I know this is an old thread, but I thought it would be appropriate to report I have a good scope computer running on a Radxa Rock 5b. This has a faster ARM processor than a Raspberry Pi, and, like the ODROID-M1 it has an NVMe slot for fast storage.

I started with Armbian (Ubuntu Jammy with XFCE) and then installed the repositories for INDI, CCDCiel, PHD2. I am using TigerVNC server for headless connections. I was able to install ASTAP with *.deb files. Indiweb installs with pip. All that stuff installs and works great. I don't use KStars and Ekos, so I didn't install or test those.

I have not gotten FireCapture to work. The 32bit multi-lib instructions aren't quite right for Ubuntu Jammy. I assume it would be GREAT on this SBC because of the fast storage. I hope they eventually build a 64bit ARM version of that tool. Until then, I was able to get AstroDMx to work by removing two library files from the install (documented on the website's Known Issues page). The framerates with that tool and my fast storage are outstanding.

Using different hardware means I had to move on from Astroberry. I am guessing the shortage of Raspberry Pis has probably hurt that project. I do think that some sort of astronomy based distribution built on top of Armbian's build system could be viable. This would separate the hardware/kernel differences from the astronomy user space tools.

Read More...