Hi folks, this is my first post to the group; I'm brand new to astronomy and astrophotography. I went to a star party with friends in Sep 2019, got intrigued and decided to give it a go. I have purchased a Sky-Watcher AZ-GTi and a few related accessories for mounting my Canon DSLR. I know there's simpler ways to get going, but I wanted to put together something reasonably easy to transport for travel and use/reuse gear I already had, so here's what I've been trying to work with. I don't think any of this is very exotic stuff:

- SW AZ-GTi mount (latest fw, in EQ mode), wifi conn to RPi
- SW Star Adventurer wedge
- Vanguard CF travel tripod
- RPi 3B+ with RTC module & cooling
- Canon 450D DSLR, USB conn to RPi

- Astroberry 2.0.1 (also with prev versions), wifi conn to mount and PC
- iOS SynScan Pro app
- Kstars/Ekos (just grabbed latest version yesterday, but have been working with whatever's been current since Oct 2019).
- MacOS 10.14.6 on a MacBook Pro

Weather was un cooperative for some time, but I have time now with good weather in a warmer locale, so I've been spending some evenings trying to get things going. So far, I've not been able to progress past getting either a polar alignment or star alignment due to a host of issues. Ultimately, I think the mount is defective and will have to be repaired/replaced. That issue aside, I have no problems getting Astroberry set up, connecting to the camera, mount and a joystick (game controller) for controlling the mount. I've played around with a few other SW options on the Pi and didn't really have any issues that I could not figure out. The SynScan app is "OK" and seems to work but obviously is not very polished. I don't have to use MacOS; I'm comfortable in Windows and Linux and can run Win10 and Linux in VM's if needed or use a separate laptop if not travelling, but this is the most convenient as I work mostly in MacOS.

So, my main question is for people who are also using Ekos on MacOS. How reliable is the software for you? My experience has been that during the processes of getting set up, attempting alignments, trying to do a few plate solves, etc (haven't made it as far as actual photography yet!), that Kstars crashes a few times per hour. Some evenings, I've had 15-20 crashes and it seems like it's borderline unusable. This can't be normal, right? Should I bail out on this and just use another OS? VNC to the Pi is an easy option, but seems quite inferior to just running the sw on my laptop and using my larger monitors, etc.

Thanks

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