Install ARIS on Your Rig

A rig is the computer that lives at your telescope. It runs the ARIS backend and an INDI server, and it does the actual work: capturing frames, guiding, running sequences, stacking. The app on your phone or in your browser is a view into the rig — close it, and the rig keeps shooting.

The fastest way to build one is to write a ready-made image to a card. Everything is already installed; there is nothing to compile and nothing to type. If you would rather add ARIS to a machine you already run, see installing onto an existing machine below.

What you need

• A Raspberry Pi 5 (recommended). For other hardware — a Jetson, a NINA PC, a smart telescope — see Choosing a Rig Computer.
• A power supply that can sustain 5 V / 5 A on the Pi 5. Cameras, mounts, and filter wheels draw real current over USB — an underpowered rig browns out mid-night, and the symptoms (devices disconnecting and re-enumerating) look like driver bugs. The image lifts the Pi 5’s USB current cap, but only your power supply can actually deliver the amps.
• A good microSD card: UHS-I U3 / V30 rated or better, 128 GB or larger — the same class of card drones and cameras record 4K video to. The image takes about 10 GB, plate-solving star database included; the rest holds your subs. Good choices: SanDisk Extreme, Samsung PRO Plus or Lexar Professional 1066x (all U3, V30 and A2).
• Network: the rig and your phone or laptop on the same local network. Ethernet is most reliable; good Wi-Fi works. Internet is needed for remote access — imaging on the LAN works without it.
• Your equipment connected to the rig over USB: mount, camera, guide camera, focuser, filter wheel, rotator, flat panel — whatever you have.

Write the card

1. Install Raspberry Pi Imager on your Mac, Windows, or Linux machine, version 2.0 or newer, and open it.

2. Point Imager at the ARIS image list. Open Imager's settings and paste this into the OS-list (content repository) field:

   https://downloads.arisastro.com/imager/aris.json

   You only do this once per computer — Imager remembers it. Each ARIS product has its own list, though: the rig and the SkyNode are different URLs, so setting up the other one means pasting its URL here instead.

3. Choose OS → ARIS Rig OS, then pick the version listed under it.

4. Choose Storage and select your SD card or SSD.

   Caution

   Imager erases the selected drive completely. Check you have the right one.

5. Click Next, then Edit Settings, and fill in:

   • Hostname — aris-pi becomes the rig's address on your network, so it answers at aris-pi.local. It is also the name the app shows for the rig, so pick one you will recognise — a stock name like raspberrypi or ubuntu leaves it called “My Rig”.
   • Username and password — yours. This is your login account, not anything ARIS runs as. Do not use the username aris: the image already has an account by that name, and reusing it gives you a login that cannot run administrator commands.
   • Time zone — yours, so times in logs and file names match your clock.
   • Wi-Fi — your network name and password, unless you are using Ethernet.

   Save, then confirm you want to apply the settings.

6. Write the image and wait for the verify to finish, then move the card to the device and power it on.

Note

First boot takes a few minutes and reboots itself at least once while it expands the filesystem and applies your settings. Leave it alone until it settles — a power cycle in the middle is the one thing that can leave a card half-configured.

Optional: use a different port

The rig serves ARIS on port 8080. Change it only if another program on the rig’s own computer already uses 8080. A printer, NAS or other device in your house that uses 8080 does not conflict: each device has its own ports.

1. After Imager finishes, take the card out and put it back in. A drive named system-boot appears.

2. Open aris.txt on that drive in a text editor. Remove the # in front of web_port=8080 and change the number to a port from 1024 to 65535.

3. Save the file, eject the card, and move it to the rig.

Note

No aris.txt on the drive? Your image predates this setting. Set the rig up on 8080, install the update the app offers, then change the port with the pencil next to the rig’s name in Settings → Connection.

You can change the port, and the rig’s name on your network, later in the app: in Settings → Connection, tap the pencil next to the rig’s name. The rig moves without a restart, so a running sequence continues, and it keeps answering at its old address until your device reaches the new one. If no device reaches the new address within two minutes, the rig goes back to the old one.

Tip

The same file rescues a rig you cannot reach: edit web_port in aris.txt on the card and start the rig again.

Verify it works

From a phone or laptop on the same network, open:

http://<your-hostname>.local:8080

Use your port instead of 8080 if you changed it.

The ARIS app loads directly from the rig. There is nothing else to host — the rig is the server. From here, follow First Connection to connect the app and set up your equipment.

Tip

Bookmark the rig’s address on the devices you image with. A dark site with zero internet does not lock you out of your own equipment. Once you claim the rig for remote access, each device signs in to it once, at home with internet (Sign in); after that it proves itself to the rig locally, with no cloud round-trip, so the rig keeps recognising it with the network unplugged.

What’s already on the image

• The ARIS backend on port 8080 by default, serving both the ARIS app and the rig API from the same address.
• INDI server and the full driver set — cameras, mounts, focusers, filter wheels, rotators, flat panels, GPS. Drivers load dynamically as devices are configured.
• PHD2 for guiding, run as a managed service.
• Plate solving: the ASTAP solver plus a Gaia-based star database, so solves run entirely on the rig with no internet.
• Siril, used for overnight deep stacking.
• mDNS discovery, so the rig announces itself as <hostname>.local and the app finds it automatically — no static IPs, no router configuration.
• USB reliability hardening: device rules, USB autosuspend disabled, and a fix for the Pi 5’s default USB current cap. These prevent the classic mid-night dropouts that plague USB-attached astro gear.
• Auto-start on boot for all of the above. Power-cycle the rig in the field and it comes back on its own.

Pair for remote access

Remote access adds this rig to your fleet at app.arisastro.com, so you can reach it from anywhere — no port forwarding, no router changes. In the app, on the rig’s network, open Settings → Connection → Remote access and tap Enable remote access, then follow Pair for Remote Access. It takes about two minutes. Claiming a rig flashed with ARIS Rig OS also turns on sign-in on its own network: each phone, tablet and browser signs in once with your account.

Install onto an existing machine

If you already have a Linux machine you want to use — a Jetson, a mini PC, a Pi running something else — install ARIS onto it instead of reflashing. The installer targets Raspberry Pi OS and Ubuntu on 64-bit ARM or x86, and sets up everything listed above. An NVIDIA Jetson has its own installer, for JetPack 6.1 or later (Ubuntu 22.04). Both need Python 3.11 or later and install it if it is missing.

Note

During the beta, the installer bundle is provided with your beta invite.

1. Copy the ARIS install bundle onto the machine.

2. Run the setup script as root:

   sudo ./setup_pi.sh

   On an NVIDIA Jetson, run its own script instead:

   sudo ./setup_jetson.sh

   If another program on that machine already uses port 8080, add --web-port with a free port, for example sudo ./setup_pi.sh --web-port 8085. Both scripts take it.

   Expect a long first run — it updates the OS and downloads the ~1.2 GB plate-solving star database. Everything is logged, and the script is safe to re-run if it’s interrupted.

3. Reboot. All ARIS services are enabled to start automatically, and the Pi 5 USB power change requires a restart to take effect.

Windows + NINA instead

If your imaging PC already runs NINA, you don’t need a Pi. The ARIS NINA plug-in turns the Windows machine into an ARIS rig: NINA stays your capture engine, and you plan, monitor, and control from ARIS on any device. See the NINA integration guide for setup.

NINA rigs support remote access too — pair one the same way, with a claim code. Remote access is in beta; some ARIS features are still Pi-only, listed in the NINA integration guide.