Mac Controlling SGP

Question for you. My dad is 85 and wants a new laptop. I have one to give him but that leaves me with a Mac Laptop for acquisition.

What are your thoughts on switching to a Mac Air Laptop to control all my gear out there. Currently I’ve been using a Surface Pro running Windows 10.

Before I give him my laptop I wanted to get your thoughts on whether or not I would be shooting myself in the foot by doing so.

I bought the Mac laptop so I could run pixinsight on it and sneaky snake processing images at work!

Thanks

Sean

ASCOM is for windows only, and SGP is also only for windows, so you pretty much have no choice but to run windows to control a telescope using SGP.

i do use the mac RDP client to connect to my telescope computer though and that works fine.

rob

Got it. That answers that question. I’m so glad I asked.

Looks like I’m buying dad a laptop lol

Sean Molony

I got a 2012 MacBook Pro and installed Windows 10 on it. I run SGP, PHD2, Ascom/EQMod, CDC and Pixinsight on it. Maybe not what you intend, but works fine for me.

I did not know you could even do that. Interesting. Thanks

There are 2 ways of doing this. The first (which is likely the most stable) is to run the MacOS “Bootcamp”. It will take a portion of the disk for windows and then when you turn the machine on, it will ask you if you want to boot to Mac or Windows. In this setup, you run Windows “natively” and it has full unfettered access to all the ports and other hardware. The other method is with a virtual machine (like Parallels)… this method is more convenient, but likely less stable. Because it is Windows running on top of MacOS, there can be hardware sharing problems, problems with memory sharing, etc. That said, lots of people have done it and don’t have any sort of PTSD.

Thank you Ken for taking the time to write all that. I solved the problem when others stated that it couldn’t be done and bought my dad a new laptop and kept my windows box. So I get to keep my surface pro for imaging and my Mac laptop stays out of the game.

I’ve been a mac user for a long time and have used bootcamp in the past. I have had some issues with windows 10. It seemed to work better with windows 7 but it might be my install. I can’t hear the audible sound when you plug a USB device in. This can be extremely frustrating when you are trying to trouble shoot a bad connection etc… Some key strokes will not work. The one that comes to mind is CTR/ALT/DEL maybe even right mouse clicks (not sure on that but it was one of the more popular key strokes). you can find ways around all of these pit falls but I found it easier to buy an inexpensive laptop for running my astronomy equipment. You can always use PI on your mac and process on it. I just purchased a GPD Micro Laptop (worlds smallest laptop). If your a good shopper you can pick one up for under $400. I put the GPD on the rig and remote desktop into it from my mac. So far so good.

Anthony

interesting… had not heard of that. can it be run with the lid closed?

You’ll need to adjust a Windows power setting to change the lid-closing behavior:

  1. In the System Tray (bottom-right corner of the screen), find the Battery icon. Right-click the Battery and choose Power Options .
  2. On the left of the Power Options menu, select Choose what closing the lid does .
  3. You’ll see options for the power and sleep buttons. Under When I close the lid , change the dropdown box for Plugged in (and On Battery if you want) to Do nothing .
  4. Click Save Changes and you’re good to go.

Now when you close your laptop screen, it will continue to run as normal. This means that you can control it with external devices while the laptop itself is neatly tucked away. However, remember that you’ll need to put your laptop to sleep or shut it down using the commands on the Start Menu once you’ve made this change.

thanks. i guess i was wondering if it was OK from a thermal perspective, since they seem to have cranked the TDP from the typical levels on this machine.