Custom plan import?

jpp_seestars50

Suggestion: add the ability to import a custom plan from a file. The planning tool in the app only allows 10 minute increments of time but for some plans it would be helpful to allow shorter increments on some targets. If we had more control over the time increments or allow us to upload our own plans that would be very helpful.

starnet59

By the way, the plan mode works pretty well, good job ZWO! So well in fact that I have stopped doing normal captures, the ones that require you to not sleep, and I do all my imaging now exclusively in planning mode.

Giancagero

starnet59 when you create a plan, I understood you have to "transfer" it to the Seestar (switching it on, start the plan). My question is: do you have to let the Seestar switched on or you can switch it off and it will "awake" when the plan is planned to begin? Thanks a lot!

starnet59

I do not know. I only had two clear nights to play with the planner so far and I used them to do actual captures. I am pretty sure the S50 will not awake on its own. I do not think it will even start a plan automatically, you still have to "execute" it manually.

One other limitation I discovered tonight. is that the planner has hard limits for when a night starts and ends. These need to be relaxed by about an hour in both directions. I was able to do good imaging for almost an hour before the planner would start.

starnet59

starnet59 To illustrate my point, this is NGC 281, the Pacman Nebula, 36 minutes of successfully stacked 10-second exposures that required 45 minutes (so 80% stacking efficiency, which is great), all taken before SeeStar would let me even start a plan. The FIT image has been processed in GraxPert, which is free (AI background removal, some AI noise removal and stretching), then AI upscaled by 2x to 2160x3840 and more AI noise removing using Aiarty Image Enhancer, which is not free. I am not using ZWO's AI Denoiser because it does not work on the FIT file, only on the much lower quality JPG and on top of that it is way too aggressive. The overlay has been created by subtracting two JPG files saved by SeeStar with and without overlay (I take this opportunity to ask again ZWO to automatically save a PNG overlay file together with the FIT and JPG image files), which was then also upscaled 2x with Aiarty and superposed over the final image:

My point is that if you have a clear night you lose one hour in the evening and another one in the morning because of the hard stops hardcoded in the planning software. The image above was captured fully outside the range allowed by the SeeStar planning mode. Both evening and morning planning start and stop limits should be relaxed by one hour.