OpenLiveStacker - live stacking open-source software/app for Linux and Android

[Artik]

7 hours ago, Stu said:

Nothing clever, just attached the phone to the eyepiece with the scope on an EQ tracking mount. When held absolutely steady, the phone engages Astro mode and it will take a 4 minute exposure made up of 16 second subs. That’s what generated the result posted.

Interesting what is max exposure that can be set for the camera on your phone... Almost every phone even with good camera I tested had top 0.5s exposure.

[PeterStudz]

I have an iPhone but in Night Mode my iPhone 14 Pro takes 10 sec subs but only up to 30 seconds. The iPhone 12 did 3.3 sec subs. You can see in the camera data for these Milky Way shots. 

Although I don’t have an Android phone I think the clue is in “Astro mode”. On an iPhone Night Mode, and its associated 10 sec exposure, cannot be accessed by 3rd party apps.

 

 

 

Edited December 17, 2023 by PeterStudz

[Artik]

Versions 25 & 26 released: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/releases/tag/beta26

Changelog of 25+26:

• Fixed bug #78 Starting stacking stream for DSLR/gphoto can get stuck sometimes
• Fixed but #77 Default Image format for Android camera likely too large for phone to process
• Added support of synthetic exposure - adding adjecent frames as they are single exposure - it is useful for cases max exposure is too short and there is not enough signal to even perform registration, for example smartphone cameras or UVC cameras like sv105
• Updated touptek SDK to version 20231210
• Added support of removing calibration frames from the database
• Added support of mono8 to UVC
• Show thumbnail automatically when working with delay so you don't need to open one

And the biggest news of all I submitted it to Google Play... now it is in review. I hope it will pass and finally it would be downloadable from Google App Store and there will be no need to install it via APK.

[MartinB]

Hi Artik,

I am very much in the slow learners class when it comes to IT but I'm wondering whether your app will be able to help me.  I do some of my imaging using a asiair plus.  This has a live view facility with the image delivered to a phone or tablet.  I would like to be able to use this set up at our astro society to show the live view image on our large monitor via a windows PC.  Is this possible?

[Artik]

On 20/12/2023 at 18:27, MartinB said:

This has a live view facility with the image delivered to a phone or tablet.  I would like to be able to use this set up at our astro society to show the live view image on our large monitor via a windows PC

OpenLiveStacker uses web based UI - so its UI actually runs inside web browser.

If your windows PC and the android are at the same wifi network and connected you can just open http://IP.OF.YOUR.ANDROID:8080 and you'll access the web UI and all features of live stacker.

[MartinB]

Oh great, thanks for that Artik

[Artik]

Ok good news... OpenLiveStacker is now in Google Play - you can install it from there

[Guest]

So, one of the main reasons I (re)joined this forum was because of this.  Great job on this piece of software, very nicely done!  I loaded it from the google store a little while ago and been enjoying playing with it since.

Some comments from my end:

I have an asi290mc and the app works great with it.  Sometimes it drops the connection to the camera, but I suspect the cables, not the app.  However, when this happens the app gets 'stuck' and won't close properly even when I click on the close and exit button.  I have to actually force stop the app.  Not a biggie, just thought I'd mention.

I also have a Canon M50 and it works great with it.  I can't seem to be able to change the iso through the app though, but it works on the camera.  Otherwise everything seems fine.

I have the app installed on a google pixel 7pro and I tried using the internal camera.  It works fine if set to the default auto exposure and iso, but when switching to manual, the iso and exposure values are some strange floating point range that are not accepted no matter what values I put in.  I tried valid ones from the specs on the camera, but none of those work either.  It gives a not valid value or something like that.

Another minor bugaboo is that even after I close and exit the camera app, much later, like minutes later, I get a phone notification of so many frames stacked and such.  Not sure why the delay and why still the notification even after the app has closed.

Oh, minor ask.  Is there a way to incorporate some form of focus aid to the streaming view?  Like maybe the ability to zoom the image past 1:1 would be nice to be able to gauge star size.  My eyes arent what they used to be and focus masks are not useful for wide angle lenses and internal phone cameras.

But I've been having lots of fun with it.   I'll post some piccies at some point.

Thanks again for all the great work!

Daniel

[Artik]

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I have an asi290mc and the app works great with it.  Sometimes it drops the connection to the camera, but I suspect the cables, not the app.  However, when this happens the app gets 'stuck' and won't close properly even when I click on the close and exit button.  I have to actually force stop the app.  Not a biggie, just thought I'd mention.

 

One thing I notices that it can be easy overload the app. Finally Android with ARM isn't PC with i7. So If your sensor resolution is large (also 290mc is way withing reach) I'd recommend using binning or ROI, especially if working with short exposures. I try to do my best to prevent it but sometimes it may just overload processing pipeline with large memory consumption and in some cases it may just take too much time to "unstack"

I may need develop some memory control to prevent something like that, but that isn't trivial,

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I also have a Canon M50 and it works great with it.  I can't seem to be able to change the iso through the app though, but it works on the camera.  Otherwise everything seems fine.

 

Are you setting the camera to manual - "M" mode? Does it list ISO control in the list or not?

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

I have the app installed on a google pixel 7pro and I tried using the internal camera.  It works fine if set to the default auto exposure and iso, but when switching to manual, the iso and exposure values are some strange floating point range that are not accepted no matter what values I put in.  I tried valid ones from the specs on the camera, but none of those work either.  It gives a not valid value or something like that.

 

Can you please send the logs:

1st enable camera debugging in main enterance

2nd get in and try to set exposure.

Get the logs log.txt and android_camera.log from Android/media/org.openlivestacker/OpenLiveStacker/debug

I want to see if there is something I miss

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

Another minor bugaboo is that even after I close and exit the camera app, much later, like minutes later, I get a phone notification of so many frames stacked and such.  Not sure why the delay and why still the notification even after the app has closed.

What android version is it? I noticed this stange behavior on Android 10 sometimes, and it isn't really consistent. As general android app that runs in background (and you want it to to be able to run long sesssions) need to generate some notifications. Probably something with cleanup doesn't work well but I wasn't able to figure why.

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

Oh, minor ask.  Is there a way to incorporate some form of focus aid to the streaming view? 

Good question, it is something that was asked like estimation of image sharpness etc for focusing. 

I mostly use Bahtinov mask but I understand that some numeric aid can be useful especially for solar observations when Bahtinov isn't that useful.  Hadn't get into it yet. Since it requires some kind of registration. I probably need to open a feature request for one.

Quote

 Like maybe the ability to zoom the image past 1:1 would be nice to be able to gauge star size.

Generally you can zoom past 1:1 but if your resolution is very large it is may not be enough. Simplest is to select a small ROI and than zoom.

2 hours ago, dciobota said:

But I've been having lots of fun with it. 

Thanks. 

And know this kind of reports are very valuable since they give me point to what guys a looking for and help prioritizing stuff. 

Edited January 13 by Artik

[Guest]

11 minutes ago, Artik said:

One thing I notices that it can be easy overload the app. Finally Android with ARM isn't PC with i7. So If your sensor resolution is large I'd recommend using binning or ROI, especially if working with short exposures. I try to do my best to prevent it but sometimes it may just overload processing pipeline with large memory consumption and in some cases it may just take too much time to "unstack"

I may need develop some memory control to prevent something like that, but that isn't trivial,

Are you setting the camera to manual - "M" mode? Does it list ISO control in the list or not?

Can you please send the logs:

1st enable camera debugging in main enterance

2nd get in and try to set exposure.

Get the logs log.txt and android_camera.log from Android/media/org.openlivestacker/OpenLiveStacker/debug

I want to see if there is something I miss

What android version is it? I noticed this stange behavior on Android 10 sometimes, and it isn't really consistent. As general android app that runs in background (and you want it to to be able to run long sesssions) need to generate some notifications. Probably something with cleanup doesn't work well but I wasn't able to figure why.

Good question, it is something that was asked like estimation of image sharpness etc for focusing. 

I mostly use Bahtinov mask but I understand that some numeric aid can be useful especially for solar observations when Bahtinov isn't that useful.  Hadn't get into it yet. Since it requires some kind of registration. I probably need to open a feature request for one.

Generally you can zoom past 1:1 but if your resolution is very large it is may not be enough. Simplest is to select a small ROI and than zoom.

Thanks. 

And know this kind of reports are very valuable since they give me point to what guys a looking for and help prioritizing stuff. 

Thanks Arty!

Ok, so next time I use it I'll definitely send you the logs and report on the behaviors.  Here's the questions I can answer now.

I can definitely see how this live stacking can overload the phone memory.  Mine has 12gb memory, and usually uses about half when running.  I didn't check the usage while the app was running but I can do that next time.

My android version is 13.

You mention being able to zoom past 1:1.  But even when I turn on viewfinder mode it only gives me enough zoom (up to 4) to see up to 1:1?  Do I need to set roi to be able to zoom past 4?  I haven't played with roi yet.  I might try that next time. 

Thanks again for your comments.  I'll send you the debug files for the internal camera and the behavior of the M50 when I run it next time.

[Artik]

Version 27 is released to both github and Google Play

New features

 - Added support of linear gradient removal caused by light pollution.

Bug fixes:

- Changed the depth of computing queue from 20 to 10 frames to prevent memory overloading under high loads.
- ToupTek driver fixes: Fixed ROI calculations when binning in use
- ToupTek driver fixes: Removed frame rate limits for future solar/planetary imaging
- ToupTek driver fixes: Removed RGB image from mono cameras
- Now frame-rate limits are are not shown if they aren't known
- Fixed "json" error - in case of no camera detected - now proper error is given

 

Here an example of gradient removal (after and before)

 

[Artik]

New release 29 - support of planetary stacking, quality filters and performance improvements

New Experimental Features

• Added implementation of planetary stacking - with post-processing based on Richardson-Lucy deconvolution and sharpening
• Added support of image quality filters: sharpness, brightness, registration quality

New features

• The post processing and stacking are separated into two different threads allowing to stack at much higher frame-rates
• Post processing now can skip frames if more than one are already for post processing to improve latency and performance
• Added logging to UVC driver

Bug fixes

• Support of UVC devices that do not report default or resolution values is added

New manual entries:

• Planetary Post processing: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual#planetary-stacking-controls
• Filters: https://github.com/artyom-beilis/OpenLiveStacker/wiki/Open-Live-Stacker-Manual#filters

Demo of Sun live stacking: