A new deep sky image capture software on the rise!

[jjosefsen]

Also if you ever do get it to work, go for Version 1.9 and not 1.8. It is stable and has some very nice features.

[CrashEd]

Took NINA out for a spin last night (that sounds wrong! 😆) and I have to say, I was very impressed.

I found it more intuitive to use that SGP and the download speed with my ASI1600mm Pro is incredible in comparison! It will seriously same some time over SGP. Plate solving with ASTAP was also much faster than Platesolve2. 

I managed to get through a whole imaging session with only a few hiccups:

1. Autofocus was slightly out (50 steps) compared to what I could achieve manually, although I did realise (too late) that I didn't have the binning set to 2x2 as I would normally in SGP. This meant that there weren't enough stars for analysis. I think you can change the sensitivity of the star detection, so I'll try that as well. This leads on to the autostretch issue in # 2 below... 
2. I found the main image display to be pretty awful in terms of the stretch that was performed. It was pretty hard to distinguish the target, other than by some brighter stars. In fact the image history images were better. Not sure if this is a bug (I was using last night's nightly download). I tried messing with the black clipping setting and the stretch value, but to no avail. This could be why the autofocus struggled too? I through a few images into SGP to compare and the stretch was much better.
3. I got a couple of camera download errors, which meant a few dropped frames throughout the session. I'm using the native driver for the ASI1600mm Pro, so I might revert to the ASCOM driver next time.

So, some tweaking required here and there, but otherwise I'm converted!! 😀     

Edited October 14, 2019 by CrashEd

[jjosefsen]

19 minutes ago, CrashEd said:

Took NINA out for a spin last night (that sounds wrong! 😆) and I have to say, I was very impressed.

I found it more intuitive to use that SGP and the download speed with my ASI1600mm Pro is incredible in comparison! It will seriously same some time over SGP. Plate solving with ASTAP was also much faster than Platesolve2. 

I managed to get through a whole imaging session with only a few hiccups:

1. Autofocus was slightly out (50 steps) compared to what I could achieve manually, although I did realise (too late) that I didn't have the binning set to 2x2 as I would normally in SGP. This meant that there weren't enough stars for analysis. I think you can change the sensitivity of the star detection, so I'll try that as well. This leads on to the autostretch issue in # 2 below... 
2. I found the main image display to be pretty awful in terms of the stretch that was performed. It was pretty hard to distinguish the target, other than by some brighter stars. In fact the image history images were better. Not sure if this is a bug (I was using last night's nightly download). I tried messing with the black clipping setting and the stretch value, but to no avail. This could be why the autofocus struggled too? I through a few images into SGP to compare and the stretch was much better.
3. I got a couple of camera download errors, which meant a few dropped frames throughout the session. I'm using the native driver for the ASI1600mm Pro, so I might revert to the ASCOM driver next time.

So, some tweaking required here and there, but otherwise I'm converted!! 😀     

Glad to hear you had a good time.

I don't know what version you are using? But the later versions (1.9 and onward) are running the same autostretch routine as PixInsight, and in general that is the best implementation I have seen.

In the 1.10 Nigtlies there has been a lot of work on the autofocus code, with a brandnew detection function (contrast based) and new parabolic and hyperbolic curvefitting functions as opposed to the classical v-curve functions.

This is a great improvement to autofocus!

 

BUT the 1.10 nightlies are a little volatile at the moment as there is a lot of new code being put in, so probably best to be on 1.9 or ask around which 1.10 nightly has been stable lately.

My last imaging session was on 1.10.16 and that was stable enough for a fully automated night.

[Guest]

I am always downloading and using the Version 1.10 NIGHTLY #0XX ( my last used version is 1.10.16) and I did not encounter any issues..  

 

Cheers

Martin

[CrashEd]

38 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

Glad to hear you had a good time.

I don't know what version you are using? But the later versions (1.9 and onward) are running the same autostretch routine as PixInsight, and in general that is the best implementation I have seen.

In the 1.10 Nigtlies there has been a lot of work on the autofocus code, with a brandnew detection function (contrast based) and new parabolic and hyperbolic curvefitting functions as opposed to the classical v-curve functions.

This is a great improvement to autofocus!

 

BUT the 1.10 nightlies are a little volatile at the moment as there is a lot of new code being put in, so probably best to be on 1.9 or ask around which 1.10 nightly has been stable lately.

My last imaging session was on 1.10.16 and that was stable enough for a fully automated night.

 

27 minutes ago, artem said:

I am always downloading and using the Version 1.10 NIGHTLY #0XX ( my last used version is 1.10.16) and I did not encounter any issues..  

 

Cheers

Martin

Thanks guys - I was using the latest version (1.9 and the latest nightly), so maybe I'll try reverting to the one you mentioned just in case something got bugged in that version. There was definitely something wrong with the stretch.

I'll persevere though as it's a great bit of software!

[dazza1639]

It would be good if you could use it with an indi server. I have all my gear connected to a RPi, and connect to the remote indi server running on there with KStars on my windows machine. It would be nice to do somthing similar with NINA, as it looks great and a bit slicker than KStars.

[jjosefsen]

39 minutes ago, dazza1639 said:

It would be good if you could use it with an indi server. I have all my gear connected to a RPi, and connect to the remote indi server running on there with KStars on my windows machine. It would be nice to do somthing similar with NINA, as it looks great and a bit slicker than KStars.

Yeah that would be good, but it is a massive project to undertake I think.

I do believe the next big thing comming is a rework of the sequencing funktionality and with it things like dome control and such.

Edited October 14, 2019 by jjosefsen

[CrashEd]

Had another great night using NINA last night. Think I've finally cracked the autofocus, although it's taken a bit of setting up. I'm still not getting a classic 'V' profile but it's close enough. It's hitting the focal point better now in any a case.

The only real issue now is that I'm still getting the odd camera error (ASI1600mm Pro). I'll try and post a log on their Discord channel. This time it was during the autofocus routine and luckily not during imaging.

Great bit of software though!

Edited October 17, 2019 by CrashEd

[jjosefsen]

5 hours ago, CrashEd said:

Had another great night using NINA last night. Think I've finally cracked the autofocus, although it's taken a bit of setting up. I'm still not getting a classic 'V' profile but it's close enough. It's hitting the focal point better now in any a case.

The only real issue now is that I'm still getting the odd camera error (ASI1600mm Pro). I'll try and post a log on their Discord channel. This time it was during the autofocus routine and luckily not during imaging.

Great bit of software though!

I don't have a v-curve either, more like a U, and with the new parabolic / hyperbolic fitting algorithms in the nightly releases it hits focus very well.

[CrashEd]

I tried the parabolic fit the other night but it was before I had it all dialled in, so I'll give it a go next time I'm out.

Which 1.10 nightly version are oyu finding the mose stable?

[jjosefsen]

33 minutes ago, CrashEd said:

I tried the parabolic fit the other night but it was before I had it all dialled in, so I'll give it a go next time I'm out.

Which 1.10 nightly version are oyu finding the mose stable?

I haven't had a session in weeks, but I ran 16 without a hitch.

I think the latest is fine too, they found the memory leak that was causing issues in the QHY native driver, and now you have to enable loading of those drivers in the options so it doesn't affect every non QHY user.

For clarity - QHY are comming with a new driver really soon where it is fixed.

[DKNicholson]

I've been using SGPro for over a year now and it work well for me, BUT I'm always willing to try something else if there are some benefits. In your opinion are there any benefits of NINA over SGPro (apart from price obviously!)?  For me the main bug bear is that SGPro is not exactly intuitive, but once you've worked out what needs to be done it certainly works.  I don't really want to try it just for the sake of trying it because there is always quite a learning curve, but if NINA is genuinely 'better' it would be worth it.

[jjosefsen]

1 hour ago, DKNicholson said:

I've been using SGPro for over a year now and it work well for me, BUT I'm always willing to try something else if there are some benefits. In your opinion are there any benefits of NINA over SGPro (apart from price obviously!)?  For me the main bug bear is that SGPro is not exactly intuitive, but once you've worked out what needs to be done it certainly works.  I don't really want to try it just for the sake of trying it because there is always quite a learning curve, but if NINA is genuinely 'better' it would be worth it.

Hmm I don't know too much about SGP if I'm honest, having only tried it on one imaging session.

But setting it up was quite a journey, and I'm an IT guy..

 

So I would say these from the top of my head:

• User Interface - In my opinion it is so much better and cleaner than both SGP and APT.
• Speed - It is quite fast and many things are done in parallel.
• I'm not 100% certain here, but here goes anyway - I think NINA has native support for more cameras than any other software out there.
• And as you already mentioned, it is free..

[DKNicholson]

jjosefsen - many thanks for your response. I'm about to get a new camera so that may well be the time to try NINA. I'm getting the SX Trius-SX694, don't suppose you would know if that is supported? I also have an SX Filterwheel, and Lodestar x2 which should be OK.  My focuser is the RIGEL Stepper Motor, USB nStep Focus Control which is quite old now, so that's a consideration.

Do hope you don't mind me putting all this to you.

Yours aye - DKNicholson

[jjosefsen]

19 minutes ago, DKNicholson said:

jjosefsen - many thanks for your response. I'm about to get a new camera so that may well be the time to try NINA. I'm getting the SX Trius-SX694, don't suppose you would know if that is supported? I also have an SX Filterwheel, and Lodestar x2 which should be OK.  My focuser is the RIGEL Stepper Motor, USB nStep Focus Control which is quite old now, so that's a consideration.

Do hope you don't mind me putting all this to you.

Yours aye - DKNicholson

Well all peripherals such as wheels, focusers, etc. Are controlled by ASCOM so they should work. But Starlight Express is in fact not natively supported. It's hard to implement something like that without a test camera, and no developer had one, and SX didn't want to lend a developer one. 🙁

But it will work with ASCOM..

[DKNicholson]

Many thanks for that - I may well give it a go. 

[CrashEd]

22 hours ago, DKNicholson said:

I've been using SGPro for over a year now and it work well for me, BUT I'm always willing to try something else if there are some benefits. In your opinion are there any benefits of NINA over SGPro (apart from price obviously!)?  For me the main bug bear is that SGPro is not exactly intuitive, but once you've worked out what needs to be done it certainly works.  I don't really want to try it just for the sake of trying it because there is always quite a learning curve, but if NINA is genuinely 'better' it would be worth it.

Last night I tried adding to my dark library using SGP by just having my camera and filter wheel attached to my laptop. It was such a hassle messing around with my (proven) profile to stop it complaining that I didn’t have my mount etc attached. 

I gave up and switched over to NINA and it took 2 seconds - it is very intuitive. I now do everything in there. I don’t think I’ll go back to SGP now as it’s too inflexible. It’s also quite slow, so NINA is saving me valuable imaging time (or giving me more time to collect data). It’s well worth a try. 

[DKNicholson]

CrashED - thank you for that insight. It's obviously a little difficult to get enthusiastic about setting up new software, but SGPro is a bit slow. Over 5 hours imaging I add 45 minutes for SGPro to focus and think about what it's going to do next! 

[bottletopburly]

Out of interest can N.I.N.A  be run from a pi4 and controlled from  my laptop.

[jjosefsen]

1 minute ago, bottletopburly said:

Out of interest can N.I.N.A  be run from a pi4 and controlled from  my laptop.

No. Windows only at this time.

[bottletopburly]

9 minutes ago, jjosefsen said:

No. Windows only at this time.

Thanks I’m awaiting APT 3.90 release which will allow me to run indigosky ON PI4 via APT   , wondered if N.I.N.A. could do same thing .

[PeterCPC]

I tried this and found the previous version quite good. Unfortunately the latest version refuses to download any images from my ASI385 so I gave up on it.

Peter

[Noobulosity]

11 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

I tried this and found the previous version quite good. Unfortunately the latest version refuses to download any images from my ASI385 so I gave up on it.

Peter

The version that doesn't work. Is that one of the nightly releases? If so, why not go back to the working version? Nightly releases aren't made to be stable, they're for testing new features. If something broke, let the devs know about it so they can fix it.

[PeterCPC]

1 minute ago, Noobulosity said:

The version that doesn't work. Is that one of the nightly releases? If so, why not go back to the working version? Nightly releases aren't made to be stable, they're for testing new features. If something broke, let the devs know about it so they can fix it.

When I opened up NINA it said that there is an update and do you want to update now, so I did. Wrong choice.

Peter

[CrashEd]

36 minutes ago, PeterCPC said:

When I opened up NINA it said that there is an update and do you want to update now, so I did. Wrong choice.

Peter

There's a option in the settings that allows the software to prompt for stable, beta or nightly updates. Maybe switch to stable or beta if you want stability.