Stellarium & Webcam on a Netbook

[keithsizer]

Hello Everybody, hope your all well?

Last night was my first night out with my Skymax 127 AZ GOO. After looking at the moon, we tried to do the alignment. We ran in to a few problems, didn't get good results. I have looked on the internet, and found Stellarium. I have also found that it is hit or miss on Netbooks. My first question is, Do any of you run Stellarium on a Netbook? How well does it run? What Netbook do you have?

I'm also thinking of adding a Philips SPC900NC webcam. Is there anything spec wise I should be looking for to run both? The netbook will only be used to run Stellarium and the Webcam.

Thanks in advance for your help.

[Staffy]

I got the same scope as you a Christmas. I found with alignment it is best to set up using two stars that are in the same quadrant as you intend viewing in. I set up one night on Vega and Polaris and when it tried to find Jupiter it wasn't even close. Setting up on each occasion after that on stars in a more westerly direction has given me quite accurate acquiring and tracking. Another very important factor is to make sure that your tripod is set up correctly. Ensure the bubble in your spirit level on the mount is central. If your scope is not level it won't be able to look in the right place.

As for Stellarium, I run it on a PC but I run Redshift 6 on a netbook and although it is a bit slow to boot up once it gets started it works perfectly - this is on Windows 7 Starter.

I hope this helps. Good luck!

The tie setting will be important too. I get this from Atomic Clock: local current time London GMT for complete accuracy.

To find your correct latitude and longitude try finding your viewing site on Google Earth. Your lat and long will be displayed at the bottom centre of the picture.

[malc-c]

Hello Everybody, hope your all well?

Last night was my first night out with my Skymax 127 AZ GOO. After looking at the moon, we tried to do the alignment. We ran in to a few problems, didn't get good results. I have looked on the internet, and found Stellarium. I have also found that it is hit or miss on Netbooks. My first question is, Do any of you run Stellarium on a Netbook? How well does it run? What Netbook do you have?

I'm also thinking of adding a Philips SPC900NC webcam. Is there anything spec wise I should be looking for to run both? The netbook will only be used to run Stellarium and the Webcam.

Thanks in advance for your help.

Depends on the spec of your netbook. I've tried Stellarium on an Asus 900A, with a 16GB Runcore fast SSD, 2GB RAM and the frame rate for re-drawing the sky is poor - less than 1FPS. I don't think it's the Atom processor that's the problem, it's the graphics chip. If you can find a netbook or similar with a ION graphics chip you should fair better. There are alternative software, probably not as polished but will do the same thing - most are listed here on the forum in some posts - the search function should help

Malcolm

[Steep]

I run Stallarium on a Lenovo S12 (intel Atom) without any problems. I've also used SharpCap to capture avi's from my spc880 again without any difficulty. I don't use it for processing though, I move the files to a usb stick and process on my main pc.

If you have an Android phone, have a look at Google Skymap, it works well enough to find constellations planets etc.

[malc-c]

I run Stallarium on a Lenovo S12 (intel Atom) without any problems.

That's because the S12 has the Nvidia ION graphics chip. This can run video at full 1080P HD without problems - Stallarium would fly on an Lenovo S12

[Glider]

Both webcam and Stellarium are fine on my Tesco eMachine 250 and Samsung NC10.

[keithsizer]

Thanks for all your help and advice. I've seen an Lenovo IdeaPad S12 for £220, think that's the way I'm going...

Thanks again

[tomw28]

Another option for running Stellarium is to use the iPhone or iPod touch version. I personally use it and it is the easiest way for me to navigate my way around the sky. If you already have an iPhone or iPod touch you could then get a netbook that is just powerful enough for the webcam. I assume that would be cheaper leaving you a bit of left over money for other astro goodies! Just a thought,

Tom

[Woody]

Keithsizer- That Lenova is a good price...so good I just bought one!

Nice find:hello2:

[Steep]

That's because the S12 has the Nvidia ION graphics chip. This can run video at full 1080P HD without problems - Stallarium would fly on an Lenovo S12

There are three versions, Intel Atom (my one), the Nvidia Ion and a Via model. The Ion is by far the best and most expensive, but the Intel does me proud too.

[malc-c]

Stand corrected. Two are based on the Atom processor, with a choice of graphics chipset (Intel945GSE or Nvidia ION) or the VIA nano CPU and Intel Graphics.

Strange thing is the Asus which also has the Atom 270N processor and I beleive the same Intel chipset gives such a poor refresh rate - what refresh rate does your S12 give

[Steep]

It jumps around a bit but say an average of 12 fps peaking at 22, oddly enough a bit of mouse pointer movement raises it and makes it run smoother, if I leave it to idle the rate slowly drops to a low of 7.75 which is ok as long as I'm not running fast forward.

I'm running XP, I did try win7 home but it was too resource hungry, however with XP it's not possible to permanently change a programs' priority. I can make Stellarium run at 15fps at idle via task manager but only after I've started it and it reverts to 'normal' next time.

[malc-c]

Well, I've just spent a few hours browsing the net for something that will run on my Asus Eee 900A and offer telescope control. I came across WinStar2 and for £5 registered to enable the scope control and additional atlases. I'm still waiting for my C6-SGT to arrive so can't confirm if the Ascom drivers work, but the program runs really fast on the netbook (solar system mode animates the satellites round the Earth in fast forward mode real quick )

There has probably been a link to it in some other post, but for anyone wanting to have a look here's the URL Introduction to WinStars 2

[malc-c]

I must admit I'm very impressed with this program, it's easy to use and works well on the PC. I've connected to a simulated telescope and to track an object it's a simple case of right click and select follow - or type in the name of the object and click follow - There is a nice touch as well in that the stars twinkle in planetarium mode !

Here's a screen shot, even tracks satellites - one can bee seen to the right of Orion

For 6 euro this is one of the best bits of software I've found. Yes there are a few odd things (Orion being called "the hunter" for example) but I can live with those

[Midpoint]

I recently got an Asus Eee PC 1015 and it seems to run Stellarium fine (20-30fps). I was going to stick up a review in a couple of days, I've jut got t finish a couple of battery tests first to make sure it'll survive a reasonable time out in the field.

[akoobra]

I recently purchased an Acer Aspire one and downloaded the latest Stellarium, got good frame rates however the text was all mixed up (graphics card not good enough). I reverted back to 10.2 and got slower fps (up to 15) but the text is great. I can certainly recommend going to a previous version if you have a netbook without top specs.

[astroimpulse]

I have a new Aspire One N550 which is a dual processor, upgraded to 2gb (wish it would go higher) and a fast SSD drive. Also Win 7 64bit.

It runs perfectly fine with lots of other stuff but I like to keep it as small windowed.

[Kit-Fox]

Original Asus 701 here with custom linux distro & stellarium on it & its fine, runs ok without any noticable lag as long as you dont put up the constellation artwork. Ram was upgraded to 1Gb tho

&

Asus 900 with a cutdown XP install on it with 2Gb of RAM. Again runs fine without any noticable lag without any artwork put up. This one has the optional D/Lable catalogues on it and the satellite plugin enabled.

Dont have any cameras or mounts hooked up to them tho.

[AllanJ]

I have a Samsung N150. It runs Stellarium, but that can be a bit slow or jerky, so I tend to use CdC on the netbook more often. I use it for NexImage webcam software (AMCap), plus Registax, Gimp, Open Office and a variety of other bits and bobs.

Allan

[leenewtoastro]

I must admit I'm very impressed with this program, it's easy to use and works well on the PC. I've connected to a simulated telescope and to track an object it's a simple case of right click and select follow - or type in the name of the object and click follow - There is a nice touch as well in that the stars twinkle in planetarium mode !

Here's a screen shot, even tracks satellites - one can bee seen to the right of Orion

For 6 euro this is one of the best bits of software I've found. Yes there are a few odd things (Orion being called "the hunter" for example) but I can live with those

how is this now you've had it for sometime? still like it? does all you need?

[PETENAUD]

I run stellarium on an old IBM X31 netbook with a Centrino processor and XP Pro, and it runs fine.

It wont run on my fujitsu amilo laptop though!

[jayjt29]

Original Asus 701 here with custom linux distro & stellarium on it & its fine, runs ok without any noticable lag as long as you dont put up the constellation artwork. Ram was upgraded to 1Gb tho

&

Asus 900 with a cutdown XP install on it with 2Gb of RAM. Again runs fine without any noticable lag without any artwork put up. This one has the optional D/Lable catalogues on it and the satellite plugin enabled.

Dont have any cameras or mounts hooked up to them tho.

I have the 701 collecting dust, can you run the SPC900 on it?

Thanks

Jay

[RascalUK]

I had gfx probs on my newish laptop. Googled it and found a solution that involves me starting it up in a diff mode via a command line and it works fine.

Can't remember off top of my head what it is. Will post back later when I boot it.

[Si W]

I run Stellarium on an Acer aspire one notebook, i will say though, it runs on Windows XP, for the reason of software compatibility for other software i use as i run my full setup on this notebook, Stellarium runs very well on XP, but i cant speak for Windows 7, never used it.

[RascalUK]

Righty,

Right click your Stellarium short cut and in the TARGET box you need this (replacing the first bit obv, if Stellarium isn't in the defaul install directory...

"C:\Program Files\Stellarium\stellarium.exe" --safe-mode

This forces Stellarium to use a work-around for the problems it has with some graphics cards.

Works for me using this...