A more seamless and unobtrusive auto-plate solver

[bokemon]

I've been using the Push-to assistant along with telescope simulator in Stellarium and it works well to achieve what I want. But really, all I need is for the little "plate solve and resync" button in the mount control section to loop. The problem with using the push-to assistance is that it opens up a big window that blocks the guidescope display of the stars, and certain buttons, like the reticule, don't work any more. I don't need sharpcap to tell me how much to move since I am monitoring the mount position inside Stellarium.

A related feature request is if Sharpcap can somehow "internalize" the ASTAP plate solver. (I guess it makes calls to an external program?) Currently, the plate solving interrupts my other windows programs, e.g. even inside Stellarium it will make the mouse cursor turn into the hourglass. And multiple ASTAP icons show up and disappear in the Windows taskbar, making it hard to actually click on some other icon..

[admin]

Hi,

you can switch to using the command line version of Astap, which helps with the 'Astap pops to the front every time'. Astap_cli is downloadable from the main astap site and then you copy it to the same folder as the normal astap.exe and configure sharpcap to use it in the plate solving settings. The Astronomy.net based solvers (ASPS, Astrotortilla, Ansvr) are also less intrusive, but slower.

As for the plate solving loop, you could just set up something in the sequencer to do that, then run the sequence and cancel when you are done. By default the sequencer locks the UI, but there is a special step to disable the lock.

cheers,

Robin

[bokemon]

It seems that the sequence aborts when a single plate solve fails, e.g. when it takes a frame in the middle of movement.
Is there a way for sharpcap to do a cursory evaluation for streaked stars before sending it over to the plate solver?

[admin]

Hi,

right now no, but it is something worth considering. The approaches to deal with this at the moment are

* Adjust the mount settle delay in the hardware settings to allow a longer time after the slew is complete before SharpCap considers the mount settled
* Use a retry step in the sequence to allow for the need to retry a plate solve

If you can get it to happen fairly consistently, do let me know, as I have tried quite hard to make sure that it will ignore frames that are captured while the mount is moving (but if the camera is buffering frames then I may not know - QHY cameras in live mode are known to do this).

cheers,

Robin

[admin]

Hi,

actually, I was already working on an internal plate solving engine when you first posted, but didn't want to announce it until it was ready - see this post for details of 'SharpSolve' : viewtopic.php?t=7122

cheers,

Robin

[bokemon]

Hi,

right now no, but it is something worth considering. The approaches to deal with this at the moment are

* Adjust the mount settle delay in the hardware settings to allow a longer time after the slew is complete before SharpCap considers the mount settled
* Use a retry step in the sequence to allow for the need to retry a plate solve

If you can get it to happen fairly consistently, do let me know, as I have tried quite hard to make sure that it will ignore frames that are captured while the mount is moving (but if the camera is buffering frames then I may not know - QHY cameras in live mode are known to do this).

cheers,

Robin

Since I'm using this as a "push to assistant" substitute, sharpcap does not know when the mount is going to move.