Go Back   IceInSpace > General Astronomy > General Chat

Reply
 
Thread Tools Rate Thread
  #41  
Old 23-09-2020, 08:03 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
I think they would have retained a lot more goodwill if they had telegraphed their intentions and made a clean break. Something like "From SGP V4 we will be transitioning to a subscription based sales model" and then comitting to at least an annual bugfix and security updates as required for V3.X for any users who did not care to move to a subscription. They actually have worked to keep this quiet, I saw mention on their forum a week or so ago of a move to the subscription model where one of the devs removed the link someone had posted to the new website with a comment on the lines of "We are not ready for this to be quite that public yet"

What are they going to do if someone exposes a big security vulnerability in V3.2 in a couple of months time which allows peoples PC's to be compromised, suck it up folks, pay up if you want it fixed?
Reply With Quote
  #42  
Old 24-09-2020, 07:22 AM
Saturn488
Registered User

Saturn488 is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2018
Location: Melbourne
Posts: 358
Quote:
Originally Posted by The_bluester View Post
I think they would have retained a lot more goodwill if they had telegraphed their intentions and made a clean break. Something like "From SGP V4 we will be transitioning to a subscription based sales model" and then comitting to at least an annual bugfix and security updates as required for V3.X for any users who did not care to move to a subscription. They actually have worked to keep this quiet, I saw mention on their forum a week or so ago of a move to the subscription model where one of the devs removed the link someone had posted to the new website with a comment on the lines of "We are not ready for this to be quite that public yet"

What are they going to do if someone exposes a big security vulnerability in V3.2 in a couple of months time which allows peoples PC's to be compromised, suck it up folks, pay up if you want it fixed?
Yeah. Or if they want to do a subscription based model, do one that every other company out there does. Pay a monthly/yearly fee and you get access to the software, forums, cloud storage, upgrades, the lot.

Paying to get the latest updates? No thanks. They might as well charge a small fee when we open the damn app to use!
Reply With Quote
  #43  
Old 24-09-2020, 10:24 AM
luka's Avatar
luka
Unregistered User

luka is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2007
Location: Perth, Australia
Posts: 1,164
Quote:
Originally Posted by Saturn488 View Post
They might as well charge a small fee when we open the damn app to use!
Don't give them any ideas
Reply With Quote
  #44  
Old 27-09-2020, 12:41 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Got NINA working last night. It took a little bit to get all my gear set up properly however it is now talking to everything.

Guiding, platesolving and autofocus worked flawlessly. I really like a number of aspects of the interface including the ability to lay it out and resize all frames. The sky atlas and framing features are neat and the sequencer is feature rich. New features are also being added regularly so I think this will be my app of choice going forward.
Reply With Quote
  #45  
Old 27-09-2020, 01:35 PM
h0ughy's Avatar
h0ughy (David)
Moderator

h0ughy is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: NEWCASTLE NSW Australia
Posts: 33,156
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
Got NINA working last night. It took a little bit to get all my gear set up properly however it is now talking to everything.

Guiding, platesolving and autofocus worked flawlessly. I really like a number of aspects of the interface including the ability to lay it out and resize all frames. The sky atlas and framing features are neat and the sequencer is feature rich. New features are also being added regularly so I think this will be my app of choice going forward.
peter,
would this software control the dome as well?
Reply With Quote
  #46  
Old 27-09-2020, 01:38 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
current 1.10 version doesn't but V1.11 is set to have dome control according to their forum
Reply With Quote
  #47  
Old 27-09-2020, 01:42 PM
h0ughy's Avatar
h0ughy (David)
Moderator

h0ughy is offline
 
Join Date: Apr 2005
Location: NEWCASTLE NSW Australia
Posts: 33,156
Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
current 1.10 version doesn't but V1.11 is set to have dome control according to their forum
well that would be great news, would they be beta testing the features?
Reply With Quote
  #48  
Old 27-09-2020, 01:45 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Quote:
Originally Posted by h0ughy View Post
well that would be great news, would they be beta testing the features?
The dome beta is due for release in weeks and version release in months.
Reply With Quote
  #49  
Old 28-09-2020, 08:02 AM
DavidTrap's Avatar
DavidTrap (David)
Really just a beginner

DavidTrap is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 3,032
NINA and Voyager are very similar in terms of capabilities. I’m torn between the two. Voyager worked very well first time out, but am haven’t really give. NINA a proper tryout.

Voyager seems to have the slight edge if setting up a night long run with multiple objects, but sequencer 2.0 in NINA sounds like it might be adding most of those capabilities. I don’t have an observatory with a motorised roof, so that’s not of great concern to me at this time.

Have you any experience with Nina and meridian flips? Voyager did this hands off the first time.

Voyager does auto focusing like Focusmax, but I think Nina does a v curve analysis each time? Any comments on that?

Do I buy a licence for Voyager, or give NINA another chance.

DT

Quote:
Originally Posted by peter_4059 View Post
Got NINA working last night. It took a little bit to get all my gear set up properly however it is now talking to everything.

Guiding, platesolving and autofocus worked flawlessly. I really like a number of aspects of the interface including the ability to lay it out and resize all frames. The sky atlas and framing features are neat and the sequencer is feature rich. New features are also being added regularly so I think this will be my app of choice going forward.
Reply With Quote
  #50  
Old 28-09-2020, 09:21 AM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
I am fairly well invested in Voyager at this point (Having evolved through both APT and SGP trying to get something that would reliably focus my SCT)

Just beware if you ask a question on Voyager focusing that there is a clash of terminology. At least in Voyager speak the single star focusing routine is a V curve, not the full field average as is done in SGP and produces what looks like a V curve to most people!

The "V curve" in Voyager is produced by the focus system as it characterises your optics using the first light wizard, and you can add more V curve runs after that and I assume it then averages the lot. From my understanding it compares star HFD (It uses stars with known magnitudes) to the recorded V curve (Which has a lot more data points than the standard 9 of an SGP focus run) to calculate the correct focus position, moving the focuser a few times to determine which side of focus it is on and confirm best focus. SGP is doing something broadly similar to the Voyager V curve characterisation each time it makes a focus run, but using the whole of field average HFR and a lot less data points.

I have found the V curve mode to be the most reliable focus routine and quick (Even allowing for a slew to a focus star and back) but you need either reasonably flat optics or to be imaging something small in the field of view to make the best of it. The full field focus routine is at least as quick as SGP is and in my experience, at least as robust, but you run the first light wizard for the V curve first which auto populates the step size etc.
Reply With Quote
  #51  
Old 28-09-2020, 04:07 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Quote:
Originally Posted by DavidTrap View Post
NINA and Voyager are very similar in terms of capabilities. I’m torn between the two. Voyager worked very well first time out, but am haven’t really give. NINA a proper tryout.

Voyager seems to have the slight edge if setting up a night long run with multiple objects, but sequencer 2.0 in NINA sounds like it might be adding most of those capabilities. I don’t have an observatory with a motorised roof, so that’s not of great concern to me at this time.

Have you any experience with Nina and meridian flips? Voyager did this hands off the first time.

Voyager does auto focusing like Focusmax, but I think Nina does a v curve analysis each time? Any comments on that?

Do I buy a licence for Voyager, or give NINA another chance.

DT
David,

I've now trialed all three (NINA, Voyager and SGP). I would say Voyager is strongest if you want to script a whole night session and walk away however I found the scripting quite clunky and didn't like the way each object needed to be set up in the script as well as elsewhere in the UI (that was some months ago and things might have changed since).

I really like the NINA UI and while it is still missing some of the capability the other two have, it seems to be developing rapidly and the approach the developer is taking reminds me of the early SGP days when user input seemed more welcome.

The two things NINA currently doesn't have that I would like to see are:
1. Rotator position in the driver is not necessarily the same as the plate solve solution and there doesn't seem to be a way to sync this currently. SGP has a sync function.
2. You can't currently specify a start and end time for each object in the sequence - just the number of subs. For an all night session this might be a bit of a limitation because the time to complete each object will vary depending on how many times it need to re-focus etc.

I tried the NINA flat wizard last night and couldn't get it to directly control the flat box output but it might be my misunderstanding of how it was meant to work. Not a big deal but perhaps a symptom of its relatively early days.

All three interface with PHD2 for guiding however I'm finding NINA much more reliable than my experience with SGP. This is a big deal if you want to set up an all night session. I think Voyager also had this covered well.

I'll persevere with NINA for now and if I find it too limiting I'll probably consider a switch to Voyager just to get more reliable unattended operation compared to SGP.

PS just realised I didn't answer your questions re meridian flip and focus.

I don't have any view of west at home so can't test flip so no help there. Re focusing, Voyager has two modes....one is traditional V-curve where it slews to a reference star, focuses and slews back to target. Other is focus on all stars in imaging FOV. Both worked well in Voyager however it took a bit of time on Teamviewer with Leo to get it all set up. I don't think I would have done it justice on my own.

NINA has a similar approach to SGP and the imaging FOV in Voyager. Only difference is NINA has a number of HFR vs focus position curve fit options you can choose from. You can also choose slew to a focus star in NINA however I haven't tried that option yet.

I've never had focusmax so can't compare.

Last edited by peter_4059; 28-09-2020 at 06:21 PM.
Reply With Quote
  #52  
Old 28-09-2020, 08:36 PM
DavidTrap's Avatar
DavidTrap (David)
Really just a beginner

DavidTrap is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2009
Location: Brisbane
Posts: 3,032
Thanks Gents,

I personally, like the slew to a star and V-Curve focus option, so will probably stay with Voyager.

I'm also hoping Voyager develops into an alternative for ACP to use at the school observatory, so being familiar with it's operation would be useful.

DT
Reply With Quote
  #53  
Old 04-10-2020, 05:31 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
I've now spent quite a few nights testing NINA and I think I've got to an issue that the current version cannot overcome. For the QSI cameras it can only connect using the ASCOM driver. It seems the currently available ASCOM drivers do not allow gain to be selected. I want to image L,Ha, OIII, SII at high gain 1x1 bin and RGB at low gain 2x2 bin, however without the ability to select gain, this is not possible in NINA.

Back to the drawing board.
Reply With Quote
  #54  
Old 05-10-2020, 11:07 AM
Wilsil's Avatar
Wilsil (Wilco)
Registered User

Wilsil is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2020
Location: Greenwood
Posts: 371
You guys are so far ahead of me. :-)
I have only started to use APT last Saturday and must say that it was so much easier.
The simple things like star alignment on a bigger screen (I am still using a DSLR).
Waiting for the EQmod cable to fully use APT.
I have NINA as well and like the clean interface, but haven't tried it yet.
Reply With Quote
  #55  
Old 05-10-2020, 11:34 AM
lazjen's Avatar
lazjen (Chris)
PI cult member

lazjen is offline
 
Join Date: Dec 2012
Location: Flaxton, Qld
Posts: 2,064
I'd love to try NINA, but until they get Dome support properly in place it's just unusable for me.

Voyager has been working fairly well for me overall and is easy to understand. I bought a licence but only intend to buy a 1 year support upgrade if and when I really need it. With these types of software subscriptions, that's the key to saving money.

I think eventually though, I've got to sort out my hardware setup, ditch Windows completely and go to Linux/Ekos full time.
Reply With Quote
  #56  
Old 05-10-2020, 12:32 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Yep - I'm back to playing with Voyager and will probably go that way. The thing I find frustrating with it is the dragscript seems so slow to edit. I'm also trying to work out a way to not start the next sequence until the object has cleared the trees, without having to enter the same data in multiple places.
Reply With Quote
  #57  
Old 05-10-2020, 02:17 PM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
What are you wanting to do Peter? run one sequence until a second target clears the trees and then move to that target? Or just wait until one target clears the trees before imaging it?

For a single target you could set it up with a "Do if HA between" and put the earlier hour angle to something that has it past the trees. To image two targets using the hour angle of the second one would be a little trickier but I reckon you could have two sequences in a dragscript, get it started and set a "Wait until" and work out the altitude that is good for target #1 and call that sequence with a "Do if" between hour angles using the co-ordinates of target #2, with the end hour angle being the hour angle that puts #2 clear of the trees before moving on to target 2. That second sequence could also be preceded by a "Do if" based on hour angle, or if you know you can image that target until dawn, use the timing in the call from the dragscript to start it immediately when the hour angle condition is met and image until dawn.

That should mean that Voyager will wait for the first target to reach an appropriate altitude before starting on it and will continue until the second target clears the trees at which time it will move over to it. It would be handy if there was a "wait until" based on hour angle as well, which I might put in as a feature suggestion as it can be more useful that altitude.

The flipside with dragscripts (Flipside from being a little slow to build initially, depending on how much you want to put in them) is the flexibility they offer in how you do things, and once you build one you are happy with you can fairly quickly recycle it by changing the target parameters and sequences that are called. I will often try to do two targets in a night, so the first one will be triggered by hour angles (Start and stop) picking a target in a good position to image early in the night, and then when that goes more than a couple of hours past the meridian, move on to something else that is now suitably positioned in the east. People do build very complex dragscripts for unattended setups with heaps of targets pre built all with "Do if between" conditions. Get the script right and the setup can run for weeks at a time without much intervention, if that is your fancy. I have not gone that far, just two targets in a night to make best use of the time things are highest.
Reply With Quote
  #58  
Old 05-10-2020, 02:55 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Thanks for the ideas Paul. I've spent quite a bit of time a year ago with dragscripts however I would prefer it if the program would get the RA/DEC info from the sequence directly rather than having to enter it in both places. There doesn't seem to be a way for either the Timing or Decision elements to work without having to enter the target RA and DEC in their config dialog box.
Reply With Quote
  #59  
Old 05-10-2020, 03:00 PM
peter_4059's Avatar
peter_4059 (Peter)
Big Scopes are Cool

peter_4059 is offline
 
Join Date: Jun 2007
Location: SE Tasmania
Posts: 4,532
Here's the "all night automated imaging" script I wrote last year as a trial.
Attached Files
File Type: txt RunMultipleSequences_V4.txt (18.9 KB, 7 views)
Reply With Quote
  #60  
Old 05-10-2020, 03:42 PM
The_bluester's Avatar
The_bluester (Paul)
Registered User

The_bluester is offline
 
Join Date: Feb 2011
Location: Kilmore, Australia
Posts: 3,342
You don't have to manually enter the RA/DEC any more. If you use the web dashboard (As the easiest/quickest way) you can generate target RA/DEC and save them in Roboclip, you can then fish the targets out of Roboclip both to create the sequence and import them into decision/timing lines in dragscripts. I just had a look, if you plan to just center on a specific target with a known name/catalog number you can generate those directly in Roboclip as well. I normally use the web dashboard so I can see what my framing should look like.
Reply With Quote
Reply

Bookmarks

Thread Tools
Rate This Thread
Rate This Thread:

Posting Rules
You may not post new threads
You may not post replies
You may not post attachments
You may not edit your posts

BB code is On
Smilies are On
[IMG] code is On
HTML code is Off

Forum Jump


All times are GMT +10. The time is now 03:01 AM.

Powered by vBulletin Version 3.8.7 | Copyright ©2000 - 2024, Jelsoft Enterprises Ltd.
Advertisement
Testar
Advertisement
Bintel
Advertisement