Creating astronomy tools…

[Karl Perera]

One thing I am interested in doing is creating some helpful astronomy tools and adding them to my website.

I have already created a Long Exposure Calculator here:
https://astroimagery.com/techniques/imaging/astrophotography-calculator-for-long-exposures%5D

This calculator enables you to enter your Bortle sky pollution level, the read noise level of your camera and the amount of noise you can accept in your images. It will give a suggested sub-exposure time for a colour camera, a monochrome camera and when using narrowband filters.

I’d love some feedback on this and any ideas for a collaboration or suggestion for tools you think would be helpful to you.

• This topic was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Karl Perera.
• This topic was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Karl Perera.
• This topic was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Karl Perera.
• This topic was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Karl Perera.
• This topic was modified 11 months, 1 week ago by Karl Perera.

Karl Perera
Astrophotographer, Teacher and Author
https://astroimagery.com

[Dr Paul Leyland]

If you feel up for a real challenge, you could write an INDI driver for the Velleman K8055 series of boards.

This would be a highly non-trivial undertaking but one which would win you kudos with a wide selection of the amateur community. People have been asking for one for years.

At the moment domes with a Velleman controller, mine included, can use only the LesveDome ASCOM controller. The problems with LesveDome is that the source code is unavailable, it is Windows only, and is ASCOM instead of the much more portable INDI.

Yesterday I purchased a Velleman WPI110N (the latest release of the K8055 series) with a view to seeing whether I can persuade it to play ball without having to perform potentially dangerous tests on a live dome.

[Mr Ian David Sharp]

Dr Paul Leyland wrote:

At the moment domes with a Velleman controller, mine included, can use only the LesveDome ASCOM controller. The problems with LesveDome is that the source code is unavailable, it is Windows only, and is ASCOM instead of the much more portable INDI.

I’ve written my own Dome controller using the ASCOM Alpaca standard. My code runs on a Raspberry Pi. The Alpaca initiative is fully portable as it uses a JSON/REST API and therefore is no longer Windows COM specific.

[Dr Paul Leyland]

Ian: this sounds most interesting!

Can your driver be used under EKOS?

Perhaps we could discuss this in greater detail by email rather than clogging up the BAA fora.

[Mr Ian David Sharp]

Dr Paul Leyland wrote:

Can your driver be used under EKOS?

Perhaps we could discuss this in greater detail by email rather than clogging up the BAA fora.

I know nothing of this EKOS of which you speak! Yes, let’s talk offline…

ian.sharp@astro-sharp.com

Cheers
Ian.

[Tim Haymes]

The sub frame calculator is helpful. Thank you. When you plug in numbers i can see the range of possibilities to try
Tim

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