Here is a pretty long list of requested features and improvements. The results of this poll will not dictate the priority of our to do list, but it will certainly provide meaningful input. Not everything thrown into the mix made it to the list… some things we are not interested in implementing, others maybe I missed and it’s certainly possible that I just didn’t understand others. Some requests we are delaying just to keep the size of this list reasonable. No hard feelings here… doesn’t mean your ideas are bad.
Anyhow, this will stay open for a couple weeks. You are free to change your votes at anytime (you only get three though). Not that most of you care, but voting is anonymous (even to forum admins).
Please pick your top three requests:
Auto focus frame cropping (for cameras that support it)
Multi camera sequence capture. Coordination of dithering, target change, meridian flips, target synch, other options, etc… (extra cost add-on)
Target options for specifying start and end times with methods other than local time (altitude, etc…)
Proportional event rotation, instead of just normal rotation or forcing a filter to finish, the target will move to the event that is behind… when all are equal, will proceed with normal rotation
Smarter dithering decisions (i.e. not dithering if filter changes, after other mount movement, other small time savers here too)
Seed the MFW canvas with any arbitrary image and make it easy to expand its borders
Ability to use 32 bit FITS files as centering and MFW reference images
Flats Wizard overhaul: Scan the entire sequence for a comprehensive set of flats that would be required to cover all light frames. Be able to select / deselect easily (in case you have already captured some prior to running the wizard). Other items here too (like consideration of camera rotation).
Event profiles: Make predefined events, add them easily to a target, multiple targets or to an existing equipment profile (i.e. when the equipment profile is chosen, it might populate events with the chosen event profile)
Sequence merging tool: Merge other sequences into the current sequence (at the target level)
API enhancement: Right now the API is designed to control equipment that is attached to it, but has little to no control over ACTIONS… like starting / stopping a sequence, running AF, centering a target etc…
SGPro auto updater: If a user option is selected, have SGPro automatically download, install and restart new versions of SGPro (user is still involved in the decision)
More “target wizard” type behavior. Help selecting targets based on location, time of year, object type, etc… (extra cost addon)
Smart target execution: Given a sequence with a bunch of targets, create a run list to maximize data capture (extra cost addon)
Grid-based target editing tool (edit properties of all targets from a single windows)
Recenter every N frames (I can’t remember why this is needed)… Is it a band-aid for bad guiding or something to do with mirror shift?
Option(s) to disconnect all equipment when a sequence ends
A window, based on the users coordinates on the earth, to show astronomical data (sunset/sunrise, moon data, all the relevant twilight times, etc).
Auto focus setup assistant. Not sure what this means right now or how to implement, but the idea would be to help with filter offsets, minimum star size, etc.). Set should be much easier with the new AF routines though.
Reopen the MFW with the settings and tiles used to create a sequence.
There’s no option for none of the above, which is what I’d vote for.
Most of the features will only satisfy a small number of people with more specialised needs. Not having additional features makes the application easier for everyone to understand and use. It also makes it more reliable, the code has to handle the additional features and even if they are not used the additional complexity can make it less reliable.
I’m sorry if this is duplicative, but I have been travelling. I just wanted to comment on the “recenter every xxx” request since the wording of the poll sort of implies it might not be too important. I thought I would explain why this would be extremely useful to me. I am using a mount that does not require guiding for modest focal lengths, a 10Micron GM1000HPS. I am very thankful that SGP implements the direct mount guider to allow my subs to be dithered by SGP. That is great!. The problem is that while the mount is good enough to permit 20 min or longer subs with round stars, over the course of a long imaging session, say 8 hours, there is drift. On a recent image collection I had about an 8% drift on one axis, so I had to crop 8%. Normally this is not a huge deal, but in this case given my image scale and the size of the target I had framed it very precisely and this amount of cropping was almost enough to harm the image. There is a way to get around this, but it is not very convenient and since it duplicates data it is error prone. I break the imaging into multiple identical targets that are about 2 hours long and that way I can force SGP to recenter as each target starts. While this is certainly useable, it is hardly ideal. There may well be far more important features, but since on the surface it seems this should not be too hard given that SGP already has like auto refocus that interrupt imaging on a time/frame count basis to run a routine, I thought I explain why I (and I’m sure others using high end mounts) would appreciate this facility.
That’s not what I meant to imply… I was indicating that I can’t remember why folks are asking for it and if somebody could refresh my memory (like you did).
OK… Crude representation here (will try and represent it better elsewhere). Taking the difficulty of implementation and popularity (votes), I have produced a weighted version of the features above. This is a more realistic sorting of features if / when we decide to do them:
I wonder with the third suggestion to disconnect all equipment if it might be possible to select which equipment or all to disconnect should this go ahead? I’m thinking in particular of being able to disconnect the camera but keep tracking etc., on. This could be used to switch cameras.
I see my favorite (multi-camera) is demoted due to difficulty. OTOH, it is an add-on so maybe being an income producer will give it a boost. I do have to say that of all of them, multi-camera is the only one I would be willing to pay extra for (and quite a bit at that given that it is an equipment value multiplier)!
This is with respect to the “full module” which includes:
Workflow to launch and register slave instances of SGPro
Dithering coordination
Target change coordination
Target event sync across scope sequences
Support for disparate target capture (no target sync)
Recovery mode coordination
Meridian flip coordination
Auto focus coordination (when one scope is OAG)
UI work to properly disable a bunch of equipment control on “slave” instances
So… that in mind, there may be a version of this that is WAY less sophisticated and could be released earlier. Not exactly sure how or what it would be, but would likely just encapsulate coordinated dithering and then we could improve on the rest of it incrementally.
