If you have a Raspberry Pi, chances are you want to use it to control your Astro-Rig at some point. Astroberry is the software to let you do that.

What It IS

Astroberry is a pre-made disk image that, when installed on a Raspberry Pi, gives you all of this and more:

  1. INDI-based drivers for all your equipment
  2. Kstars planetarium software and EKOS control software
  3. PHD2 guiding software
  4. Dome control, automation, target selection, equipment databse, and more
  5. ASTAP, SER viewer, GPS capabilities, Hotspot, VNC & Web remote access, and tons more

Basically, if you know what NINA is, then you already know what Astroberry is; it's just for Linux instead of Windows.

What It's NOT

It is not ASIair. It is also not Stellarmate. Even though it's going to look and behave a lot like these things, because these things are commercial products that use the same underlying software like INDI drivers and EKOS. But who cares? If you have a Raspberry Pi lying around, you can install Astroberry on it, strap it to your telescope and use it just like an ASIair or a Stellarmate but without the "closed box" limitations that those products have.

Why You Need It

If you're already doing automation and control with something like an ASIair, Stellarmate, or a Windows PC running NINA, then using Astroberry is going to be a step sideways. It won't gain you anything you don't already have. If you don't want to spend your money on a Windows Control PC, then a Raspberry Pi might be a cheaper option with similar results.

I have two Raspberry Pis running Astroberry that I used to use to control my rigs. One of them was connected to the SVBONY kit, and the second to the Celestron C8 kit. My Mele was conected to my solar kit since the Astroberry software doesn't do solar astrophotography. I ran SharpCap on it for that.

Eventually, I put the solar rig on the same mount as the SVBONY and since you can't have two computers controlling the same mount, I dropped the rPi running Astroberry for the Windows-based Mele running NINA and SharpCap because it could do both solar and night-time astrophotography. The rPi is still connected though, and if I wanted to, I could still have it control things for night-time work, just by turning off the Mele and plugging the USB cable from my Pocket PowerBox into the rPi instead of the Mele and everything would be connected.

So if you're not an rPi user, you're not missing out on anything. If you are an rPi user, maybe you want to give Astroberry a try!