I ended up setting up APCC Pro (thanks for auto-emailing the license, A-P team!) that'd be in another video of its own. Setup and use have been much easier than I remember it to be from my last time working with my Mach1 (perhaps I've learned more since then, and things are just more familiar, concept-wise). During my recent tests, I also tried sticking with Windows RDP, which worked like a charm every time without a glitch to connect from my MacBook to the mini PC, without requiring a monitor.

Both APCC & the A-P v2 driver have been setup over REST API & IP and avoid virtual and real serial ports. I find IP to be more universally understood and easier to work with than USB. All wired ethernet cables, though. Not trusting wireless for mount control (beyond initialization) just yet.

ie, 

a) APCC -> V2 driver over REST API

b) driver -> mount over a TCP/IP connection. I love the fact that I can use IP to talk to mount.

c) Disabled virtual ports and cleaned up existing ones to silence some errors around them

That said, as a backup, I've also been going through testing the Sky Safari a bit thoroughly the last few days. It seems to be a good alternative, especially when looking to use ASIAIR... or just by itself, for EAA or Visual users.

I ended up recording two videos along this process:

Feedback is welcome as comments on the video or over here. I hope to see more videos from folks over here.. some of you are doing some hard-core stuff, so it would be good to put them out there for others to pick up and onboard (and fix issues) easily.