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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Watney astrometry

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Replied by MORELLI on topic Watney astrometry

Hello,

I install the watney API and the star database into /opt/watney-api/. I setup the path in options Alignment Ekos: /opt/watney-api/watney-api. No success !
So I install tle watney-cli with the command watney-solve. Fails !
Last edit: 1 year 11 months ago by MORELLI.
1 year 11 months ago #81853

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Watney astrometry

Watney is very much a new platform which is currently under development by the author, that being said, when I added support for it, I did test it pretty thoroughly. It would be the cli solver that you need, not the api solver. Make sure that is downloaded and installed in the right folder on your computer. Then make sure whatever path you put the solver at is what you put into the StellarSolver options for the path to Watney Solver. Then you also have to make sure you download all the quad files that you need and put them in a folder that you specify in the configuration file, which is in the same folder as the cli solver.

github.com/Jusas/WatneyAstrometry/wiki/Quickstart-Guide
1 year 11 months ago #81862

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Replied by MORELLI on topic Watney astrometry

Hi Rob,

It is just I do. Unzip the file (CLI) into /opt/watney/ with a quad file (0.6-0.7).
and setup the path option, plus watney-solve.
I'll have a look this evening.
1 year 11 months ago #81889

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Replied by MORELLI on topic Watney astrometry

It's OK. I omitted to modify the path to the database into the quad file. Thanks.
1 year 11 months ago #81893

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Watney astrometry

No problem. We should provide some instructions somewhere on either how to set it up or a link to the page explaining it.
1 year 11 months ago #81895

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Replied by Maria Fry on topic Watney astrometry

Thanks for sharing such a helpful instruction, really appreciate for your article.

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1 year 11 months ago #81900

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Replied by MORELLI on topic Watney astrometry

I do it on french Webastro.net.
1 year 11 months ago #81904

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Replied by Nigel Dunmore on topic Watney astrometry

Hi

I believe I’ve set this up correctly but have yet to get it to solve anything. It says it needs at least 300 stars which seems rather high (at least to me a complete beginner) when only taking a images of a few seconds for polar align or slewing to a target. The other solvers seem to work quite happily with astap returning in less than 2 secs on a raspberry pi 4.
Is the Watney solver meant for something more specific than the quick images I’m using it on?

Regards

Nigel
1 year 11 months ago #82012

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Replied by Rob Lancaster on topic Watney astrometry

The watney solver is very much new and still under development. I added the initial support for it and it will get better with time I think.

The message about 300 stars is from StellarSolver. I am just saying that I changed a setting from your profile. All the other solvers work better when limited to about 50 stars or less. That isn’t true for watney, we found it worked better with like 300. That doesn’t mean it won’t work with less than 300 stars, just that I increased the setting that limited it to 50 stars to limit it to 300 or less instead.
1 year 11 months ago #82050

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Replied by Nigel Dunmore on topic Watney astrometry

While that makes sense I could swear that the message output said it needed 300 stars rather than it would use up to 300. Looking at the github for the solver it does say that the number passed is the maximum it will use rather than a minimum it needs.

Will have to check next time.

Does leave the question as to why it didn’t solve, will have to poke around more.
1 year 11 months ago #82073

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Replied by Nigel Dunmore on topic Watney astrometry

So having a poke around and the log does say it needs at least 300 stars…


The poking around was actually to do with trying to use tmpfs for /tmp. My thinking being that rather than writing a temporary fits file to my sd card then read it back while doing platesolving I would just hold it in memory. Not expecting much/any performance increase as I expect the buffer cache gives me pretty much that anyway but at least it should stop needless writes to the sd. However while doing this poking I noticed that the temporary fits files aren’t being deleted. Is this normal with a failed solve or have I messed something up?
1 year 11 months ago #82107
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Replied by Jussi Saarivirta on topic Watney astrometry

Hi Nigel, I'm the guy developing Watney. :)

The logged message isn't really true; Watney does not need 300 stars to solve, quite often around 50 stars can do the job, sometimes even less. However the more stars there are, the better the odds to find a solution (up to a point - the recommended max and also somewhat optimal is 300 purely because of performance reasons).
You could also try the built-in star detection and see if it makes any difference. For that there's also a parameter in the configuration file (defaultStarDetectionBgOffset) you can adjust to make star detection more sensitive. However the StellarSolver's internal SEP should work just fine from my own experience.
31 stars is somewhat low so I'm not completely surprised if it doesn't solve, so you could see if a longer exposure or using binning does the trick.

I'm also interested in seeing the images you are not able to solve. Finding out the reason why it's not solving is always something that interests me and improving the solver is a priority so if you can send me an image that doesn't solve (but for example solves with another solver) I'd be happy to look at it. You can for example open an issue at github.com/Jusas/WatneyAstrometry/issues and attach the image there.

/ Jussi
1 year 11 months ago #82127

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