Fix Alpaca Safety Monitor Discovery in NINA

What’s happening

Your imaging PC finds the Alpaca Safety Monitor using a small network “discovery” broadcast. When Windows classifies your Ethernet connection as Public, the firewall blocks the Safety Monitor’s reply — so NINA never sees the device and can’t read your Safe/Unsafe status.

This fix adds one narrow firewall exception that allows only the Safety Monitor’s discovery reply from your local observatory network. It does not disable your firewall or expose your PC to the internet.

Before you start

• You’ll need Administrator access on the PC.

• Run this once on each computer that can’t find the Safety Monitor.

Steps

1. Open PowerShell as Administrator Click Start, type PowerShell, right-click Windows PowerShell, and choose Run as administrator. Click Yes if prompted.

2. Paste this command and press Enter:

New-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Alpaca Safety Monitor Discovery (UDP 32227)" -Direction Inbound -Protocol UDP -RemoteAddress 10.1.0.0/16 -RemotePort 32227 -Action Allow -Profile Any

When it works, you’ll see the rule details ending in Enabled : True.

3. Reconnect in NINA Go to Equipment → Safety Monitor, click Rescan, select your Alpaca Safety Monitor, and click Connect. The safety status should now appear.

What the command allows

• UDP traffic (the discovery message type)

• Only from your observatory network (10.1.0.0/16)

• Only from the Alpaca discovery port (32227)

Everything else stays blocked as before.

Remove it later (optional)

Remove-NetFirewallRule -DisplayName "Alpaca Safety Monitor Discovery (UDP 32227)"

If it still doesn’t connect

1. Confirm PowerShell was run as Administrator.

2. Use wired Ethernet, not Wi-Fi or a hotspot.

3. Restart NINA and rescan the Safety Monitor tab.

4. As a fallback, add the device manually in NINA using the Safety Monitor’s IP address and Alpaca port (your admin can provide these).

5. Still stuck? Contact support and mention it’s an Alpaca Safety Monitor discovery issue.