App Change Suggestions (calibration/solar)

bartholomule

Having played with the app a little, I've found there are a few things either wrong or that could use improvement.

The compass calibration step is done in the wrong order. This should be done before making the tripod level.
Doing it after will always throw it out of level as there isn't an easy way to tell where the feet were before. Alternatively, just make the tripod level and rotate the device to do automatic compass calibration.
Skip compass calibration (if automatic calibration isn't done). I find that if I'm standing next to the device it is working fine, but if I go in the house, it suddenly decides it needs to recalibrate. I know I just calibrated it a few minutes ago, so I shouldn't need to do it again. With no option to skip, I have to continually go outside, make an adjustment and then go back in only to find it wasn't happy with that adjustment.
Solar mode (and others) should add crosshairs, and maybe a sun-sized or moon-sized circle. When it asks "is this in the center", it's virtually impossible to tell when there's glare on the screen. A dot is clearly visible, but is it centered? No way to tell.
Solar mode (and others) need a "tap to center". If the sun has drifted for whatever reason, I just want to tap on a spot and have it move the center to the spot where I tap. The drag controls are insufficient for fine adjustment. Fine-control arrows would be an improvement (and should be added anyway), but if I could just tap and have it move, that would be optimal.

AstroNet@ZWO

bartholomule Great suggestions, thank you, we will optimize these issues

bschnitzer

bartholomule great idea about crosshairs/disk. I find it cumbersome trying to center a sunspot group in the 1x view prior to switching to the 4X view. I use that view to check if autofocus is accurate. My suggested variant on this would be an outline in the center of the 1x view that represents the 4X view. The outline would be toggled on/off by a button added to the right side option list.

bartholomule

Great. Thanks.

A few more things I came up with when using it yesterday.

Some option to limit rotation of the device when it is plugged in. I had it plugged in to an external battery when attempting a timelapse. It lost the sun, and I hit the button again to have it search. After it failed, I went outside to find the cord was wrapped multiple times around the base of the device. If it is plugged in, rotation up to 360 degrees each direction (maybe 270, but minimal testing should reveal which is better) is probably fine. After that, it should rotate all the way back and approach the angle from the other direction (similar to a meridian flip) to avoid pulling the cord.
An option to go "home" without powering off. This is directly related to the cord wrapping thing, but I'd like to have it return to the home az angle (alt isn't so important) so I can plug it in knowing it isn't at some odd angle that's going to cause issues and then I can go back to whatever I was doing.

If there's a better spot for feature requests, let me know. I'll keep toying with it and will probably have lots more ideas.

AstroNet@ZWO

bartholomule Thank you, we will consider your suggestions and thank you for having more and better ideas. Let us make Seestar better together.

starnet59

bartholomule Item 1 has been requested here multiple times this year. It seems ZWO does not consider this a priority and finds it more urgent to change the color of some on screen buttons from green to red. Does anybody here care about that? Do red buttons instead of green make your life easier?

Support@Seestar

starnet59
I see your genuine suggestions for Seesatr and some of the urgent needs raised, and I'm very much behind you, and while there may be some ideas that are not possible at the moment, I'll prioritize those good ideas to the team first, but things need to be considered step by step, and there are a lot of things that need to be taken into account, so hopefully they'll all be implemented at the end of the day.