Thread Rating:
  • 0 Vote(s) - 0 Average
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5
Operating model across mutiple systems + NINA
#1
I just acquired this software as I needed something to help me plan in two different locations.
For context:
1: Home observatory - one imaging system, UK based and struggling with weather. Local imaging PC fully automated - accessed remotely from the desktop in the house.
2: Remote observatory - two scopes, Spain based with excellent seeing. Local PC fully automated - accessed from same desktop PC.

What I want to do is run Skytools locally for all systems (as my deskptop is the place where I "play" and I don't want to install much other software on the imaging systems).
I'd like to be able to plan locally in one place and then export to NINA to run on either machine in each of the two locations above.
In order to this, do I need to have NINA on my desktop so that I can work with profiles etc? Should I I just fake it with the necessary files/locations?

One other question, I use NINA "direct guider" as I only need to dither the scope, there is no guiding, is this to be configured as no guiding and will it still offer a dither option when exporting to NINA (actually, on writing this, I'll just try it!)

Is there anything else to consider when dealing with the above setup?

Thanks!
Reply
#2
Hello,

Re: NINA, SkyTools reads data from the NINA configuration files, so you do normally need to have SkyTools and NINA installed on the same machine. So you could install NINA on both, but you should take some care to ensure that NINA is configured identically to the other machine. The files that SkyTools generates can be copied to the corresponding NINA folder on your other device, but this seems like a clunky bottleneck, depending on how inclined you might be to make a change while you were imaging, or if there is some sort of problem.

I think what most people do is work remotely. You could install SkyTools on the device with NINA and log into that device to use it from your other machine.

Or you could network the two computers and have SkyTools read/write the NINA data over the network via shared folders.
Clear skies,
Greg
Head Dude at Skyhound
Reply
#3
Thanks for this. For clarity, is it just the NINA Profiles that you are reading and the Targets that you are writing to? If so, the location/imaging/equipment NINA profiles do not change so that could be copied locally. (So you only care about directories and certain files?)
The targets could be automatically synchronized from my NAS storage back to the respective NINA targets (no harm in duplication as I can just ignore or delete them at each remote site).
Or are there other NINA considerations?
I created a Fake NINA local folder with respective profiles in there and that seemed to work ok, without installing NINA.

Thanks!
Mark.
Reply
#4
Hello,

Yes. It's just a couple of folders: where the NINA config file is read and where the Targets are written. I can't think of anything else that might cause trouble.
Clear skies,
Greg
Head Dude at Skyhound
Reply
#5
(2024-03-08, 10:39 PM)theskyhound Wrote: Hello,

Yes. It's just a couple of folders: where the NINA config file is read and where the Targets are written. I can't think of anything else that might cause trouble.

Great, thanks for the response.
Reply


Forum Jump:


Users browsing this thread: 1 Guest(s)