StellarMate 4+

I’ve been using Stellarmate for 9 months now, after coming across the lazy geek tutorial. I’ve taken hundreds of shots that I have been able to stack and post process successfully. The app is a great front end for the software on the Pi, and much easier to use than manipulating kstars on the Pi.

I’m using a portable equatorial mount with a DSLR camera and lens. Stellarmate connected to my mount and camera with no issues. Polar alignment works great and there is also a backup method (not well documented) that works well if you can’t see the pole area of the sky due to trees/buildings etc. The tutorial for Stellarmate focuses on LiveView, which works well as a quick “preview” function, but you need to use the capture module to get full res images for stacking and filtering. I had to read the kstars doco to understand it.

As others have said, Stellarmate can crash out. In my experience this is occasionally rather than all the time. The app is fine, it’s the software on the Pi that has issues. I suspect the main cause in my case is poor connectivity to my home wifi, which doesn’t work so well outside the house. Every time I move the mount to a different area outside, the Pi drops off the network for 30sec or so whilst it roams to the best mesh wifi point, but I prefer to have the Pi connected to home wifi (rather than run the Pi as a hotspot) so I get the weather info and can easily download the captured images to a laptop for processing.

Tried everything but it kept crashing and I followed the lazy geek tutorial but it still didn’t work. Tried the SM help line but it was a nightmare to get through and even the password system lost all my settings. Total mess

I got using Stellarmate on the recommendation of a YouTuber called Cuiv the lazy Geek where he made himself an automated telescope using the application Stellarmate, well all I can say is that it is a major disappointment, constantly crashing unable to to find alignment. Just gave up.