Just for the record and to put some of the off-topic statements from lorenzocold into perspective (some of those posts were rightfully removed by the admin because of the usage of profanity):
I have been using both the ASIAIR and Raspberry Pi 4B-based “freeware” solutions. Stellarmate is not really free, Astroberry seems to be abandoned (like many other non-profit GitHub “solutions”), Indigo is kind of open, but the full GUI is not really free either.
- KStar/EKOS is free and well supported, but lacks an easy GUI on the iPad. I tried Stellarmate… not as easy and not as stable as the ASIAIR. Lost a few nights with Stellarmate as well.
- KStar/EKOS has a very steep learning curve and endless tabs and menus to access literally hundreds of “tunable” settings, which are not the 1-2-3 approach by the ASIAIR.
- With KStars/EKOS you need a remote login and have a very low quality typical LINUX-GUI.
- Besides the Raspberry Pi that is running the indiserver (KStars/EKOS), you still need a second computer. A phone or iPad running VNC is not a good a solution, because of poor readability. Again, I found Stellarmate not really adequate yet.
- There is no live imaging/stacking in EKOS, no easy mosaicking, no “just-click-here” for setting up hardware. I always had trouble focusing with the EKOS tools… tons of non-self-explanatory settings, no clue what they do… in the end the focusing routine runs forever and does not find the focus. The focusing interface in the ASIAIR is simply brilliant. I use it either fully automatically or manually with a Bahtinov mask.
- The ZWO hardware is IMHO superior to the Raspberry Pi. The first ASIAIR was a RPi3, the AA Pro was an RPi4B, the AA Plus already used the industrial compute module version of the RPi4B, the new ASIAIRs are using new hardware, great external antennas, better on board memory than the off-the-shelf RPi. The new RPi5 still has the same poor WiFi antenna for the 5GHz network as the RPi4B. I use the AA mini at a distance of 20m to 30m, set-up in the garden, while I am in the warm house. Impossibly with the RPi4/5 without extra routing hardware.
- The AA boxes have a 12V input and several 12V outputs, which you do not find on a RPi4/5, either.
- OK… the new AA software seems to have issues with the guiding settings… if this is the only issue… I am sure ZWO will come up with a solution.
- Ranting and using profanity will not make anyone’s case more solid nor does it provide any technical info on the actual issues.
