×

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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

New KStars/Ekos Module: Analyze

  • Posts: 157
  • Thank you received: 19
@kengs

I had a sense there was some authority behind response to my original post ... :-)

Not directly related to topic, but are there any other conditions that would cause an offset other than PA? PHD2 reports my PA between 0.5 arcmin to 3.2 arcmin, so I'm not sure that's the issue. So, some other force must be in play. I'm guessing its either balance or cabling. I'm wondering if is possible to get a hint from looking at the corrections.

jmh
3 years 6 months ago #59107

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 527
  • Thank you received: 139
I would like to see temperature, barometric pressure, dew point, and possibly any other weather data (SQM comes to mind), plotted on the graph to to see how that that has an effect on SNR and HFR throughout the night.This would help people understand when to focus, if they're not doing it a appropriate times, or enough, or maybe too much. Right now, I refocus at every filter change, but maybe I should be doing it at every degree drop in temp, or every several degrees drop. Who knows, but this addition would be great in understanding what's happening.
3 years 6 months ago #59109

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 1208
  • Thank you received: 559
Ferrante: wasn't aware of Astrodom, looks very cool. Take a look at the .analyze files and in particular the method processInputLIne()
invent.kde.org/education/kstars/-/blob/m...yze/analyze.cpp#L621
Note that I'm monitoring real-time processes, so some signals come in in awkward ways.

Let me know if there are other things you'd like to see in the file, or perhaps something like a header line that might make things more future proof.
Right now, the file has no header lines, but there's no good reason for that omission. I guess it does have a version header
#KStars version 3.5.0. Analyze log version 1.0.

It is very early in the evolution of Analyze, it's possible that I'll change the file format...though I have no such current plans.
Of course it would also make a lot of sense to make sure people can real old logs...
Still thinking this through.

BTW, I'd love to include more capture-related analysis (like you get from PixInsight files). Right now the only signal computed
is the HFR. I was waiting on @Rlancaste's StellarSolver software release, which was planned for KStars v3.5.0, as it was a
rework of the whole SEP/Sextractor framework for KStars. Not sure of his schedule, though.

Hy
3 years 6 months ago #59111

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 527
  • Thank you received: 139

If you included the solver, I suppose it would be possible to see how much drift is happening between frames, or after guide star loss? Are these results realtime?
3 years 6 months ago #59115

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 1208
  • Thank you received: 559
@Lead_weight: Andrew, yes, agreed. I was planning on adding some plate-solver-related info someday/somehow after stellarsolver's release.
Last edit: 3 years 6 months ago by Hy Murveit.
3 years 6 months ago #59116

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 1208
  • Thank you received: 559
@lhoujin et al:

Below is a table of the colors in use when the capture or focus timeline is "striped". ( see here for the code ):

If you have no filter or the filter name is not recognized, there is no stripe.
The filter names correspond to what's filled in for the Indi filter wheel settings.

My apologies, I just 'hacked in' a US-English-centric version of filter names. Happy to internationalize it.

This is a great place to contribute. Please send me more filter synonyms and/or missing filters with synonyms & suggested colors!



I'm using Qt colors, which are defined here
but I could use RGB values as well].
Last edit: 3 years 6 months ago by Hy Murveit.
3 years 6 months ago #59117
Attachments:

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 1208
  • Thank you received: 559
@Lead_weight: Andrew,

I agree in principle about your weather-related info, but in practice:
(a) not sure where to get the info (outside of temperature, which is there already, though not plotted--see below).
(b) would need to figure out how to manage the display all the new numbers.

Temperature is the one of your suggestions that's already in the module. It's displayed in the details box for focus. I didn't plot it because I had so many stats already I thought there was only several measurements per night (i.e. "on every filter change" might mean every half hour?) but I suppose I could. I think I could fit one more line of stats, though things are already crowded.

Input on ways to manage all the possible stats would be good.
I.E. Jasem feels (and I agree) that KStars should work on small displays, e.g. displays where the horizontal resolution is ~800px and vertical ~738 and I did squeeze this tab in a bit to get it to fit that, more or less.

Hy
3 years 6 months ago #59118

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 527
  • Thank you received: 139
Yikes, the small display thing might be an issue. But you already have checkboxes that let you choose what to display in the graph, correct? I've not used the new module so can only assume. If you wanted to look at the graph of HFR vs. temp, you only turn those on. Focus would appear on the top, so you can correlate focus to HFR, and with temp in the chart below you should be able to see change over time. It's not important that the numbers be represented accurately on the chart, but more so see the plotted line so you can make a correlation of the plot of HFR vs temp. ie. "Oh, I see HFR getting worse as temp drops" Rather than seeing specific numbers on a chart. SQM could also help you gauge focus quality. The higher up you're pointed, the less atmospheric diffraction, the tighter your stars should be. SO, SQM, temp, and HFR together as an option. Anyhow, I'm just thinking out loud.

As long as you can plot the chosen metrics on the chart and see them in correlation to what EKOS is doing on the timeline, then you can make some judgement calls on how you might change things to improve the outcome.
3 years 6 months ago #59119

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 249
  • Thank you received: 62
Reading the .analyze file is quite straightforward thanks to the descriptive naming you added to the events.

Astrodom keeps track of imaging frames only, so the main source of information (beside reading fits headers) would be the CaptureComplete tagged line.
To me it would be nice to have on that line also data not directly related to the frame. For example, average RMS during capture and SNR.

Other capture related data like eccentricity and noise would also be nice to have, when will be available. I would rather read those from .analyze than from PI because have to run SubframeSelector first.

ferrante
3 years 6 months ago #59145

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 91
  • Thank you received: 18
the analyze tab in Ekos is great! thanks for adding this very useful and informative feature. A few remarks/ques:

- from the timeline graph of the guide activity, I can click on a section and view the rms scatter plot. Is
it possible to ctrl or shift click or some other select action to plot multiple segments ?
am guiding with dithering, which breaks up the rms record, but would like to see the rms plot for the whole guide session

- playback of the guide rms scatter plot showing accumulation of data points ?

- can the data be exported to a phd2 log viewer readable text file ?
3 years 6 months ago #60010

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 1208
  • Thank you received: 559
Dean,
Answers inline.

>> would like to see the rms plot for the whole guide session

To be clear, I assume you're talking about the plot in the lower right hand corner with 2 concentric circles
(because you already can see the drift graphs for the whole time period).
It's possible to add that, but I'm unclear of the semantics of selecting multiple sessions.
Can you suggest? E.g. what would it mean to select multiple captures or multiple focus sessions?
FYI, I believe I have one control-click in there already (to reset the y-axis), so I understand how to add
those click modifiers. In an early version of this I had a help-popup to show all these things, but
it got moved to online doc, and, unfortunately, somehow the process is for adding to the online doc
is currently broken :(


>> playback of the guide rms scatter plot showing accumulation of data points ?

Do you mean an animation, where you see one point then another ... sort of a "real-time playback"?
If so, I also thought of doing animations like that (but for autofocus), but in the end decided that it was not a v1.0 feature.
I'm curious, why do you think it would be useful?

>> can the data be exported to a phd2 log viewer readable text file ?

This is a separate topic from Analyze, but guiding data can be (usually is) exported to PHD2 format.
Make sure that the checkbox called "Save Internal Guider User Log" is checked
(you find that in the Options-->Guide section in the lower right corner of the Guide Tab)
and then you can find your log in a sister directory to the main logs.
On linux that would be in ~/.local/share/kstars/guidelogs/*
It has been that way for several months, so you may have old guide logs there you can look at with phdlogview
(or, alternatively, you can now use analyze to see guiding, though its input is a different file format).

Hy
3 years 6 months ago #60031

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

  • Posts: 91
  • Thank you received: 18
thanks for replying inline and yes the LR plot. Animations might be useful for explaining guide performance in visual
terms. I develop software for medical image analysis / review and find interpreting
changes statically or over time visually is insightful. I read a number of posts here and on CN around guiding
issues and having experienced poor guiding performance and wanted to review my data
in phd log viewer but the .csv file I saved from Ekos would not load. I can review prior .activity files in
Ekos but a review in phd log viewer may be more helpful for now.
A typical session: I work at 1 or more imaging targets. My process is (after PA) to select, slew to,
capture and solve with guide scope / camera then loop on the main camera and nudge the mount to
center the target, then start guiding with dithering every frame or some other periodicity. The
analysis tab shows sections of guiding followed by gaps due to other activity: finding a different
target, focusing, dithering etc., so within an acquisition session there are "rms gaps". I want
to plot the rms scatter for that session cumulatively (ie, ignoring gaps) or in time progression
via animation. I am also unclear on semantics since it could depend on workflow. What if the user
determines that for now: ala file explorer apps wherein you ctrl click for individual (in time sequence)
sections and shift click for the whole shuhbang?
3 years 6 months ago #60035

Please Log in or Create an account to join the conversation.

Time to create page: 0.995 seconds