Sharpcap doesn’t find Cygwin for Plate Solve

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GaryS
Posts: 175
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:18 pm
Location: Boston, USA/Jackson Hole, USA

Sharpcap doesn’t find Cygwin for Plate Solve

#1

Post by GaryS »

Hi
I’ve been trying unsuccessfully multiple times to download the plate solving files to the Intel Nuc I use at the scope for controlling mount, camera, filter wheel, etc.

I had no problems setting up Astrotortilla and Cygwin for my laptop which I have inside connecting via RDP to the Nuc. The location of the ‘solve-field’ file shows up as needed under ‘detect automatically’.

When downloading, the ‘Downloads Additional files’ (index .fits images I guess) message by Cygwin took about 20 minutes and at the end of it all, it did not show up in the plate solving ‘Detect Automatically’ line (see image. When I tried to browse to the files, all I found under Cygwin were two folders: ‘usr’ and ‘var’ - incredibly frustrating. Plus we’re having SQM 20-21 dark skies right now which I am totally missing.

Thank you for any help you can provide.
Gary
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admin
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Re: Sharpcap doesn’t find Cygwin for Plate Solve

#2

Post by admin »

Hi,

I suspect that the installation of the cygwin/astrometry.net part of Astrotortilla didn't work properly (it requires downloading most of cygwin during the install , so perhaps connectivity issues or server problems). That leaves you with a few files in c:\cygwin, but nowhere near all the ones that are needed.

I have managed to get this (only usr and var in c:\cygwin) to happen myself in testing just now by deliberately deleting the existing c:\cygwin directory of a good Astrotortilla install and then trying to reinstall. Somehow the installer skips past installing all the main cygwin packages. So far, I don't understand why. It may be easiest to just use one of the other plate solving options like ASPS, Ansvr or Astap.

cheers,

Robin
GaryS
Posts: 175
Joined: Sun Mar 31, 2019 5:18 pm
Location: Boston, USA/Jackson Hole, USA

Re: Sharpcap doesn’t find Cygwin for Plate Solve

#3

Post by GaryS »

Thank you so much for trying this Robin. Before reading your note, I had just written myself a note to try ASTAP on the Nuc. I’ll continue with my working version of Astrotortilla on the laptop when I’m able to site at the scope.
Cheers
Gary.
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Re: Sharpcap doesn’t find Cygwin for Plate Solve

#4

Post by admin »

Hi Gary,

my guess is (and this is only a guess) that something that the Astrotortilla installer tries to download has moved to a new URL, and the installer is not spotting that the download fails, so just skips past big chunks of what it sould be doing.

cheers,

Robin
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