If you've ever hauled a Windows PC out to the pier and fought driver issues and dropouts, this talk is for you. The whole thing rests on the ASCOM Alpaca standard. AlpacaBridge brings Alpaca to Linux, so an iMate, StellaVita, ASIAIR, or Raspberry Pi at the telescope can serve your mount, camera, focuser, and filter wheel to NINA, Sequence Generator Pro, or whatever else you already run.

What we covered:

• Why the PC at the mount is the weak link, and how moving drivers onto a device at the telescope removes it
• Where AlpacaBridge stands today: 16 vendors and more than 80 ASCOM ConformU-verified drivers, ready to use now
• A first look at Ara, our headless astrophotography automation suite for macOS, Linux, and Windows, which is still in development
• Live questions from the TAIC crowd on hardware, setup, and what comes next

Thanks to the TAIC volunteers for having me. They run a free weekly show for astrophotographers, and it's well worth a subscribe.

Ready to try it? Start with the SBC install guides, check the Supported Drivers list for your gear, and come say hi on Discord.

The best part of the story is the manufacturer support behind it. Vendors are shipping us hardware so we can build and verify drivers on the real thing:

• iOptron supplied an iMate controller for ongoing development
• Player One Astronomy provided Phoenix filter wheels and Uranus-C Pro cameras
• QHY committed filter wheels, focusers, and cameras
• ToupTek joined in for camera and accessory integration
• ZWO ASIAIR hardware now runs OpenAstro software

Or, as I put it when Ben interviewed me: "They're supporting us. It's freaking awesome."

The article also walks through what this looks like in practice. The iMate runs a Debian-based OpenAstro image from a microSD card and becomes a web-based astronomy controller, with reliability prioritized over experimental features. And the bigger picture matters too: open standards mean less vendor lock-in and gear that stays useful longer.

Support keeps growing, too. The current list is always on our Supported Drivers page, and the SBC install guides will get you running on an iMate, StellaVita, ASIAIR, or Raspberry Pi.

Read the full article at ScopeTrader.

His writeup gets to the heart of the design: AlpacaBridge separates how your hardware behaves from how it's exposed on the network, using the standard ASCOM Alpaca protocol. Your imaging software talks to your gear no matter where it physically sits or what operating system you run, whether that's Linux, macOS, or Windows, on anything from a Raspberry Pi to a NUC, a Mac mini, or an older laptop.

A few things Harris highlighted that we're proud of:

• No driver installs across multiple machines. The drivers live on the device at the telescope, and everything else just connects.
• Conformance first. Our initial iOptron mount driver passed formal ASCOM conformance testing. As Harris put it, "the AlpacaBridge driver passed checks that existing drivers did not."
• Transparency about how it's built. "No mystique, no exaggeration, just practical explanation of how research, testing, debugging, and verification came together."

That philosophy hasn't changed since launch: cleaner connections, fewer assumptions, and better behavior from the gear we depend on.

Read the full article at ScopeTrader, then see where the project is today on our Supported Drivers page.

Along with the fresh look, the site now hosts:

• Documentation, including the full set of SBC install guides for the iOptron iMate, Raspberry Pi, ToupTek StellaVita, and ZWO ASIAIR devices (previously on the GitHub wiki)
• Supported Drivers: every ConformU-verified camera, mount, focuser, and more that works with AlpacaBridge
• News: release announcements and project updates will be posted right here

As always, OpenAstro is free and open source. Join us on Discord or explore the code on GitHub.

Clear skies! 🔭