What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

All the latest news about new features and improvements to SharpCap
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admin
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What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

#1

Post by admin »

Hi folks,

August will be a bit of a slow month SharpCap-wise, since I will be taking a couple of breaks. However I've managed to slip in a few new features and bug fixes for today's update :)

Planet Positions

This version of SharpCap adds the planets, sun and moon to the target selection window (not the short dropdown in the deep sky sequence planner, but the more comprehensive target selection list that is accessed using the 'More...' button

The planet positions are calculated in real time and should be relatively accurate (maximum error 1 arc minute, probably much closer in practice). The problem with planetary position calculations is that in order to get the highest accuracy you need to work out an enormous number of terms in the equation, which slows things down and increases the amount of data that needs to be stored. I am using a package called AstronomyEngine which seems to get a reasonable balance between accuracy and data size.

Note that the position of the moon may be inaccuarte if SharpCap cannot determine your latitude/longitude (the moon is close enough for this to be significant).

Feature Tracking Improvements

I have done some tweaks to feature tracking to try to improve the reliability of the calibration procedure, and also to automatically flip the RA adjustment direction when the mount moves to the other side of the meridian (note: you will need to recalibrate with the new code for the calibrated side of pier to be recorded for this to work).

Smart focus scanning

This was behaving incorrectly when scanning in the -ve movement direction - now fixed.

ROI Area adjustment

The ROI box can now be moved around with the arrow keys (click on the ROI control first to direct keyboard presses to it). Each press will offset by 8 pixels up/down/left/right.

SDK Update

The SVBony SDK has been updated to v1.9.1, which should fix some issues

As well as the above, there have been the usual collection of bug fixes and small improvements.

cheers,

Robin
bvalente
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Re: What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

#2

Post by bvalente »

>>>The ROI box can now be moved around with the arrow keys (click on the ROI control first to direct keyboard presses to it). Each press will offset by 8 pixels up/down/left/right.


Fantastic! Thanks Robin

Brian
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Re: What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

#3

Post by kvandebeek »

"The SVBony SDK has been updated to v1.9.1, which should fix some issues"

I received version 1.9.4 of the SDK directly from Cindy at SVBONY, is it sufficient to just replace the SVBCameraSDK.dll file in the SharpCap installation directory in order to use that particular version of the SDK?
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Re: What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

#4

Post by admin »

Hi,

yes, that should be fine. You might also need to update the driver to 1.9.4, but I am not sure if that is a requirement or not.

cheers,

Robin
kvandebeek
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Re: What's new in SharpCap this week... 15th August 2022

#5

Post by kvandebeek »

Yes, I received/installed the hardware driver as well. Great, thanks!
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