I have a travel router that is connected to my Pi unit that drives the Ekos software. Minus holding the true time this combination works when I use the IP from my travel router and connect to this on my MacBook via Real VNC. Unfortunately I can't say the same with holding a connection to Ekos when trying to use the Stellarmate App on my iPad.

On the Settings page I have no trouble discovering the IP that is on my GL.iNet travel router. This brings up my telescope and guidescope on the same page. As far as holding a connection to Ekos however I can see the Ekos tab blink on and off every other second. If I click on Ekos when it is blinked on right away a message pops up saying that it is Syncing.

Since this same combination works with a stable Real VNC connection on my MacBook I am suspecting the Internet settings. At the telescope my Pi unit that drives the Ekos software is connected to a Ethernet cable. The other end of the Ethernet cable is connected to my GLiNet travel router. On my iPad I am connected to the IP that is driven from the travel router. In the Stellarmate app there are several internet related combinations of settings such as hotspot, ethernet and WiFi. Since the signal from the travel router is carried through the air I have chosen WiFi for my choice of internet connection. Is this correct?

In a somewhat unrelated thread Jasem suggested that I remove the Stellarmate connection that I had from the settings page. I did this and scanned for a replacement. The behavior with this repopulated connection is the same with sync issues.

Is there something that I am missing on my end?

Briefly I thought the syncing error was solved.

I installed a RTC chip on my Pi unit. While I was doing this I also decided to look for updates and consequently updated from SM OS 1.70 to 1.71.

When I got on the StellarMate App this time around Ekos connected right away. I spent a couple hours acclimating myself to the different controls. I couldn’t find everything so I viewed a couple more recent videos for the app by Jasem. Still I could move through the tabs fine without issue.

In between running into the crippling error I found one more annoyance. The text within the SM app interface does not scale that well. This makes me wonder whether there is a way to tweak the settings somewhat. I am using I believe a 11 inch iPad.

I shot some flats but was hoping to be able to preview the ADU numbers like you can within the capture tab on the desktop version of StellarMate. Not a huge deal, but perhaps there is a way to look at these numbers?

The point I got caught in the sync loop was when I tried to do a Polar Alignment. It made a couple slews and then a Meridian flip announcement popped up. It tried to take the last image but then just got confused. After quite a while the syncing message popped up.

When I run into a Meridian Flip problem in the basic StellarMate interface I go to the mount page and sometimes the Clear Mount option gets me out of a loop. This time I tried Clearing the Mount in the NoVNC interface. It didn’t seem to want to do anything. Another thing that I wanted to try was doing a Park while I was in the NoVNC interface. Unfortunately the right side of the screen was cropped off so I couldn’t try this. I couldn’t do this directly in Ekos as it was caught in a loop.

Any ideas in untangling these issues?

Added thoughts: Since I get the sync error with the Stellarmate App and don't when running through Stellarmate on my MacBook (through RealVNC) I am concluding that the sync issue must be some kind of network overhead. I am wondering what makes the stability of the Stellarmate App so much different than ASIAIR?

I did find a forum thread on Cloudy Nights where there was 1 individual who wasn't plagued by issues with the Stellarmate App. The one thing that he pointed out was that he used a 8gig instead of 4gig RAM Raspberry Pi. I am going to at least try this. Of course if this was the difference I guess my network overhead theory is incorrect.