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ASCOM All Sky Camera Software


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Hello,

Last year I developed an 'all sky' imaging application to run my Starlight Xpress Oculus camera (for Oculus owners you can find out more here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/allskeye/info). I have recently added 'experimental' ASCOM support for it but don't have any other cameras to really test in on. If anyone is looking for this kind of software and would be happy to carry out some beta testing please let me know. Please bear in mind:

  • The software is really designed for traditional astronomical cameras using longer exposure lengths i.e. not video astronomy and am not sure how well it will work with faster CMOS cameras
  • The software is mono only, no colour images can be processed (although it might be possible to use a colour camera to produce mono images - something I would like to test)
  • It has been running for a while so is reasonably stable but please bear in mind that this will be a beta test so do expect problems! :-)
  • Oh and sorry but it will only work on Windows computers from Vista onwards (no XP)

Thanks,

Mike

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  • 2 months later...
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  • 2 months later...

Another update to the 'AllSkEye' Windows app. The main features are:

  • ASCOM camera support is now pretty solid
  • Colour cameras are now fully supported
  • Lots of options to regularly send a customised 'latest image' to your website or file location
  • Process images and create nightly movies
  • Detect line features
  • Run unattended 24/7
  • Archive Images / manage folder space
  • ...

Although it is still in beta it is pretty stable and already in use in quite a few observatories (and working well by all accounts). You can find out more and download the software here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/allskeye-ascom/info 

Mike

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Hi Mike,

I've tried it with the ZWO ASI290MM and it works fine image capture wise.

I'm going to out it together in a box for outdoor use and see how it performs over say 1 week and let you know.

I've also put together a basic html webpage to show the latest saved image on a browser, with configurable refresh rates, so the image will be updated every second if I wanted it to be.

The main caveat being if the latest saved image doesn't change on the server, it won't change on the webpage.

I believe this is the easiest low resource way of doing it, and could easily be translated to display on an external webpage.

Rather than having a laptop / PC processing and displaying the images all the time, I can just look up the webpage from the server on my phone and bingo, a view of the sky.

Feature request - can you have the 'pause' inbetween exposures to automatically change depending on the time of day / year?

So as darkness falls, the pause can get longer, then shorter for when the sun comes up - in the same way as you do 'night time settings' based on the lat / long coordinates and time of day / year?

This would make for some fast image updates during the day (for example, every half a second or so, depending on other parameters set) and longer pauses for the night to allow for say 20 second exposures.

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I should have added, this was on Windows 7 x86 - does this work on x64 and Windows 10?

Is there a Linux version?

I'm thinking of putting the smallest computer I can in the camera enclosure and ideally this software would be all that's needed I reckon.

It frees up the obsy PC to concentrate on imaging, and as I only have a thin client doing this, it is running near capacity already when SGP does its HFD measurements!

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Thanks for the feedback!

22 hours ago, Jonk said:

Feature request - can you have the 'pause' inbetween exposures to automatically change depending on the time of day / year?

So as darkness falls, the pause can get longer, then shorter for when the sun comes up - in the same way as you do 'night time settings' based on the lat / long coordinates and time of day / year?

This would make for some fast image updates during the day (for example, every half a second or so, depending on other parameters set) and longer pauses for the night to allow for say 20 second exposures.

Sorry I'm not quite clear on this, could you maybe elaborate? If you choose to let the app calculate the required exposure time you will naturally end up with quicker updates during the day and longer ones at night (with or without a pause) but maybe I misunderstood.

21 hours ago, Jonk said:

I should have added, this was on Windows 7 x86 - does this work on x64 and Windows 10?

Is there a Linux version?

Yes it will run on Windows 10 32 and 64 bit. No Linux I'm afraid...

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Yes this is what I meant - plenty of daytime images, basically to produce a fast refresh of the latest image, automatically increasing the pause / exposure as night falls.

I'm thinking if anyone wanted to save the images during the day into night a smart timelapse could be produced.

Maybe the pause can be left at 2 seconds without any detrimental effect when night falls (longer exposure), as you say?

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  • 7 months later...

The 'AllSkEye' all-sky imaging application has been updated a few times over the last few months and some interesting features have been added:

  • Redesigned UI / Dark Theme
  • Native ASI ZWO Camera Support
  • Star / Solar System Object Labels
  • Static Image Overlay
  • Image Preview Pan and Zoom

It is still in 'Beta Testing' but pretty stable. For more info and to access the software please see here: https://groups.yahoo.com/neo/groups/allskeye-ascom/info

Mike

Stars.jpg

AllSkEye1 (1).jpg

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Hi Mike,

Although detected by the software, it would appear as though native ZWO doesn't work (at least for me)....

image.png.56418de7433a4e976376da7b84a308b9.png

Error.png.330f5f03aa6fe55773aa2431488006ee.png

Windows 10 64 bit, ZWO driver V3.0.0.4, AllSkEye 0.9.9.8 although the software reports this... (0.9.9.6?)

image.png.83d334f7296078bbf1dafb2d73c2165a.png

 

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Strange, just tried it with my ASI178 and all works fine. The error message doesn't really say much, could you please send me your settings and log files and I'll have a look there? I'll PM you my email address.

Mike

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13 hours ago, Jonk said:

Hi Mike,

Although detected by the software, it would appear as though native ZWO doesn't work (at least for me)....

image.png.56418de7433a4e976376da7b84a308b9.png

Error.png.330f5f03aa6fe55773aa2431488006ee.png

Windows 10 64 bit, ZWO driver V3.0.0.4, AllSkEye 0.9.9.8 although the software reports this... (0.9.9.6?)

image.png.83d334f7296078bbf1dafb2d73c2165a.png

 

I got the same but the camera works under the ascom driver.

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Me too, it works under the Ascom driver, but as I found out in other software such as Sharpcap for example, some of the camera controls are not availabe using the Ascom driver.

I think this is the same for anything with an Ascom driver as well as native?

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Ok, I have a feeling that this is related to the fact that you are both using a mono camera. Maybe some of the controls in the native driver at not implemented for mono cameras which could explain the error. I'll have a go at making some changes to try to fix it, a bit of a guessing game unfortunately as I don't have a mono cam... Fun and games! ?

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Ok, I've just uploaded a custom build to test my theory. If you go to the online storage and open the 'Custom Builds' folder there is an updated version AllSkEye_0.9.9.10_Custom zip file there which contains the changes.

Let me know how you get on!

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I would test it but the custom builds folder is still showing empty.

I've tried to reload my browser (sometimes the cache is used rather than a fresh 'fetch') and nothing.

Will try again later.

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