StellarMate X OS, where have you been all my life!

I just installed StellarMate X OS for Mini PCs on my Eagle 4, and wow - this setup absolutely rocks.

Coming from the NINA world, running TheSkyX with a Bisque MX+ inside a Digital Dome Works observatory from TI, I was used to fighting with dome geometry, drivers, and endless ASCOM headaches. Night after night, tweaking settings, chasing down connection issues - you know the drill.

Then I booted up StellarMate X OS. It recognized everything - the mount, cameras, focuser, even the dome - right out of the gate. VNC baked right in, plus the Stellarmate companion app - all right there at my doorstep.

No driver installs. No manual configs. Just… go. Within a few hours, I was imaging.

After years of frustration trying to get all my gear to play nice, I’m honestly still in shock at how seamlessly it all came together.

A much deeper write-up is coming soon on ScopeTrader, but seriously - kudos to the StellarMate team. Where have you been all my life?

Last night was my first offical - "actual" night with Stellarmate - and it was a smashing success!

It wasn’t without its share of hiccups, but most of those came from me learning the ropes and from having every piece of tech I own connected to the observatory at once. Between the iPhone 16 Pro Max, iPad Pro, and MacBook all talking to the dome, it was a wonder the thing didn’t start humming the Star Wars theme.

I had thrown together a quick sequence to collect SHO data, and in my haste it only captured twenty frames of sulfur and about eight of hydrogen, skipping oxygen altogether. Even so, that didn’t take away from what mattered most. For the first time in the twenty years since we built this house and topped it with a dome, I didn’t have to step foot inside the observatory for startup, troubleshooting, or shutdown. Not once.

Gone are the days of wrestling with ASCOM drivers. Gone are the days of loading TheSkyX, then linking it through ASCOM, then launching the ASCOM support dashboard just to bring up my focuser and mount, followed by firing up Digital Dome Works to home the dome and control the shutter. I need nothing else now—just StellarMate and its buffet of tools. Ekos and KStars are absolutely dynamite.

Last night was the first time I could focus entirely on the experience. Everything—dome, telescope, camera, focuser, guider—worked together like a well-tuned orchestra. I spent the evening exploring the StellarMate app, learning its rhythm, and watching the system handle the tasks that used to take me several steps. The hardware faded into the background, becoming what it should have been all along: the means to collect data, not the obstacle.

That shift changed everything. The night wasn’t about fixing or fighting the setup. It was about astrophotography and observing, the way astronomy should be when technology knows its place. I have a strong feeling that before long I’ll be replacing every other solution I have, including the ASIAir, with small fleets of micro PCs running StellarMate. It feels like I’ve finally found the way to let the observatory run itself.

Anyone else here using Ekos for remote control of thier equipment?

I'm new to the hobby, new to StellarMate and new to this site. I recently bought a used Losmandy GM8, a used Stellarvue SVX 80T from the factory, a guide scope, a couple of cameras. I just bought a new StellarMate and have been having trouble setting it up and getting everything to work. I mentioned this to a few members of our local club and a very experienced astrophotographer in our club said I should switch to NINA. I see you too have years of experience, so why StellarMate over NINA?

You really can’t go wrong with Losmandy! I still own my G11, don’t use it as often these days, but it’s a testament to craftsmanship and precision. And Stellarvue? Rock-solid. You’re going to love that scope.

As for StellarMate… For some background, I came from the “legacy” world of running a laptop with Starry Night Pro back in the early 2000s. Fast-forward to today and we’ve got ASIAIR, NINA, StellarMate, and several others. As you already know, they all aim to do essentially the same thing: control the mount, guiding, camera, focuser, filter wheel, and of course automate image capture. But each has its own flavor in how it accomplishes that.

NINA is definitely a jack-of-all-trades, but it’s more of a hub that pulls together a lot of external components. It relies heavily on additional software - ASCOM, plate-solving tools, various plugins, hardware-specific drivers, etc. That flexibility is great, but it also means a steeper learning curve because each subsystem behaves differently depending on your hardware. I enjoy NINA for the most part, but where it ultimately fell short for me was dome control. I could never get any NINA plugin to properly slave my dome to the mount 100% reliably, which is critical for my remote setup.

So I moved on to StellarMate. And this might sound like a commercial (it isn’t—they’re not paying me!), but StellarMate just worked for me on the first try. When I hooked up the dome, mount, camera - everything - it all came to life immediately. It felt like magic after the amount of tinkering I was used to (months). It’s not perfect and has its quirks like any system, but the level of automation I’ve been able to achieve has gone through the stratosphere. Having plate solving, driver support, and so many core features baked right in makes a huge difference.

I still run NINA on some rigs, and I’ll always have a soft spot for ASIAIR, but for my observatory, StellarMate takes the cake.

What kind of trouble are you running into?