Getting started

The whole install is: write a card, power up, open a web page on your phone. Nothing here needs a keyboard plugged into the Pi.

What you need

Raspberry Pi	Pi 5 recommended, Pi 4 works.
Power supply	The official 5V/5A (Pi 5) or 5V/3A (Pi 4). Underpowering a USB3 camera shows up as mysterious disconnects mid-night, not as an obvious power error.
Storage	64 GB+ microSD. A high-endurance card if you plan to shoot RAW — see Storage & RAW.
Camera	A Pi camera module. The HQ Camera / IMX477 is the recommended one and what Skylapse is developed against. A ZWO ASI USB camera may also work; see Cameras.
Lens	A fisheye, or you are photographing a rectangle of sky rather than the sky. See Cameras & lenses.
Optional	A DS3231 RTC module (~$5) — a Pi has no battery-backed clock, so it boots with a stale time until it reaches the network.

Weatherproof housing and dew heater are covered on the Hardware page. The complete reference build, with prices, is there too.

1. Write the card

1. Download skylapse.img.xz from the latest release.
2. Open Raspberry Pi Imager and pick your device — Raspberry Pi 5 (or whichever Pi you have).
3. Under Choose OS, scroll all the way to the bottom and pick Use custom, then select the skylapse.img.xz you downloaded.
4. Choose storage — your microSD card — and hit Write.

Imager will not offer its customisation screen for a custom image, so there is nowhere to enter Wi-Fi here — that’s expected. The camera asks for your Wi-Fi itself on first boot, from your phone, in the next step.

Put the written card in the Pi and power up. The first boot expands the filesystem and takes a minute or two longer than later ones.

2. Open it

The freshly written card knows nothing about your Wi-Fi yet, so the camera serves its own network. Join Skylapse-Setup from your phone’s Wi-Fi settings — it is open, no password — and go to:

http://10.42.0.1

Setup runs on the first visit: joining your Wi-Fi, camera with a live test shot, where the camera is, what to capture, and optionally a password. A couple of minutes on a phone, and every answer can be changed later from the tabs across the top.

That is the whole install. No terminal, no config files, no account, nothing in the cloud.

If it says “No camera detected”

That is usually not a fault. Raspberry Pi OS identifies cameras by reading a chip that many third-party boards — including most HQ/IMX477 clones — simply do not have. On the Camera tab, open “My camera isn’t being detected”, pick your sensor, and tap Enable and restart. No terminal needed.

Then pull the power for 15 seconds and plug it back in. This is the step people miss. Restarting applies the setting, but it does not cut power to the sensor, and most camera boards will not come up until it has genuinely been off. On this project’s own hardware the declare → restart → power cycle sequence works every time, and stopping after the restart does not. The page tells you when, and picks up by itself afterwards.

3. Point it at the sky

Start focus assist from the dashboard, zoom to 8×, and turn the lens ring until the sharpness number peaks. Nothing is written to the card while focusing, and it exits by itself after 15 minutes. Then leave it: capture follows the schedule you set, and a dawn timelapse renders itself every morning.

Next: the screens, or turn on phone alerts so you know if it ever stops.