Astrometry-api-lite 1.1.0 out - with Windows 10 installer

[jusasi]

Hi folks,

I just finished work on a new release of the Astrometry-api-lite application and I'm happy to announce that it's now easily installable on Windows 10 with Subsystem for Linux installed. The new Windows installer lets you install and configure the whole shebang with just a few mouse clicks and installs a desktop shortcut to run the service. The only manual install requirement that is left is the Linux Subsystem, which you can install from the Windows Store. You can get the Astrometry-api-lite installer from here: https://github.com/Jusas/astrometry-api-lite/releases

In addition I've added a Dashboard page, which shows you the information of the latest solver jobs and their current state, as well as object detection and annotation images, and now it's also possible to cancel pending/running jobs from the Dashboard.

In case you're not yet familiar with it, Astrometry-api-lite is a local alternative to using http://nova.astrometry.net for your plate solving purposes. The project's aim is to make an easily locally installable, alternative lightweight API to the Astrometry.net full site and suite. You can then use it from your astronomy software, like KStars/Ekos for example. It's fully open source, and the code is available in Github, https://github.com/Jusas/astrometry-api-lite . It runs on Linux as well as Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux.

 

Best Wishes,

- Jussi

[LightBucket]

So, I have a Linux laptop with Kstars and EKos, and have downloaded all the Astrometry catalogue files I need for my FOV’s onto my PC so I don’t need to use the online solver, so works faster for me, wil this be of use to me or not..?

[jusasi]

1 hour ago, LightBucket said:

So, I have a Linux laptop with Kstars and EKos, and have downloaded all the Astrometry catalogue files I need for my FOV’s onto my PC so I don’t need to use the online solver, so works faster for me, wil this be of use to me or not..?

Well if you're already running your Kstars on Linux, you'd just be adding an extra layer with this API - just download the astrometry.net solver (if running Ubuntu or similar, sudo apt-get install astrometry.net) and configure it to use your catalogue files (/etc/astrometry.cfg, add_path) and you're good to go. You can set up Kstars to use the solver directly, you don't need Nova or Astrometry-api-lite at all.

 

Edit: to clarify, if on the other hand you were running Kstars/Ekos in Windows, this is what you would need. On Linux however Ekos can use the solver directly. Also if you wanted to solve from another computer that does not have the solver or the index files, then using the API would make sense.

Edited April 4, 2018 by jusasi

[LightBucket]

20 minutes ago, jusasi said:

Well if you're already running your Kstars on Linux, you'd just be adding an extra layer with this API - just download the astrometry.net solver (if running Ubuntu or similar, sudo apt-get install astrometry.net) and configure it to use your catalogue files (/etc/astrometry.cfg, add_path) and you're good to go. You can set up Kstars to use the solver directly, you don't need Nova or Astrometry-api-lite at all.

 

Edit: to clarify, if on the other hand you were running Kstars/Ekos in Windows, this is what you would need. On Linux however Ekos can use the solver directly. Also if you wanted to solve from another computer that does not have the solver or the index files, then using the API would make sense.

Ah, got you now, yes I used to use a windows laptop to control my system and had to use the online solver then, or the one that mimics the online one provided with INDI, so this new one would mean that on windows it will now work like it does with Linux and can be installed in the same way, so as not to need the Internet at all..correct....?

forgive me I am a bit slow...

[jusasi]

Basically, yes.

If your control laptop is a Windows laptop, you could now install the Astrometry-api-lite to the control laptop, go set the Kstars/Ekos solver settings to use http://localhost:3000 instead of http://nova.astrometry.net and that's it. And yes, you wouldn't need an internet connection - that's the idea .

In fact, this is how I roll, I run Windows 10 with Kstars on my control machine while my INDI slave is a Raspberry Pi, and run the Astrometry-api-lite as my solver on the Windows machine.

Edited April 4, 2018 by jusasi

[LightBucket]

1 hour ago, jusasi said:

Basically, yes.

If your control laptop is a Windows laptop, you could now install the Astrometry-api-lite to the control laptop, go set the Kstars/Ekos solver settings to use http://localhost:3000 instead of http://nova.astrometry.net and that's it. And yes, you wouldn't need an internet connection - that's the idea .

In fact, this is how I roll, I run Windows 10 with Kstars on my control machine while my INDI slave is a Raspberry Pi, and run the Astrometry-api-lite as my solver on the Windows machine.

Yes that’s exaclty how I used to do it with my rpi3, but I now use a Linux Ubuntu laptop, with it..  so even though I have no need for this ATM, I can see it will be very useful for many people...

so how does yours differ from this one, as I used in a similar way to yours on windows..it tricked the PC in thinking it was searching online, it says its for SGPro but will work with Kstars / Ekos.

http://adgsoftware.com/ansvr/

 

Edited April 4, 2018 by LightBucket

[jusasi]

17 hours ago, LightBucket said:

Yes that’s exaclty how I used to do it with my rpi3, but I now use a Linux Ubuntu laptop, with it..  so even though I have no need for this ATM, I can see it will be very useful for many people...

so how does yours differ from this one, as I used in a similar way to yours on windows..it tricked the PC in thinking it was searching online, it says its for SGPro but will work with Kstars / Ekos.

http://adgsoftware.com/ansvr/

 

It's very similar to ansvr by its concept, although I've never used it but judging by the instructions it's very much the same. The same basic idea of providing an offline API for the solver. Not many differences, apart from Astrometry-api-lite being multi-platform solution and open source. In Windows Ansvr runs on top of cygwin, while Astrometry-api-lite runs on top of Windows 10 Subsystem for Linux.

[han59]

This is an interesting development.  I think in the introduction or documentation you should describe a little more about the pre-conditions and installation.  As far I understand you need either:

1) A Linux system with a local astrometry.net installed.

2) Win10 64 bit Creators edition, Linux sub system installed. E.g. you could use my guideline as a start:

http://www.hnsky.org/linux_subsyst.htm

3) Windows system with Cygwin version of Astrometry.net v0.38  ??

Programs should be able to execute astrometry.net locally but this will help for the programs which only have a web interface to astrometry.net.

Han

 

[jusasi]

1 hour ago, han59 said:

This is an interesting development.  I think in the introduction or documentation you should describe a little more about the pre-conditions and installation.  As far I understand you need either:

1) A Linux system with a local astrometry.net installed.

2) Win10 64 bit Creators edition, Linux sub system installed. E.g. you could use my guideline as a start:

http://www.hnsky.org/linux_subsyst.htm

3) Windows system with Cygwin version of Astrometry.net v0.38  ??

Programs should be able to execute astrometry.net locally but this will help for the programs which only have a web interface to astrometry.net.

Han

 

The information is there, but I have to admit it's pretty well buried under a wall of text. I should restructure the readme and categorize the documentation into the repository Wiki.

To answer your questions:

1) Correct. It's mentioned in the readme if you can find it

2) Yep, Win10 with Linux Subsystem.

3) Not supported out of the box. I suppose it could run, given that it's executed inside cygwin.

And correct, this is for the needs where the API is required. With Win10 Linux Subsystem or cygwin you could natively run the solver as well - but if your software cannot use it directly and requires to use the API, that's when this software helps you.

- Jussi

[Chris67]

Hey Jussi,

thanks a lot for this nice app ! I was able to install it with success and easily.

I use Prism v10 for the astrometry solving. In its configuration, I simply replaced http://nova.astrometry.net with http://localhost:3000

But when I try to use it, I get the following errors :

POST /api/login 200 2.186 ms
ValidateError {
	fields:
	{ 'model.request-json': {message: '\'request-json\' is a required', value: undefined } },
	message: '',
	status: 400,
	name: ValidateError' }
POST /api/upload 400 5.567 ms
ValidateError {
	fields: { id: { message: 'id', value: 'protocol error' } },
	message: '',
	status: 400,
	name: 'ValidateError' }
POST /api/submissions/Protocol%20error 400 1.881 ms
...

It works very well with nova.astrometry.net

Any idea from where this could come ?

Could you help me out of this ?

Thanks,

Christian