I've been experimenting with Voyager for a while and in particular the scripting function for all night unattended imaging. I've come a long way and have now had several nights where I've switched the pc on, started the script and Voyager has looked after everything right thought to shut down at dawn. Last night I decided it would be fun to set up the all sky camera in a position where it could see the sky and the scope.
As you can see from the timelapse, I only have a limited piece of sky to shoot in so I have set altitude and hour angle limits per target so Voyager knows when to start and stop each target. It sits and waits for 10 minutes if no target is ready to image. This way the script needs no adjustment over time other than choosing which targets (I have slots for 5 per night in my script).
Yes, thanks for sharing Peter. Pretty nice all-sky camera to show the milky way passing overhead so clearly.
I've been doing quite a lot of reading up on NINA recently after you mentioned it and some other options. Wouldn't expect it outperform Voyager in the automation department, but seems to have really come along in recent years with very active contributors. Might have a play during future bright moon "engineering nights" and see how stacks up against SGP.
Thanks Marc. It completed another all nighter last night. I think it is cloudy tonight so time for some planning for next targets and some tweaks to settings.
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Originally Posted by RobF
Yes, thanks for sharing Peter. Pretty nice all-sky camera to show the milky way passing overhead so clearly.
I've been doing quite a lot of reading up on NINA recently after you mentioned it and some other options. Wouldn't expect it outperform Voyager in the automation department, but seems to have really come along in recent years with very active contributors. Might have a play during future bright moon "engineering nights" and see how stacks up against SGP.
I was surprised the Milky Way showed up that clearly here. The old ASI120M is doing a great job considering the environment it is operating in (inside a sealed box with a Raspberry PI keeping it nice and warm.
I did spend some time with NINA and thought is was very good. The only issue for me was it didn't have the ability to control my QSI with native drivers, only ASCOM. Unfortunately the ASCOM driver doesn't allow low gain mode to be selected with 2x2 binning and that is how I'm shooting RGB. The other thing I found strange about NINA is they use Discord rather than a traditional forum. If you post a question the response seems to get lost in what seems more like a chat- might just be me not understanding how to configure it though. Other than those two niggles it looks like a really powerful tool and is getting better rapidly. Another option is CCDCiel - same developer as Cartes du Ciel.
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Originally Posted by h0ughy
Wow you have that down to the mm you are indeed wizard class Peter
It's taken quite a bit of experimentation but I've tried to set it up so I don't have to keep changing things other than the selected targets. I'm working on a project to automate that at the moment however it needs some Python skills that I'm lacking so currently at proof of concept stage.
Fantastic job to have it select sequential targets within your horizon limits.
I believe the author of the software is heading in the direction of autonomous target selection - then it’ll be a definite alternative to ACP Scheduler for remote autonomous operation. You might not have to do the programming yourself
I bought a licence for Voyager last year and found it fantastic - pretty much ran the first night without intervention. NINA also looks good. I’ve been away for the last few days so have missed the opportunity to fire up my gear for the first time in months - hopefully the weather gods will be look kindly on us after a meagre summer of astronomy.
Fantastic job to have it select sequential targets within your horizon limits.
I believe the author of the software is heading in the direction of autonomous target selection - then it’ll be a definite alternative to ACP Scheduler for remote autonomous operation. You might not have to do the programming yourself
I bought a licence for Voyager last year and found it fantastic - pretty much ran the first night without intervention. NINA also looks good. I’ve been away for the last few days so have missed the opportunity to fire up my gear for the first time in months - hopefully the weather gods will be look kindly on us after a meagre summer of astronomy.
DT
Hi David. I was aware Leonardo is working on the "Advanced Version" of Voyager and I've heard it is going to have the ability to pick targets based on user criteria. That will be a massive breakthrough compared to more traditional approaches where you have to plan everything in advance. I'm not sure of the time frame for its release or how much it will cost.
Meanwhile, I love the challenge of tinkering and making stuff (I suspect you've already picked up on that ) I'm really interested in learning Python as it has some handy astronomy libraries and it also seems to be the goto language for AI and machine learning - who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?
I have not dived in quite as deep as you. I have a single target dragscript template, and a two target template as I have the advantage of amost the full sky to point at. All I do is create a sequence per target then I take the templates and add the sequence and use the robotarget coordinates I generated to begin with to populate a wait timer until whichever target I am adding reaches my altitude threshold before starting (Virtual FOV and robotarget were huge selling points of Voyager for me)
I'm in a small inner city block near Brisbane with huge neighbors trees all around. My maximum window on a single target is 2 hours and some are just one hour hence the reason my script has 5 targets and only ever points East.
I have a sequence defined per target and after choosing 5 targets, do a save as for each of these to SEQ_1...SEQ_5 so the dragscript doesn't need to change. All the coords and limits are already pre-defined in the sequence files.
I haven't used robotarget but do use the Virtual FOV to do the initial framing when I create the sequence files.
My dragscript has evolved and grown (>600 lines) as I've added physical assets like a cloud monitor and power switching so it might have some stuff that is redundant now but it is working so I'll stick with it for now.
Hi David. I was aware Leonardo is working on the "Advanced Version" of Voyager and I've heard it is going to have the ability to pick targets based on user criteria. That will be a massive breakthrough compared to more traditional approaches where you have to plan everything in advance. I'm not sure of the time frame for its release or how much it will cost.
Meanwhile, I love the challenge of tinkering and making stuff (I suspect you've already picked up on that ) I'm really interested in learning Python as it has some handy astronomy libraries and it also seems to be the goto language for AI and machine learning - who says you can't teach an old dog new tricks?
Yep - I hope he doesn’t go silly with the price tag. ACP is functional, but stuck in the 90s in terms of its interface - editing config files with a text editor is quaint. (I’m considering this as an option for the school observatory)
I hope to get some more experience with the software over the next few months, though my setup doesn’t need the level of automation you are using.
I hope to get some more experience with the software over the next few months, though my setup doesn’t need the level of automation you are using.
DT
For me the automation allows me to make the most of a clear night while still getting sleep so I can work the next day. Prior to using Voyager I really needed to keep an eye on it throughout the session in case anything screwed up. Ive certainly captured a lot more data on each target than ever before.
I also enjoy the challenge. The roof on my pool pump shed is manual and the size of the shed makes it difficult to automate. When we finally move to Tassie I'll look at a roll off roof setup that can be fully automated so a lot of this is practice for that time.
What a fantastic time for amateur imaging. Just when you think we've already got it good, it gets better in the software offerings department.
You've inspired me again to roll up the sleeves and check out NINA and Voyager Peter. Come about CDC has never "done it for me". Perhaps being too harsh.
Agree the Discord approach for NINA is unusual - I've only recently learned the basics of Discord, and would greatly prefer a forum approach.
What a fantastic time for amateur imaging. Just when you think we've already got it good, it gets better in the software offerings department.
You've inspired me again to roll up the sleeves and check out NINA and Voyager Peter. Come about CDC has never "done it for me". Perhaps being too harsh.
Agree the Discord approach for NINA is unusual - I've only recently learned the basics of Discord, and would greatly prefer a forum approach.
Thanks again for sharing your progress.
True Rob,
I can't believe how fast things are advancing now. In the last few years we've got multi star guiding, object centering with platesolving, instant messing from the app, great advances in autofocus reliability, integration with environmental devices and power switching, automated flats...the list goes on.
If you want to see the ultimate setup, take a look at what Tim Hutchison has done:
The other thing I found strange about NINA is they use Discord rather than a traditional forum. If you post a question the response seems to get lost in what seems more like a chat- might just be me not understanding how to configure it though.
That's interesting. I'm on their discord a lot, and rarely does a question go unanswered. It's usually in a very small window when all the devs are away/asleep (Discord tells you if they're online).
Usually an @ or a bump will get the question answered, but that's so infrequent.