran it, I reflexively typed "sh setupAstroRaspbianPi.sh". That fails (because it needs to run bash, not sh). Of course, that's my user error, but you probably could check to see if bash is running and if not let people know. (I know you have the #!/bin/bash at the top, but if you do what I did, you don't get bash).

Thanks again for the very nice scripts.
Hy

Thanks, some good ideas here. I will look into them soon!

Rob

Note that there is one issue with asking questions at the beginning as you said, some of the questions are not asked by the script. Some of them are asked by the installation or configuration of software. So those particular ones could not be asked earlier. But there is no reason I couldn't ask all the ones I ask at the beginning from a programming perspective. They were just asked at the spots they were placed for organizational reasons. If somebody wants to remove some component of the script, it is all in one place.

What I can say is all the scripts run flawlessly. Raspbian now is very smooth and stable. No complaint at all in hotspot and cable connections. Thanks.

For anyone driven on by the need to to get the AstroPi3 script working on the Raspberry Pi 4 on Ubuntu Mate I've found this thread,

ubuntu-mate.community/t/how-to-get-ubunt...raspberry-pi-4/20049

There are 2 methods to get this achieved, I've tried the first version and it works, I now have a working version of Mate on my Raspberry Pi 4. As I type this it is now running the AstoPi3 script for Ubuntu Mate and so far it is doing so without any issues. I'll try it with the simulators before I hook it up to my kit. hopefully this means I can use the PPA and Rob's update script to keep thing up to date.

PS. The first time you boot it takes an age for the Mate screen to appear but it does get there in the end.

Regards

Alan

Just a quick report back.
The system works fine on the simulators direct with a keyboard mouse and screen also through VNC and Indi Web Manager via an Ethernet cable to to the network, but VNC and Indi Web Manager over WiFi were not without some issues, due to the fact that the internal WiFi module does not work correctly with the current version of Ubuntu Mate.
This was fixed by fitting an external WiFi dongle and now everything appears work fine, you do however have to disable the internal WiFi with the following from the command line to stop it tying to start up and causing issues.

sudo ifconfig wlan0 down

To reset the internal WiFi if required just use

sudo ifconfig wlan0 up

After that everything I have tried seems to work , I'll hook it up and try it under real conditions when we next get a clear night

Regards

Alan

I just need a couple of minuts to thank all the efforts and hours and days spent by Rob in his script.
It works flawlessly, even if its run by a rookie like me.

After some years using Windows astro software, I switched to K-Stars with the Raspberry pi4, it may not be the best way when I've never seen a Linux OS. But Rob's script made it easy.

Totally grateful.

Pardon me if this is a silly question - I am running Raspbian on Raspberry Pi4 and used your script to set everything up. I configured the Field Wifi to turn on after 3 minutes if the default 'home WiFi' is not found in range. Can you tell me if there is a simple way to VNC in via the Field Wifi access point (I can do this fine) and then switch the network on the Pi back to the 'home WiFi' (assuming it is in range), without having to reboot the Pi?
Dafont Showbox Adam4adam

Well, first of all you will need the name or the IP address of the rpi4 plus the password, I think the password with the script is 12345678 and you should then change, to use VNC, then when in there, just click on your home WiFi in the network list and “connect” same as any PC, but you will then have to re connect your VNC after a few mins to get back in, but no reboot should be required..
But as long as your home WiFi is in range, it will auto connect to that first, so you should not have to do any of the swapping around really...

Not a silly question until you have learned the technique!
Whilst still in VNC Viewer with the RPi in Hotspot mode open the Utilities folder on the desktop, and double click on StartNMService.desktop Enter the RPi user password and return, and the WiFi will switch off the hotspot and search for (and find) your home network. You will be knocked off the hotspot so you should connect with VNC Viewer again using your home WiFi settings.

I must say that 98% of the issues I have with my rig boil down to WiFi/networking, so, no this isn't a silly question to me either.

First, re the hotspot password. I believe when I installed via the script, the hotspot password was something like raspberrypi_password., not 123456789. You can find out for sure by looking in the folder /etc/NetworkManager/system-connections/ and finding the file that configures your hotspot (should be obvious from the filename) and then looking at that file (e.g. by running 'sudo cat FILENAME') and there will be a line with the password in plain text.

Second, though the standard WiFi connection to my home wifi usually works, it often doesn't or drops out. As opposed to using the hotspot, my approach is to use the hardwired cable approach--that is, connect a cat5 or cat6 line between the ethernet connector on the RPi and your laptop (if you have a macbookpro like I do, you'll need a ethernet-to-usbC converter) and you should be able to see the RPi at the address you set on script installation (it's possible that that requires some configuration on your laptop). This is a much more reliable/fast connection than the hotspot IMHO, and also probably avoids whatever was messing with my other WiFi connection in the first place. Of course another approach is connecting a monitor and keyboard to the RPi (which is my ultimate work-around), but that takes more time to set up.

I wish I knew why the WiFi is occasionally flakey. I assume the reason is the wimpy WiFi antenna inside the RPi. I've bought this thing which I've seen referenced by Rob www.amazon.com/gp/product/B07695YGLZ/ref..._title?ie=UTF8&psc=1 but haven't tried to install it yet. Given the pain WiFi has caused, I should up the priority on that project.

Hy

Rob, another script question (or perhaps this is general KStars?):
- when I run an imaging session, I get a ton of these on stdout/stderr:

I guess there's some audio thing I don't have, but I don't care about audio during imaging.
Is there a way of turning off sound, or some other way of disabling this? It's a minor annoyance, but I do use stdout/stderr to debug/explore the system
so I always wind up grepping out these lines, and who knows, this error may be slowing things down.

Hy