it has been a busy week this week - lots of new things have made it into SharpCap
![Smile :)](./images/smilies/icon_e_smile.gif)
The first thing I should say is that we have just switched to using a new code signing certificate. This means that you may get warnings from Microsoft Edge browser and/or from Windows SmartScreen when you download and try to install the latest versions. You can bypass both warnings (there are instructions on the download page). They should go away in a few weeks as the new certificate builds up some positive reputation with Smart Screen. If anyone wants to click the 'Report this file as safe' button in Edge to help speed this up, please feel free...
Second thing... I have now included a 32 bit version on the beta download page. For this week, it appears first above the 64-bit version. Please consider the 64-bit version as the default option though and only use the 32-bit version if necessary (old PC, old cameras, ASCOM drivers that do not support 64-bit). I will swap round the order for the next version.
Now onto the new features...
Lunar Mosaic Planner Redesign
Firstly, there has been a big update to the way the Lunar Mosaic tool is laid out... I decided that there was too much to think about all in one place in the old version, so decided to separate the steps out somewhat to give a flow from choosing the type of alignment, through performing the alignment, setting up the mosaic parameters then finally running it. Hopefully this will be easier for people to get to grips with...
You will also notice that you can access some of the menu and camera controls now while the mosaic planner is active. I have locked out anything that lets you close the camera or change resolution, since that would spoil any mosaic plan that was being prepared.
Solar Mosaic Planner
The solar version of the mosaic planner wasn't meant to happen quite yet, but two things brought it forward... Firstly I realised that the guided alignment option for the Lunar planner meant that a Solar mosaic wasn't that difficult and secondly the moon has been elusive in the last week or so (bad weather, low altitudes, etc) whereas the sun has been a bit more visible, so having the solar version gave me something I could actually test.
At one point I was thinking that I wasn't going to be able to release the feature today - I had a bug with the mosaic panels all being offset from the correct position and it took me ages to work out the reason (double correction for the difference between J2000 and JNOW). Anyway, that's fixed now, and if you watch this video you can see it in action
The focus is nowhere near the best, but I was dodging some fairly significant clouds trying to get a clear spell long enough to test things out, so ignore the focus and enjoy watching the automated 9 panel mosaic.
In the video, the captures are incorrectly being made to JPG format - that's fixed in the uploaded version.
Solar System Sequence Planner
Not going to say too much about this - it has been half done (and hidden in the menus) for a while. I decided this week to make it accessible in the menus to let people try it out. At the moment the options are fairly limited and I'm very interested in feedback on what else could be added to make it more comprehensive.
I'd also like to link this to the mosaic planning tools in some way - still figuring out the best way to do that.
Select ROI Option
This was a nice suggestion here on the forums - a cleaner way to select a camera ROI.
For supported cameras, a 'Select ROI' button will appear next to the resolution dropdown, like this
Pressing that button will make the selection area tool (red rectangle) appear and the button will change to 'Apply ROI'. All you have to do is move the selection area to the place and size you want then press the 'Apply ROI' button to set the size and pan/tilt all in one go.
Right now, there is a bug for this with Altair cameras in 8 bit mode - they seem to be displaying images upside down in 8 bit mode which messes with this functionality. I will try to fix that issue this week.
Push To Assistant
The final feature this week - also from a forum suggestion...
This feature is designed to help those without GOTO mounts by using repeated plate solving to show how far you need to move to get to your desired target co-ordinates. There is a little bit more info in this post : viewtopic.php?p=35967#p35967
If you use a dobsonian or other push-to setup and also have SharpCap and plate solving set up, I'd be keen to get feedback on this feature.
cheers,
Robin