SharpCap Forums

I am following up on a earlier post from about a year ago about platesolving via the script. At that point it seemed like it would require running the tool externally. This is certainly possible, but it would make such a script less general / portable (because it would not be using SharpCap settings, etc.) However, I see from browsing in iPython that SharpCap exposes at least a "BlindSolver" method. This CAN be run and does a blind solve correctly. Unfortunately after completion the "Result" method is null and as such there is no way to access the reuslt.

FYI, the motivation here is that one could basically have a simple software implementation of Celestron's "SkySense", since the CPWI package now has the ability to add reference points into the sky model programmatically. It would be nice to automate this process rather than having to do it manually.

Hi,

there is now a way to do this in SharpCap 3.3 – 3.3 introduces a new sequencer tool which gives a more user-friendly way to script SharpCap's functions. The sequencer can trigger the plate solving and resynchronisation code, and it's also possible to run sequence of commands from within the Python scripting.
That should do exactly what you want, although there is no way to work out whether the plate solve/sync succeeded or not as far as I can tell.

Hope this helps, Robin

I see that the SharpCap 3.3 beta now also has a "SolveAndSync" method that returns an asynchronous task. This is super useful! However, any chance that that task could include the return code upon completion indicating whether the platesolve was successful? (I think there is a "Result" property that can be used for this purpose.)

Hi,

Yes, that makes sense – no problem

Cheers, Robin

jrschmidt2 I was wondering if you made any progress on this that you could share. I am trying to go down the same rabbit hole of not adding any alignment points initially in CPWI and then using a SharpCap sequence/script to slew to a few locations in the sky that are not obscured by trees, performing a plate solve and then adding that location to pointing model in CPWI. I hate to reinvent the wheel if you have made some progress.

Hi,

from the API side, the call to PlateSolveAndSync now returns a Task<bool>, so you can find out whether it worked or not.

thanks,

Robin