new version of ppmcentre available

[bird]

Just a quick heads-up, DP (david pretorius) has been testing and bug-finding on a new version of my ppmcentre utility, and it looks like it's now ready for other people to use, so if that's a tool that you're using in your processing work then have a look at the web page and grab the new version:

http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/software/ppmcentre

Support for Windows and Linux (and probably Mac and any other UNIX as well).

regards, Bird

[asimov]

Is there a 'tutorial' available for this program.

When I say I am 'command line program brain dead'.....I mean it! I have PPM centre on both computers & I have no concept on how to use it...I can't even get the program to start up. I'm a computer n00b, pure & simple.

[davidpretorius]

sort of:

http://precons.com/iis/articles/imaging_toucam_planets_notracking.a spx

read the bit about PPMCENTRE ( It will get you into the DOS or COMMAND prompt where you need to run it.) . it is based upon the old version, but basically i use this command now:


ppmcentre -width=400 -height=400 -outdir=out -qestimator -renumber=last irisjobs\mars_051220

instead of the one in the article:

ppmcentre irisjobs\mars_051116

These commands are listed at http://www.acquerra.com.au/astro/software/ppmcentre/

The new features that i now used are

-width=400

this and -height=400 make the 640x480 sized image smaller and thus quicker to process in registax

-outdir=out

the old version took all your old bmp images and centred the image on the originals. The new version now will process you files and then write them to a new directory. in this case "out"

-qestimator helps grade the images for sharpness

-renumber=last resorts the images using the numbers at the end of the filename. the resorting is based upon qestimator above.

you have to make sure that when converting you avis to bmp's that they have sequential number system at the end of at the beginning.

hope this helps

The centring side of this is very handy for dobbers, but for tracking guys, the centring is not as crucial. the qestimator will at least grade the images.

Bird is working on the sorting of images for shape as well, like you do when you eyeball them.

So hopefully, down the track, the program will sort the images by shape and by sharpness of image

[bird]

...also, if you're not sure about using the command line, then I have some good news fr you - there will be a "graphical" front end written in the next few weeks that will make it easier to use.

The commandline will always be there, perfect for running large batch jobs and crunching through lots of images, but the GUI will make it a bit easier for people who want to use the program without working too hard :-)

Bird

[Muddy Diver]

Hi Bird

What does your software do exactly? sorry for the dumb question but it sounds a little advanced for me. Does it handle basic or more advanced image processing tasks?

Barry

[bird]

Hi Barry. At the moment it's a pretty basic program. It started out as a place for me to code up ad-hoc image processing functions, and also locate and centre planet images in each frame.

Where possible, I use other software, but when I find a bug or a limit in other software that I don't like then I'll add that functionality to my program instead so I don't get blocked.

The main thing that you might use my program to do is locate and centre each image in a sequence of frames, and then shrink the size of the frames to make processing faster in registax

If you have your frames as a video, then you'll need to use something like virtualdub to export them as separate files in BMP format into a directory, and then run my ppmcentre utility from that directory.

I think Dave Pretorius has a tutorial around somewhere that gives some examples, maybe he'll read this post and add the link...?

regards, Bird

[davidpretorius]

post #3 replying to asimov!

does your scope track muddy?

[Robert_T]

I be one of them.... thanks Bird!

[Robert_T]

Hi Bird, just wondered if there's been any progress on the graphical interface for ppmcentre for us command-line challenged techophobes?

cheers,

[bird]

Well, the backend part has made large steps forward, but there is no GUI as yet :-)

The basic design will be for a two-part system, the backend is where all the processing happens and is a revised version of ppmcentre, and the frontend is the user interface with all the widgets and flashing lights :-) The two parts will run as separate processes and talk to each other to exchange data.

This way I can still have the backend available as a commandline-driven, scriptable program. It will even be possible to have the backend running on a different machine to the frontend - i.e. I would have the backend running on my "astro" server here that holds all my data., and then run the frontend on the machine in front of me. They communicate across the network.

It's taken a while to think out how I want to implement this, and now that christmas has passed I'm finding that work is starting to take some of my time, but I'm still making progress.

Bird