Astrophotography with an OM-1 Mark II on an Orange Pi 5B

Do You Love Pain?

Apparently I do, which must be why I chose this path… I kid.

It just so happens that I have a bunch of really nice Olympus/OM Systems gear and wanted to push the limits with it by doing a wee bit of good ol’ astrophotography.

My Goals

The sky quality where I live is Bortle 8-9. Rarely if ever would I want to shoot astro from home. I do spend a lot of time overlanding and car camping under Bortle 1-2 skies, however, which gives me the perfect opportunity to shoot the stars.

However, free space in the car comes at a premium so I wanted to devise a system that was as small and lightweight as possible. I also wanted to have full GOTO capability; manually aiming at a target with a 300mm lens on a micro four thirds sensor is NOT easy nor fun.

A Bit of Raspberry Pi

Naturally, I gravitated toward the Raspberry Pi which could run INDI/KStars/EKOS and be controlled remotely via VNC.

I purchased a Raspberry Pi 4B (8GB), flashed it with Astroberry 2.0.4, and away I went. This worked reasonably well with my older E-M1 Mark I and Mark II bodies. However, the UI was painfully slow, especially when panning around in KStars. Then I realized Astroberry was no longer actively maintained and it wasn’t compatible with the newer OM Systems bodies I acquired.

What to do?

A Different Fruit

To address the speed issue, I upgraded to an Orange Pi 5B (16GB+256GB) and it is so much faster than the Raspberry Pi 4B. Everything feels smooth and snappy, even when running full blown GNOME and/or KDE.

To address the updates (or lack thereof) issue with Astroberry, I decided to just pull down the source code and compile everything I need on my own so that I can always enjoy the latest bug fixes and newest features.

Why not just use StellarMate? While StellarMate is a great project, reasonably priced, and updated pretty frequently, it just doesn’t offer the flexibility I want/need.

My Gear

My full gear list (minus the bodies and lenses) is as follows:

• iOptron CEM26

• iOptron 2 kg Counterweight (for CEM26)

• iOptron GPS Module (for CEM26)

• iOptron LiteRoc Tripod (for CEM26)

• Vanguard SB-100 Stone Bag

• William Optics DSD 210 Dovetail Plate

• Really Right Stuff 50mm Lever Release Clamp

• Neewer Quick Release Plate QR Clamp

• ZWO ASI120mm Mini Guide Camera

• ZWO 30mm f/4 Mini Guide Scope

• SVBONY SV172 Lens Warmer (400mm)

• SVBONY SV172 Lens Warmer (320mm)

• Goal Zero Yeti 200X

• Orange Pi 5B (16GB+256GB)

• Orange Pi 5B Case

• Orange Pi Heatsinks

• HDMI Dummy Plugs

How well does it work?

It works quite well, actually! Well enough that I felt motivated to write up a simple guide on how I set up my Orange Pi 5B to help anyone else who might be considering this path. Clear skies!