Astro photography tool - Page 11

pmrid (Peter) · #**201** 13-02-2011, 05:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoddha

Thanks! I'm trying to give my best

Hi Ivo,
using the 1.35 Beta last night on a Win7 machine and APT the ONLY program running. I had earlier decided to run PHD off a separate laptop to eliminate any possible clash between the 2.
I had several lockups - the message Win7 throw up is something to the effect "This program has ceased opearting" or something similar. On several of those occasions, I had Live View ON and had tried to activate the Focusing Aid Panel and whenever it happened, the Focusing Aid box appeared only as a pale pink rectangle of the same shape. I was running at 1024x768 I think. A few times, the Focusing Aid box did appear and did function correctly so sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. I haven't been able to think of a cause. I thought you might.

Peter

mswhin63 (Malcolm) · #**202** 13-02-2011, 06:19 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by pmrid

Hi Ivo,
using the 1.35 Beta last night on a Win7 machine and APT the ONLY program running. I had earlier decided to run PHD off a separate laptop to eliminate any possible clash between the 2.
I had several lockups - the message Win7 throw up is something to the effect "This program has ceased opearting" or something similar. On several of those occasions, I had Live View ON and had tried to activate the Focusing Aid Panel and whenever it happened, the Focusing Aid box appeared only as a pale pink rectangle of the same shape. I was running at 1024x768 I think. A few times, the Focusing Aid box did appear and did function correctly so sometimes it did, sometimes it didn't. I haven't been able to think of a cause. I thought you might.

Peter

I had the same issue but on the current stable version, the problem with mine is concurrently running another feature at the same time (Stack I think), of all things I can remember what that feature is exactly.

Yoddha · #**203** 13-02-2011, 07:17 PM

Peter, Malcolm,

Tomorrow will use one of the PCs in the office to try reproduce the problem on Win7... Can you remember more details? Did you are moving the the focusing panel or it was in place during the crash?

mswhin63 (Malcolm) · #**204** 13-02-2011, 07:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoddha

Peter, Malcolm,

Tomorrow will use one of the PCs in the office to try reproduce the problem on Win7... Can you remember more details? Did you are moving the the focusing panel or it was in place during the crash?

All i can remember at this stage is that another feature was enabled but hard to say which one it is. I would activate the Focus panel and the box would appear with no detail in it then the crash would appear.

The tricky thing for me was it only happened about twice. Happening a night I sort of forgot the next day.

Window 7 for me as well.

Yoddha · #**205** 13-02-2011, 07:38 PM

Thanks Malcolm!

Tomorrow will ask my wife to give a try again, she has talent to find hidden bugs

pmrid (Peter) · #**206** 14-02-2011, 02:33 AM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Yoddha

P Can you remember more details? Did you are moving the the focusing panel or it was in place during the crash?

Yes. I would have clicked and held the cursor on the focusing box to move it into place.
Peter

adman (Adam) · #**207** 14-02-2011, 01:27 PM

I have just downloaded the beta version and have not as yet tried it out, but one thing occurred to me....

my QHY5 is connected directly to the guide port of my G11 using the "on-camera" setting in PHD. In order for APT to move the mount do I need to connect to the mount using ASCOM/GPUSB, or can it do it with my current setup?

Thanks
Adam

Yoddha · #**208** 14-02-2011, 05:06 PM

Hi Adam,

If you want to control the mount through APT you have to make an ASCOM connection. If you use other software like planetarium then choose one of the ASCOM hubs.

Yoddha · #**209** 14-02-2011, 10:55 PM

Peter, Malcolm,

Today we gave a good test of APT with my wife under Win7. We were not be able to reproduce the problem

no matter what we tried. Maybe the issue was related to something that I changed after the beta was released?!?!

Let see how the final 1.40 will behave in your environment. BTW I just decided disable 'LV Stack' while Focusing panel is active, mainly because the stack pulses affect the FWHM reading and make it unusable...

mswhin63 (Malcolm) · #**210** 14-02-2011, 11:34 PM

Thanks Ivo, I will continue to look at the issue and see if i can remember some procedures that lead up to the issue.

Is there a debug file that I can look at for the program?

Yoddha · #**211** 14-02-2011, 11:46 PM

Thanks Malcolm! There is a log file, but these actions are not logged in it

Yoddha · #**212** 24-02-2011, 01:46 AM

Some quick news

The Dutch version of the tooltips was updated with the new texts in v.1.40 A lot of thanks Henrik! Also there are some small fixes in the English version. Both can be got from the Download page...

wasyoungonce (Brendan) · #**213** 24-02-2011, 07:17 PM

Hi Ivo, I tried the Auto-dither last night. Initially had some trouble in that the Atmospheric conditions and APT was auto cancelling the exposure when it got above .7 pixels from the guide star (I believe this is the default).

With my set up, 450D, I get 1.12 arc seconds per pixel so it's easy to wander .7 pixels..typically around 3 arc seconds viewing at best. You can see this on the "PHD State" info.

So I set the Auto cancel distance to 2 pixels..all was then good.

But I wanted to ask..the max Auto dither distance is "5" (I suspect this is pixels)...I wanted to ask is this normal..I kinda would have expected to dither anything up to 10 pixels? Sorry if the question is "stupid"..just asking?

.

Oh and thanks for the inclusion of Auto dither...it's excellent! No pics yet I was doing Focal reducer tests.

Yoddha · #**214** 24-02-2011, 07:36 PM

Hi Wasyoungonce,

I'm glad that you like the new features

Thank you for the helping info you had given!

The dithering the commands 1-5 define the aggressiveness of the move, then in PHD there is algorithm to make the move random. The commands are hard-coded in PHD and other values are ignored. There is no explicit documentation about this, so the best description is found in the Nebulosity doc:

In the dialog, tell it how much “dither” to send. The dither sent will be a random number of pixels in X and Y, scaled by the level you pull down here. In the lowest level, the random numbers will vary from -0.5 to 0.5 pixels and in the highest they will vary from -1.5 to 1.5 pixels in the guide frame. Since people typically guide at shorter focal lengths than they image at, this will usually have a much larger effect in your main images.

So the max possible distance is up to 3 pixels... There is nothing stupid in the question!

Yoddha · #**215** 28-02-2011, 06:19 PM

More news

Adam was very kind to update the Polish translation and now it is available on the site! Many thanks Adam!!!

Also a French translation is in progress

Yoddha · #**216** 29-03-2011, 10:50 PM

Hello,

The new version is here

As usual there is a list of changes :

2011/3/29 - v.1.50 New features and bug fixes
-Added: DARV - Drift Alignment by Robert Vice method using LiveView - Never implemented in astro program before! (in full version only)
-Added: Auto detection of the dial mode and advise for the needed mode
-Added: New plan type - Bias plan. Automatically selects the fastest shutter speed supported by the camera
-Added: AV dial mode support for Flat plans - the exposure duration will be determined by the camera
-Added: "L_", "D_", "F_" and "B_" (for Light, Dark, Flat and Bias plans) are added in the beginning of the file names for easier post-processing
-Added: Image Path selection dialog (full version only)
-Added: Autostar extension of Telescope Panel with all hand-box keys – available for Meade mounts. (full version only)
-Added: 600D and 1100D support (may require a non released yet update of the Canon library)
-Change: Telescope connection will not be closed when the panel is closed (full version only)
-Updated: User's Guide document (the new things are in green)
-Fixed: A problem with 60D LiveView
-Fixed: Fix of the problem when ASCOM and EQMode are used. Now tracking will not stop after a move (full version only)
-Fixed: Some UI issues under Win7

There are updates since the 1.45 beta, so it is advisable to upgrade it!

More news! The site has a new section – Gallery. It will be great if you help to extend it with your images!

Clear skies!

wasyoungonce (Brendan) · #**217** 30-03-2011, 08:05 AM

Jeez Ivo I didn't get a chance to even try the 1.45 beta yet!

Thanks Ivo

Yoddha · #**218** 30-03-2011, 09:40 PM

Looks like the weather is terrible almost everywhere

BTW there will be a small update of the full version in the next few days. DARV will become even more accurate

Yoddha · #**219** 08-04-2011, 12:42 AM

There is small update of APT - 1.51. The changes are :

- Better DARV. The optimal position is displayed as red circle (in full version only)
- Usage of the latest Canon library 2.10.0 that supports 600D and 1100D
- ISO and exposure are restored the previous values after LiveView session
- Verified that 600D works with APT 1.51

Yoddha · #**220** 10-05-2011, 09:37 PM

Some news from kitchen

As many of you know the work on APT never stops, the reason for the long delay in the new version is because there are too much new things will be included in 1.60 and this takes time.

Also with Robert Vice and Benjamin are working to make DARV implementation more accurate

Meanwhile the Gallery page is growing fast with images from all over the world!