deufrai

Hi

Can you tell me where you got your Mac version from ? Are you running from source or a pre-built binary ?
And please tell us a bit more about your mac : OS version and hardware (what CPU is this ? I hope it's not a new M1 CPU)

11 hours ago, Gmx76 said:

Any plans to support TIF files as inputs?

Hi

Not yet. But that could be done.

Could you tell me what capture software provides TIFF images ?

clear skies !

Some news : ALS v0.7-alpha2 is out !

Just needs a few little cleanups before an official v0.7 release.

What's new since we last spoke :

• switchable night mode
• switchable 'save on stop' mode
• allow manual choice of Bayer pattern for demosaicing
• Various eye candy and stability stuff

This was made possible by the feedback you guys gave us. This is MUCH appreciated

Test away => https://als-app.org/assets/releases/v0.7-alpha2/

Thanks again and clear skies to all

11 hours ago, Bill S said:

Hello again

I've found another way of making it not work.

 

I put four files in slowing and things seemed be running but then it crashed.

Log attached.

Best regards

als.log 224.96 kB · 2 downloads

 

 

Hi again

Your system is quite low on memory and you seem to have put your third image into the scan folder before the second image finished its trip down the processing pipeline.

Please make sure you Stacker worker is done before copying a new image into the scan_folder. You can tell it is done when its Status indicator does not read 'busy' as shown below :

But those crashes should not happen anyway. We'll take care of it.

Thanks again for taking the time to test & report

8 hours ago, Bill S said:

The log file is attached.

Many thanks

You seem to be triggering one of the very few real issues we need to solve : If images arrive into the scan folder faster than ALS can process them, the Stacker component sometimes end up dying and erratic behaviour occurs. I suggest you try and lengthen the time interval between 2 shots. 2 seconds is way to small, for big DSLR frames on your system.

When ALS is made robust enough in that regard, this workaround will be useless. But for now, this is the only way.

Thanks for your time, @Bill S

hi @Bill S

First of all, thanks for trying it out and reporting.

Slow to start : Indeed, until we have a proper installer (expected in a couple weeks) slow startup is expected.

12 hours ago, Bill S said:

It appeared to keep only one file and reject the others.

Did you have any warnings in the session log that could help us diagnose your issue ?

The best way to help us help you, is to :

• enable 'debug logs' in the preferences screen (at the bottom)
• restart ALS
• reproduce the issue with the same CR2 files
• close ALS
• Grab the file named 'als.log' located in your home directory and attach it here.

That would allow us to pinpoint the issue and hopefully fix it

Thanks for your time !

Cheers

Hi

A quick video introducing ALS was put up :

Made in the morning, maybe a bit to early

@stash_old

I wanted to thank you for your contributions : you pointed out several issues we overlooked. It is sometimes easy to get sort of trapped in one's habits. And having you taking the time to test ALS with your frames and own user ways allowed us to improve things and fix others. This is highly appreciated.

On 10/05/2020 at 10:21, Martin Meredith said:

From a fellow open-source Python EAA tool developer I fully applaud your efforts! I see we have gone down different lines with the main libraries we are using (I'm using scikit-image and Kivy for instance), but if there are any ways we can help each other out algorithmically then let's do so.

I would absolutely love to see open-source Python-based platform-independent capture tools that can be used (but unfortunately lack the low-level skills to produce them myself). Maybe a topic for another thread?

Martin

Thanks. I'll have a look at Jocular for sure !

And sure : why not benefit from each-other's findings !

Regarding image capture, we strongly think about having ALS work as an INDI client so it can talk to most imaging hardware out there, without relying on any other third party. More on this in a little while

PEACE

Manual selection of pattern to use for debayering is implemented

Will be published in next nightly build

Test at will !

.fts file extension handling is now fixed

But @stash_old, don't be mad. ALS still cannot process your good M31 frames.

Your FITS file does not contain the header describing the CFA pattern used by your camera. And ALS still does not provide the user with the ability to specify one. See : https://github.com/gehelem/als/issues/113

Thanks for helping us with your tests and reports

.fts issue recorded as https://github.com/gehelem/als/issues/118

2 hours ago, stash_old said:

yes becuase its confusing ALS only picks up new files in the monitored folder

Hi again,

How can it be confusing ?The very first line describing ALS features on the website states as follow :

"ALS polls a folder on your machine and aligns + stacks any new picture saved into that folder."

If this is not clear enough, I'll think of a better way to phrase it.

Regarding the issue on the FITs file you provided, this will be fixed by tomorrow. We determine file types by their name extension, and '.fts' is obviously handled incorrectly. Thanks for pointing it out

Hi again

So we went from

4 hours ago, stash_old said:

Another biggy - no support for DSLR (canon and other ) RAW format files(CR2/CR3 etc)  that I could see !

to

2 hours ago, stash_old said:

No sure if the CR2 is a bug as I could not find a way to list files currently being stacked - may have just missed it

Would you mind confirming if CR2 are actually correctly read by ALS on your system (which I assume is win10) ?

Regarding the feature you are referring to, indeed, that would be nice, when and if ALS is made to handle already-populated folders. You are welcome to file an issue on our issue tracker for that matter.

Thanks again for your time & efforts

--

Fred

13 minutes ago, stash_old said:

 

Hi

13 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Another biggy - no support for DSLR (canon and other ) RAW format files(CR2/CR3 etc)  that I could see !

As stated on ALS website : https://als-app.org/ : ALS is meant to support quite recent camera RAW files. Complete list is here : https://www.libraw.org/supported-cameras.

And yes, sorry, CR3 files are not yet supported. See : https://github.com/gehelem/als/issues/95

So it seems you just found a bug, which is a good thing. Would you be kind enough to provide the following information so we can investigate and solve the issue :

- Operating system's name and version

- what version of ALS you got that bug with : Version is displayed in the about box. *in case of a nightly build : current version will always display v0.7-dev. If you remember what nightly build you got, it's good for us*

- an image file that reproduces the issue

20 minutes ago, stash_old said:

such as list of files being stacked with option to omit and restack etc

Could you please elaborate on this ? I'm having a hard time to understand. Sorry, English is not my first language

Thanks again for your time

14 hours ago, ollypenrice said:

Salut Fred. I'm an Englishman-turned-Frenchman in the south east, where I came for good skies for astronomy. Welcome to SGL.

Cordialement,

Olly

Lucky you

Thanks for the welcome

8 hours ago, stash_old said:

Not that it counts for much

It does. 

there's always something useful to take from users' advice. Thanks for the time you spent testing and reporting

Clear skies !
 

On 05/05/2020 at 15:27, Timdog said:

I will spend time getting to know it before considering any suggested eyepiece upgrades

welcome ! And yup, that's the spirit. Don't rush on hardware

Clear skies !

Hi again @Avocette 

12 minutes ago, Avocette said:

would it be possible to allow a folder of already saved images to be stacked,

This has been asked by many, so I guess it is a real need. And couldn't cost too much to implement

11 minutes ago, Avocette said:

I suppose I could use something like SyncThing on both machines to copy over captured images and then run ALS on the laptop which would have spare processing capacity. Am I missing any obvious alternative?

You could share a folder on your windows machine and have your RPI write captured images to that.

That does not apply anymore. Times have changed, you know...

Ain't life great ?

12 minutes ago, stash_old said:

 

Hi !

12 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Straight into a missing bit for me - doesn't do FITS - Tiff,JPG,PNG only 😞

You mean : saving results as FITS format ? Sure, why not

13 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Properties should have a blob that says you cant change properties until after you have stopped Monitor etc - yes its greyed out but still needs to be hightlighted IMO

Excellent point : thanks. See : https://github.com/gehelem/als/issues/114

13 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Doesn't create missing Work folders

This is done on purpose : It would be too easy to make wrong assumptions about where everyone would agree to have ALS create its work folder, I guess. But we are all ears if we manage to reach reasonable consensus

15 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Nothing to say min 25 images - if you change to lower figure it just resets back to 25 - Really min 25 images - way too high IMO especially when using a  DSLR

This threshold is not about image count. This is used during frame alignment : When ALS finds matches (common points) between new frame and reference frame, it rejects its findings if matches count is lower than this threshold. This is used to guarantee alignment quality and is, as you may have seen, user definable

17 minutes ago, stash_old said:

Not being negative but thats the items found in just a few minutes - perhaps I will try on a later version.

Negative, maybe not. A bit harsh, surely. But what can we expect from a Brit talking to a Froggie   ? No biggie at all.

1 minute ago, Floater said:

Welcome. Hope you succeed with your aim(s). 🙂

Thank you !

41 minutes ago, R26 oldtimer said:

That's interesting. Would you consider an android app?

Hi

In a not too distant future, the integrated webserver will expose a full-fledged web application, so you can control ALS from any device that is able to run a web browser. But ALS core will still have to run on a computer / rpi.

11 minutes ago, rwilkey said:

That's great, you should have some great skies there.  The furthest out of Paris I have been is Neuilly (but still in the city) a long time ago!

So chic !