Here are some request that i believe would benefit this software.
I use an Atik 383L+ and when i end my imaging i want the warm up procedure to warm the camera until it hits 0% power consumption and then turn off (i come from maxim DL and it is a very useful feature). Right now the only way to warm up the camera is by knowing the ambient temperature of my imaging site by using a USB thermometer and warming up my camera to 3-5 below ambient. This method can cause errors especially for those that don’t use external thermometer to measure ambient temperature and warm up their cameras above ambient temperature.
When using external temperature/humidity sensors add the ability of the software to log these reading into a txt file for future reference and if possible make it to calculate the average of temperature/humidity samples of the session.
When it comes to meridian flip it would be good to add an option for the meridian flip to take place after x minutes past the meridian or after a frame is finished when the meridian flip is passed.
Eg. I image my target and finish a frame (my mount is near the meridian), when it comes to start the next frame i get a message that the meridian flip will take place let’s in 5 minutes and i image 10 or 15 subs. So i have to either wait for the meridian flip or do it myself. There is an option to do the meridian flip at x degrees past the meridian but it is rather hard to follow since imaging takes place with time rather than degrees. Here is my proposal, i would like to start my frame, the software warns me that the mount will pass the meridian while imaging and give me the option to either wait for the meridian if i am very close to it, eg 3 minutes, do a meridian flip now, again if i am near the meridian as before along with a warning to take care of my equipment hitting the mount or start the frame and perform a meridian flip after it’s finished.
I used to use an Atik 383L also. At one point I asked several manufacturers and others about warming up the camera to ambient as a way to protect the camera from thermal shock. The response was unequivocal that this is not necessary as far as the CCD is concerned. However, I can see the value of turning off the camera cooler when the sequence completes in order to save battery power if not on AC power.
Regarding the meridian flip, if you have the “degrees past meridian to flip” set to 0, the mount will flip immediately after an exposure completes if it is past the meridian. Depending on your exposure time, this could be anywhere from 1min to 29min past the meridian. (Again, for really long exposures I guess that the minutes past the meridian could be longer, but I’m guessing most people don’t image longer than 30min subs). What mount are you using? Is it a problem to images past the meridian for 30min? Speaking for myself I wouldn’t want to add a user input into the mix. The goal of this is automated imaging. You may have a very good reason for wanting this so please let me know if I’m missing something.
Not exactly sure how to do this if the user does not have access to ambient temperature. We can probably figure something out for those that don’t, but we have to be able to support both without adding a bunch of options.
We probably won’t do this unless there is a huge outcry for it.
We feel SGPro’s current set of options are adequate in this area.
I think you may have a misunderstanding here. Please see Joel’s response on meridian flips. If you do chose to wait (another option) instead of imaging past the meridian, SGPro will wait and will also ask you if you just want to go ahead and do the flip now. Anyhow, this level of control for this particular case is not something we will likely implement at this time. We may allow users to enter one decimal place of precision when users specify degrees past to flip (1= 15m, 0.5 = 7.5m, etc).
Regarding the warm up of the camera, this feature has to do when the imaging session is over and the user is shutting down the equipment. The feature of warming up the camera by setting the power consumption to 0% in x minutes gives the user a better control over the warm up procedure (an automated one that excludes temperatures) when shutting down the equipment and not forcing the guessing/use of external thermometers to measure ambient temperature (i use a thermometer in order to log the ambient temperature/humidity of my imaging site and being able to set my camera’s cool point within the ΔT window the factory states at its manual). When i was using MaximDL, at the end of my imaging session i would press the button warmup camera and within 5 minutes the camera would drop form eg. 45% to 0% and then the cooler would turn off automatically, the software for this action does not use temperatures and definitely does not go to ambient temperature. I didn’t have to enter a temperature for this action, the con of this is that the warm up time was predetermined by the software.
Regarding the meridian flip feature, i use an HEQ5 Pro and i don’t have any problems imaging past the meridian, my max imaging frame time can be 20 minutes and past the meridian up to 10 minutes, in some cases where the DEC is near 90 i can go up to 20 minutes.
I din’t know about the 0 degrees past the meridian setting will flip the mount after the frame is complete, i must have missed it when reading the manual. That is what i was trying to explain at my post. The mount will perform a meridian flip when the frame that passes the meridian is completed.
P.S. English is not my native language, so in some cases it nay be difficult to convey my meaning, i can provide further explanations if needed
P.P.S. For some reason i could not log in to the forums, even when i asked for a password reset i never received a confirmation email so i had to create a new account. I had a long time to visit the site, did something change?