Field connectivity guide¶

How to connect the Mac running ARGOS to the Seestar away from the home network, and what still works (or not) without internet.

What actually needs what¶

Feature	Needs the Seestar	Needs internet
Mount / camera / focuser / filter wheel control (Alpaca :32323)	yes	no
Manual jog (native JSON-RPC :4700)	yes	no
Plate solving (ASTAP, local star database)	no	no
Stellarium telescope control (local server)	no	no
Messier, NGC and IC target names	no — built in	no
AAVSO VSX/VSP catalogs (photometry overlays)	no	yes — cached

Plate solving is fully offline: ASTAP and its database live on the Mac. Messier, NGC and IC target lookup is also fully offline. AAVSO catalog lookup, new HD or free-text CDS name lookups, NASA ephemerides and place search need internet at their first use; successful catalogue results are cached. A field already prepared at home keeps its variables and comparison stars with no internet at all. When the network is down, ARGOS serves the cached result and says so in the log.

The status bar shows two quiet dots — Seestar ● Net ● — so you always know which of the two links is up.

Tip

Try scenario B first — the phone hotspot covers device control and live catalogues with no extra hardware. Fall back to scenario A (the Seestar’s own WiFi plus the offline cache) when the phone is unavailable or its hotspot misbehaves. Scenario C needs a working USB cable or Bluetooth PAN to the phone.

Scenario A — Mac joined to the Seestar’s own WiFi (fallback)¶

The Seestar out of the box runs its own access point (the network the iPad joins). No home router, no phone involved.

On the Mac, join the S30…/Seestar… WiFi network.
In ARGOS, enter the Seestar’s fixed IP address (10.0.0.1) and the Alpaca port (32323) on the Connection page.
Connect all. Capture, goto, focus and plate solving all work.

No internet: catalog lookups fall back to the offline cache (pre-fetch your planned targets from home the day before — just solve a frame or run the catalog query once while on the home network).

Scenario B — everything on the phone’s hotspot (recommended)¶

Both the Mac and the Seestar join the iPhone’s Personal Hotspot (Partage de connexion on a French device). This gives the catalogs live internet, needs no cable, and is the recommended field setup — one network for everything.

iPhone: enable the hotspot, and turn on Maximise Compatibility (Maximiser la compatibilité) (forces 2.4 GHz, which the Seestar needs).
Seestar: in the Seestar app, switch the device to station mode and join the phone’s hotspot (one-time setup).
Mac: join the same hotspot, then press Discover in ARGOS.
Phone hotspots usually block the Alpaca UDP broadcast, so ARGOS falls back to probing the last-used address and then sweeping the hotspot subnet (172.20.10.x) — the found IP address is kept for next time.

Caveats: the hotspot may pause when the phone sleeps, and the Seestar must be re-pointed at the hotspot’s SSID if you renamed it.

Scenario C — best of both: Seestar WiFi + phone for internet¶

The Mac can hold two links at once: WiFi to the Seestar’s AP, and internet through the phone. Requires a working USB cable to the phone (or Bluetooth PAN — slower but fine for catalog queries).

Join the Seestar’s WiFi as in scenario A.
Plug the iPhone in over USB (or pair over Bluetooth) and enable the hotspot. macOS shows a new iPhone USB network service.
In System Settings → Network, make sure iPhone USB sits above Wi-Fi in the service order (⋯ menu → Set Service Order…). The default route (internet) then goes through the phone while the Seestar subnet stays on WiFi.
In ARGOS, use 10.0.0.1:32323, then connect all. Both status dots go green.

Address¶

ARGOS uses one clear endpoint: an IP address and an Alpaca port. The last successful address is retained, and is tried as soon as the UDP broadcast comes back empty — see the discovery order below. For the Seestar access-point network that is normally 10.0.0.1:32323; on a home network or phone hotspot use Discover or enter the IP shown by your router.

Discovery, layer by layer¶

When you press Discover, ARGOS tries, in order:

the standard Alpaca UDP discovery broadcast (port 32227);
direct HTTP probes of the last-used host, then 10.0.0.1 (AP mode);
a TCP sweep of the Mac’s local /24 subnet, confirming candidates against the Alpaca management endpoint.

So discovery works even on networks that swallow broadcasts (phone hotspots, isolated APs) — it just takes a few seconds longer.