https://youtu.be/OMD5p0s43Hk
One shot captured per second, into a 30fps video, so effectively 30x realtime. Partial is sped up 6x more. Totality slowed down to 1/4x.
It illustrates a few issues. Notice there are a bunch of different clips with jumps between them before totality.
I was running with my tablet always on and near the scope and the phone in my pocket which of course was regularly losing connection as I moved around (I should have set up the wifi extender but didn't think I'd need it with the tablet continuously connected). Two issues..
- The Seestar app on the tablet just kept randomly locking up solid, which would then (for no logical reason) cause the recording to stop, and I literally had to reboot the tablet to get it to recover about 3-4 times. . The Seestar app couldn't be minimized, closed.. anything.
- Every so often I'd turn on the phone (with Seestar app already running) and suddenly see the Sun just zoom off the screen at like Fast slew speed. The tripod was solid and scope was not moving. It just seemed to drive itself off into la la land. It felt like the phone's Seestar app and Tablet's were competing for some lost command to move the scope from minutes before and suddenly decided to go do that thing it forgot to do. I was not swiping on the screen, or using the slew controls. When it did this I'd have to stop the timelapse, get out my 3d printed solar target.. point it back at the sun, and start timelapse again.
Luckily.. it didn't do any of that during totality. I ran the timelapse up to start of totality, then stopped it to take some pics (I should have let it run), adjusted the manual exposure (I had it set to manual for most of the eclipse, with the sliders almost all the way to the left, like 0 and 2-3 or something. If the shutter can go any faster, I'd add some to the left end of that slider, because the middle and right side of those sliders are pretty useless.
And of course the constant jitter and regular jumps due to the way the visual target tracking interacts with the gear lash. It required heavy stabilization in my video editor. Seestar, if you're listening. Consider this. You can avoid getting lost in gear lash if you only drive in one direction. (from the northern hemisphere, looking southerly) if you see the target drifting off right, and you need it to move left, then you can drive faster to catch it. If you see the target drifting left then don't drive left.. Just slow down or stop and let the target move itself back into center of frame as the earth rotates. Similarly for driving up/down etc. This way you always keep the load on one side of the gear teeth and not in the lash between them. Yes it can't respond as quickly but done correctly it will avoid the target jumping around every few seconds as it takes up the lash. Yes the math is a bit more complex to handle targets rising versus falling.. looking north, from southern hemisphere and so on but it's the price you pay to make the gear lash less intrusive.