purgitoria

Those are some great images 👍 Glad you liked the script and it worked out well for you and cant wait to see the final full animation, i am sure the processing and stitching is rather tedious but will be worth the effort when you are done. Wish i had been at home with the scope myself instead of working overseas, the last transit i managed to see was a short glimpse of the Venus transit back in 2012 in the only 1 minute gap in the cloud all day just before the sun dipped behind the mountains.

I would recommend Fusion 360 as well. I have recently started using it as i am doing a huge renovation job on a property i just bought and although i am not doing 3D printing(there are great addons for that) it was still great when it came to designing 3D models and creating production drawings of stonework that i wanted made by the masons and used it to model 3 fireplaces (jambs, lintels, mantles, and ashlars) as well as 3 chimneys that i am having rebuilt in sandstone instead of the ugly red brick that is currently there. I actually found it quite intuitive to use and and could knock up a 3D model of all the individual blocks and the output to a scale drawing in about 1.5-2 hours per project. I did try out freecad first but found it not only more difficult to use but also limited in some of the functions when working with different file formats and i found that it crashed quite often when percfrming certain tasks. I am not sure if there is any difference in the actual program with the license you get but i just signed up for the free personal/hobbyist one and it seems like it is not limited in features. If you go to the addon site you can download and install a lot of different modules for making gears etc for free and there are also a lot of other paid addons but for general hobbyist work i think you would not need them.

I am just curious on your setting of the exposure. I see you using .02 and wondered if that was intentional and if you were aware that exposure time in script is already quoted in milliseconds si there is no need to put a decimal value here. You could also be right in the sleep time as this script was tested with another camera brand and it could be that the ZWO takes longer to download the frames or may use some kind of buffer onboard the camera so until the buffer is cleared the camera is still busy dealing with the first capture and due to the script requiring the camera to not be capturing to process the next capture it throws the error, actual computer hardware may also cause issue if you are using a slower or older machine it may take a little longer to process the file and release the camera control. I can see at the bottom of the window that you are using 3 frames in the camera memory which looks like it is buffering to some extent possibly because your camera is higher resolution than what I am using and this would certainly explain the error you see as it would only happen when trying to capture the second “prominence” exposure.

I have run the script several times capturing in both .avi and .ser and used the SER player V1.7.2 to play back the .ser files and VLC player the .avi files and both work just fine on my computer. My setup has a DMK41AU02.AS camera on the desk as this is what i use for developing and testing of my own all sky camera software. The following is the output from the automatically generated settings file that SharpCap spits out with every video clip. I am getting clips 2 seconds and 6 seconds long with my test sequence (i am using 100 as a frame count to save time and drive space while testing), if you are using the 1000 frame count then you should get 20 and 60 second video clips. I imagine running at 1000 frame count you will be eating up huge amounts of HDD space (no wonder you wanted to write to 2 separate HDD's), at my resolution that is 1.14Gb per clip for the prominence data. [DMx 41AU02.AS] Output Format=SER file (*.ser) Colour Space=MONO8 Resolution=1280x960 Frame Rate Limit=120 fps Gain=260(Auto) Exposure=0.0996(Auto) Timestamp Frames=Off Brightness=5 Banding Threshold=35 Banding Suppression=0 Apply Flat=None Subtract Dark=None #Black Point Display Black Point=0 #MidTone Point Display MidTone Point=0.5 #White Point Display White Point=1 TimeStamp=2019-10-30T16:18:28.1640653Z SharpCapVersion=3.2.6121.0 Perhaps also use SER Player to check the .ser file details, you should see something similar to this: Filename: E:\Mercury Transit 2019\2019-10-30\Surface\17_34_11.ser Filesize: 1228808178 bytes Header Details: * FileId: LUCAM-RECORDER * LuID: 4660 * ColorID: 0 (MONO) * LittleEndian: 0 * ImageWidth: 1280 * ImageHeight: 960 * PixelDepth: 8 * FrameCount: 1000 * Observer: Observer * Instrument: DMx 41AU02.AS * Telescope: telescope * DateTime: 30/10/2019 17:34:11.123999 (0x8d75d5f6011573b) * DateTime_UTC: 30/10/2019 16:34:11.123999 (0x8d75d56fe4cef3b) Timestamps: * Timestamps are all in order * Min timestamp: 30/10/2019 16:34:11.216004 UT * Max timestamp: 30/10/2019 16:37:01.349735 UT * Min to Max timestamp difference: 2 min 50.1337 s * Average frames per second: 5.87185

I have fully tested the script and can get it to output in any format and have samples in both .avi and .ser. When using this script the output is not explicitly set within the script as there is no need to do so and it makes it more versatile for anyone else who wants to use it for outputting to their own preferred format. You must ensure that in the GUI you explicitly set the file type before running the script in the "Capture Format and Area" section of the menu for the camera, just uncheck the auto button and select your preferred output from the drop down menu, by defaut when opening a camera the file type will be set to "auto" and ".png" i think or whatever the last output type was that you selected. The frame count setting in the script shows the number of frames that it should be capturing and when running the script you will see in the bottom of the GUI the current actions, this should show a frame count and will tell you how many frames it is capturing and when it is previewing only. What makes you think it is capturing only one frame? If it is because you are getting .jpg or .png files then it is due to the above mentioned setting.

It is actually not that much code as a lot of the settings come from within the GUI already such as gain, output format etc. It is really only the settings that will be changing or that cannot be set from the GUI that need to be added along with the time delay. I have noticed however that for some reason there is a bug that does not always allow the script to be stopped from the console if you select "run script" so it may be better to open it in the pad and then run it so you should always have the option to stop the running script but even then there is some bug that can leave SharpCap stuck in a "finishing capture" mode. It seems this can be negated by clicking "stop capture" on the GUI until you see previewing again and then stopping the script. I also made a minor edit to the code in relation to how the save location is referenced as there was a possibility it could have thrown an error depending on the filename as the path separator "\" is also an escape character in Python it seems and if followed by specific letters can give it unintended functions.

import time while True: #capture surface detail import clr clr.AddReference("SharpCap") from SharpCap.UI import CaptureLimitType SharpCap.SelectedCamera.CaptureConfig.CaptureLimitType = CaptureLimitType.FrameLimited SharpCap.SelectedCamera.CaptureConfig.CaptureLimitCount =1000 SharpCap.SelectedCamera.Controls.Exposure.Value = 20 SharpCap.Settings.CaptureFolder = r'E:\Mercury Transit 2019' SharpCap.TargetName = "Surface" #start the capture SharpCap.SelectedCamera.PrepareToCapture() SharpCap.SelectedCamera.RunCapture() while True: if not SharpCap.SelectedCamera.Capturing : break time.sleep(0.5) #capture prominance detail import clr clr.AddReference("SharpCap") from SharpCap.UI import CaptureLimitType SharpCap.SelectedCamera.CaptureConfig.CaptureLimitType = CaptureLimitType.FrameLimited SharpCap.SelectedCamera.CaptureConfig.CaptureLimitCount = 1000 SharpCap.SelectedCamera.Controls.Exposure.Value = 60 SharpCap.Settings.CaptureFolder = r'E:\Mercury Transit 2019' SharpCap.TargetName = "Prominance" #start the capture SharpCap.SelectedCamera.PrepareToCapture() SharpCap.SelectedCamera.RunCapture() while True: if not SharpCap.SelectedCamera.Capturing : break time.sleep(0.5) #wait 30 seconds before next run time.sleep(30) This assumes you have created the folders already and will throw an error message if they do not exist. Default SharpCap settings were used in relation to file naming so all files will be named as per your preferred setting put in the UI beforehand. You can use notepad to edit the file to put in your own drive locations and settings for exposure, frame count and sleep time before next run. Copy the contents of the script above and paste into the pad of the scripting tool in SharpCap, put your required settings in then save to to your hard drive, when needed from the min UI select "scripting - run script" and navigate to the saved file and the script will immediately start. From the scripting console click on the stop script button on the pad at the bottom to finish.

My concern i not so much the powering of the motor as i know a battery will be more than capable of holding the charge to operate the shutter for a couple of cycles. I am more concerned about the powering of the electronics for long periods with the constant wireless broadcasting and also for all the heaters for the electronics and the motor, heaters always use quite a bit of power and it gets pretty cold in Scotland over the winter.

My intention is to use a timing belt and pulley wheel system such as the open ended belts here http://www.davall.co.uk/dsg-power-transmission/catalogue/toothed-belts/ Effectively wheel would be fixed at the top of the dome and the other would be on the drive motor at the bottom with one of the clamping plates attached to a bracket on the shutter and a series of guide rollers to align and tension the belt (this is much the same way as the Rigel system works with it's chain drive). The only problem i would see is if it were one of the older pulsar domes that had the dual shutter consisting of the upper sliding part and the lower flap in which case i would use a similar timing belt/chain method combines with a small linear drive on a bracket attached to the lower flap. My hope was to keep away from being fully battery powered as i want the redundancy and i also have concerns about just how long a 12V battery would power the shutter controller along with the heaters for the electronics and motor when it gets cold. I don't mind having battery as a backup to control the shutter when out from home position such as on a weather alarm and to keep the electronics powered during an imaging session but really wonder how big of a solar panel i would need and how many Ah i would need in battery power if i did not have a mains connection.

So, i'm currently working on my new observatory design and am basing it on a Pulsar 2.7m. It will not use however the Rigel automation system but a version of the ScopeDome automation. I will also not be using the rubber support and guide rollers but am having a custom curvilinear rail system made to support the dome as i wish to make the dome fully robotic and unattended (i work overseas a lot and it would be great to be able to use it securely when not at home). This presents me with several issues when it comes to redundancy and reliability for powering the shutter. My optimal solution would be to use something like a Quint UPS module as the 12V battery backup that can be fed from a mains supply that would be the primary source of power (the shutter control system can take both 240V and 12V supplies) and would be fed off a main 240V UPS supplying the obs. The trouble is how i get the power up to the rotating part of the dome? What does everyone else use? Does anyone use home position contacts? What brand and what are they like? Does anyone use a slipring system? What brand and what is it like?