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Old 06-04-2020, 08:34 AM
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Andy01 (Andy)
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MacOS Capture software (again)

Hi folks,

I've been a dedicated mac user for six years now - driving my QSI camera via Nebulosity 3, guiding with PHD2 and controlling my Tak NJP mount with Sky Safari.

However, I've been increasingly frustrated with Nebulosity though as it's constantly prone to hanging and crashing.

I tried Neb 4 but it was worse! Then I downloaded & tried Neb 4.3, 4.41 etc. but they are still crash prone....

So now that I'm stuck at home for the indefinite future with the current lockdown, I'm seriously looking at alternative software, and would love one that can control autofocus on my recently acquired Starizona micro touch focus system. (Nebulosity can drive it manually in steps.)

Seems that both KStars/EKOS & Cloudmakers apps claim to do most or all of the following...

capture,

guiding,

autofocus,

filter sequence,

mount control,

goto,

meridian flips,

plate solving.


I briefly looked at The Sky X but it's very expensive, and I heard that it doesn't do auto meridian flips unless you own a Paramount? (I have a TAK NJP)


So has anyone used either or both the Cloudmakers or Ekos/KStars apps on their macs with reliable success?

Which is better?

I'm not a programmer, so I'd prefer a plug & play solution.

Thanks for your input!

Cheers
Andy

Last edited by Andy01; 06-04-2020 at 09:43 AM.
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Old 06-04-2020, 08:57 AM
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Atmos (Colin)
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I’ve got TSX and although it is a great planetarium I personally wouldn’t use it for image capture if you’re wanting to do sequencing.
I’ve been a forever Mac user and use either BootCamp or Parallels (Parallels at the moment) with Windows 10 on my older MacBook Pro.

The other alternative is to look at using Wine to run some windows programs.
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Old 06-04-2020, 11:44 AM
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The_bluester (Paul)
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Once we can do an online hookup to sort out the windows side of your bootcamp fence I reckon you will end up happy enough there. If I was sure I could make it happen I would suggest just moving your bootcamp over to Win 10. I know plenty of people still hate it but W7 is getting to be a dinosaur.
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Old 14-04-2020, 10:20 AM
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Ok then, making some real progress now!

Got Ekos up and running on my Macbook - Camera, Guider, Focuser & Tak NJP mount all connected (didn't do anything different with the mount connections, it just suddenly worked!).

Ekos did AutoFocus & Capture with my QSI 6162 with no problems, mount appeared to be tracking too.

Ekos did say that PHD2 couldn't access the SX lodestar guide camera, but could see the guide star, interesting?

I havn't downloaded the plate solve libraries yet, but delighted to get this far at least in one night!

Keen to learn how to & get PHD2 setup properly and how to program a sequence to focus>choose a filter, exp time & number of subs > choose a different filter>refocus>take next set etc.

Guess I'll take some time now to watch all the online tutorials and google what to do next!

Cheers

Andy
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Old 14-04-2020, 01:34 PM
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Sunfish (Ray)
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Interesting to hear you have Ekos working on the Mac. I too have found Nebulosity crashes.

I use KStars Ecos in Ubuntu on an old laptop often as an alternative to Win 10 Sharpcap which I find also crashes.

There are some odd features but I think , after the quirks are ironed out, the program works well and is setup as a complete remote suite of functions. I will have to try it on my Mac .

The filter sequencing in the capture module is simple by indicating , time , filter and name on the left and adding to the play list + on the right. . The odd part is that the gain , offset settings are made in the Indi setup panel which comes up when it first starts, not the capture module . So to change the gain from default for a different item in the play list going back to the Indi setup panel camera tab and scrolling to the right to find the controls tab and changing there before adding the item to the playlist. So do not accidentally close the Indi set up window after it starts, or any window really. I also found the two different dither settle settings, ( thanks Colin) one for the dither and settle before guiding and one for the settle of guiding before capturing another frame. A bit complex but that is the way it works.
Once PHD is started and connected, if external guiding is selected , then guiding can be done by selecting guide in the Ekos guide module , selecting the correct camera, which takes over PHD2. I already had PHD2 set up and calibrated first.
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Old 14-04-2020, 01:35 PM
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By capture module , I mean I use the camera tab in Ekos.

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunfish View Post
Interesting to hear you have Ekos working on the Mac. I too have found Nebulosity crashes.

I use KStars Ecos in Ubuntu on an old laptop often as an alternative to Win 10 Sharpcap which I find also crashes.

There are some odd features but I think , after the quirks are ironed out, the program works well and is setup as a complete remote suite of functions. I will have to try it on my Mac .

The filter sequencing in the capture module is simple by indicating , time , filter and name on the left and adding to the play list + on the right. . The odd part is that the gain , offset settings are made in the Indi setup panel which comes up when it first starts, not the capture module . So to change the gain from default for a different item in the play list going back to the Indi setup panel camera tab and scrolling to the right to find the controls tab and changing there before adding the item to the playlist. So do not accidentally close the Indi set up window after it starts, or any window really. I also found the two different dither settle settings, ( thanks Colin) one for the dither and settle before guiding and one for the settle of guiding before capturing another frame. A bit complex but that is the way it works.
Once PHD is started and connected, if external guiding is selected , then guiding can be done by selecting guide in the Ekos guide module , selecting the correct camera, which takes over PHD2. I already had PHD2 set up and calibrated first.
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Old 14-04-2020, 02:48 PM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunfish View Post
Interesting to hear you have Ekos working on the Mac. I too have found Nebulosity crashes.
Hi Ray, I discovered a hidden preference in Nebulosity with has now made version 4.3 rock solid. Simply uncheck "use seperate capture thread". That's it, magic!

Quote:
Originally Posted by Sunfish View Post
The filter sequencing in the capture module is simple by indicating , time , filter and name on the left and adding to the play list + on the right. . The odd part is that the gain , offset settings are made in the Indi setup panel which comes up when it first starts, not the capture module . So to change the gain from default for a different item in the play list going back to the Indi setup panel camera tab and scrolling to the right to find the controls tab and changing there before adding the item to the playlist. So do not accidentally close the Indi set up window after it starts, or any window really. I also found the two different dither settle settings, ( thanks Colin) one for the dither and settle before guiding and one for the settle of guiding before capturing another frame. A bit complex but that is the way it works.
Once PHD is started and connected, if external guiding is selected , then guiding can be done by selecting guide in the Ekos guide module , selecting the correct camera, which takes over PHD2. I already had PHD2 set up and calibrated first.
Thanks for that, I'll have a play with it - will also try PHD2 again, although I thought I had it right?
Mind you it was 2am when I finished up, so I may have been overtired by that point
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Old 14-04-2020, 04:20 PM
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You can still use PHD2 separately if you prefer and I started that way. I began using Ekos to take over PHD as the dither setting and settle numbers matched those in other software so the dither in PHD is then left as default 1x.
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Old 14-04-2020, 04:32 PM
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BTW. Thanks for the Nebulosity tip. I will try that when I get the WIN10 outside. Too much software.
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Old 15-04-2020, 01:58 PM
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I am going to have to build myself a Linux box and get Ekos going on it so I can help you if you run in to issues getting plate solving going.
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Old 15-04-2020, 08:10 PM
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I tried plate solving last night on Ekos and although there was success with a tick box and then the mount moved the target into frame, it was still not centred. Any tips gratefully received.

Yet to try the other modes, using previous nights image. Ubuntu makes things complex but at least it does work after wading through the nested settings and no pay wall.
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Old 17-04-2020, 08:50 AM
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Mixed success last night> positives were

-Guiding module connected to PHD2 & was happily guiding

-Mount Module connected and was able to manually move the mount using the virtual keypad

-Camera module connected, managed to create sequences with different filters AF on filter change

-Focus Module connected, ran well (if slowly even at 2x2 binning) AF runs varied from 8-18 steps depending on starting point

Negatives> a big one! - I finally finished testing everything and had everything ready to go but when I pressed play on the capture sequence it wouldn't start the AF prior to exposing - the AF said it was exposing, and an image popped up in the fits viewer which said 'ready' - but nothing else happened! It just would'nt begin the focus run.

Troubleshooting...

- disconnected & reconnected the focuser in Indi

- turned off power to focuser, reconnected indi & ekos

- disconnected & reconnected camera, turned off camera & restarted etc.

- disconnected & reconnected guider etc.


Finally quit & restarted K Stars, which said indi driver had crashed - then restarted etc.


Sadly - none of these worked - just got the same result each time - sequence would not start due to AF not starting properly.

At 11:30pm I went back to Nebulosity & happily imaged until 3am when the clouds rolled in!

Guessing that 1) if I restarted my laptop (13" Macbook pro late 2011, 8gb ram, High Sierra) the problem would resolve itself.

or 2) I'm missing something or doing something wrong in the camera module ?

I'm not using the scheduler yet as I havn't managed to figure out how or where to load the fits index files, seems there's no clear documentation on how to set that up!

I understand the Astrometry.net is bundled with Kstars. I found the KStars> Ekos>Align>advanced> setup which when activated ran terminal- which then downloaded & installed "Homebrew" and modified the OS (eek scary) & a bunch of other scripted commands that ended with "to set up see Homebrew help" or something similar?


No Idea what to do next!

I've established my FOV is 1.35 x 2.2 degrees =132 arc mins.

Accordingly I downloaded the index 4204 - 4212.fits files but what do I do with them?

Would value some help or any suggestions please from anyone who has got this working on a mac on where to go from here
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Old 18-04-2020, 08:52 PM
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Sunfish (Ray)
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Not sure about the Mac problems. Scary indeed and have not tried outside unbuntu. I have noticed that if there is any fault in the guiding or some other required sequence the capturing will stop until this is resolved and will not start. You could try separately focussing at first to isolate this problem.
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Old 27-05-2020, 06:19 AM
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xthestreams (Paul)
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Great question, I'm doing everything I can to NOT use Windows but tools like Voyager are making it harder and harder to resits.

Personally, I've been using kstars/ekos on a Raspberry Pi 4 for direct telescope connection (sitting on the mount/OTA itself most of the time) and then the Mac client for setting up and managing the schedule and session and it's reasonably stable, a few drop outs here and there that mainly had to do with my laptop going into sleep mode when left unattended which terminates the schedule (I would have hoped/imagined that the schedule would be downloaded to the client to run autonomously but that's not the case.

Otherwise the main issue I have is what FITS file naming and management, but that's more of a personal preference thing, I'd like more file naming options but the guys over at indilib.org are super responsive and keen to improve and there's discussion going on now as to how to improve.

If you're a fan of Macs/Linux, open source and a growing library of highly scriptable automation, highly recommended. BUT you'll need to be okay with the odd bug/crash - I certainly wouldn't be comfortable knowing it was the control system for an Airbus 380.

p.s. yes, I know, why am I using a laptop?! - simple reason, I can check on my runs as I get into bed and REALLY annoy my partner with my 24 hours a day :-)
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Old 27-05-2020, 06:23 AM
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xthestreams (Paul)
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Sorry Andy and forgot to mention that yes, you really are best off installing Homebrew and doing some minor tinkering but it's generally pretty "follow the script" and you're ok. Did you wind up resolving your problems?

Strongly recommend running the actual control for your obsy on an RPi - that way if there is a reboot required, you're just rebooting the remote device.

I've just realised that's hardly a ringing endorsement...
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