Feature requests.

[telfish]

Couple of things I would like to see.

 

Time in exposure to be minutes and seconds not just seconds.

 

Ability to issue a park command to the mount on completion of an imaging run. Maybe via ascom.

 

Ability to slew to a new target and start a new imaging run so unattended imaging possible.

 

And the ability to abort an imaging run not just suspend it. At present if I start a run and discover an issue I have to close BYEOS and then restart all over again.

Terry

 

 

 

[s3igell]

And the ability to abort an imaging run not just suspend it. At present if I start a run and discover an issue I have to close BYEOS and then restart all over again.

 

Terry, I hope that you've found for yourself that BYE/BYN DOES have an Imaging Run ABORT Feature - the big ABORT Button just below the Image Timer Circle in the Upper-Right.  Just Click on that - or Click-and-Hold if you have adjusted the "Abort Delay" Setting.

[admin]

1) Time in exposure in minutes and seconds.  It's on the list

 

2) Park on session complete.  Yep that would be useful.

 

3) This is a major change BYE would need to natively plate solve, not just allow AstroTortilla to use BYE, but the other way around.  This is out of scope at this time.

 

4) Yep, the current ABORT button in the upper right corner just below the progress wheel does it

 

Thanks for posting.

 

[astroman133]

Terry,

 

BYE is a camera capture program, not an observatory control program. It is not designed to support robotic. unattended observatory control. The ability to connect to the mount is available to Premium users solely to support nudging the mount during frame and focus. If you are operating an observatory remotely then you will undoubtedly have some other observatory control application that will, for example, ensure that the mount is parked before closing the roof.

 

As long as the telescope driver supports Parking (not all do), it should not be difficult to do. I am saying this from a purely functional standpoint. However, my belief as a BYE user is that, it lies outside of what BYE should do.

 

The desire to have BYE slew to targets has been raised before.  That is a huge addition, since BYE currently has no concept of what a target is, other than a field that goes into the file name.  Sure, it is not too complicated a programming effort to have a program send an RA and DEC position to a mount, but adding some kind of target database into BYE would be a huge effort that is not at all related to camera capture.  There are many planetarium programs, some of them are free, that already do that. Most support ASCOM telescopes. 

 

Blindly slewing to an RA and DEC and then starting imaging is not something that I ever do during a photography session.  The accuracy of the slew is dependent on how good your alignment is. I use Astro Tortilla to do a more precise job of pointing at the object. I do not typically do a star alignment at all.  I make sure that I am well aligned to the Celestial Pole and then use AT to slew and point at my target  Then I may move the target off-center to include other objects in the shot or because the target is too large to fit in the FOV and I need to create a mosaic.  IMHO, slew and shoot is an oversimplification with limited usefulness for most workflows.

 

Adding autofocus capability is an enhancement that is much closer to BYE's core functionality and has been anticipated by the community for several months.

 

Those are just my 2 cents on your requests.

[s3igell]

Perhaps we should all consider a different evolution for BYE/BYN - something that Guylain hinted at in his recent Video Presentation:  BYE/BYN as the Image Capture "slave" component called upon by an Observatory Control App.

 

Guylain hinted that an approach he might be considering to address the Sync'd Dual-Camera on Single Mount could be the implementation of a TCP-based Server Interface - perhaps an expansion on that used to afford AstroTortilla interoperability (also how PHD2 exposes itself for External Control).  BYE/BYN would expose a Server Interface to request Initiation of a Capture Plan (or of an individual Exposure within an ongoing Capture Plan - for control of the Slave Camera in a Dual-Camera setup), as well as Notification of Completion of that Capture Plan (or even Progress Reports as the Capture Plan is underway).

 

This Interface would allow some Observatory Control App to manage the details of Observatory Operation, Mount Operation, Target Management, and call upon BYE/BYN to manage the Image Capture processes.

 

(Sorry, Guylain, if I've taken a little comment from you and let my imagination run...)