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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2014 20:04:20 GMT
I plan on broadcasting tonight with my ATIK and the newest update to astrolive. Should be interesting! I will be on about 9:30pm EST. Sorry UK mates, prob a bit late for you!
Hemmi
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Post by Deleted on Jul 28, 2014 21:08:01 GMT
**** tease! Would have loved to watch this. Loads of grabs and a review please!!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 5:53:12 GMT
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Post by Dragon Man on Jul 29, 2014 9:38:23 GMT
Great results Lee.
I love the FOV! and the colours are spectacular.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 10:31:18 GMT
yes, very good results. Astrolive is proving to be a very useful tool for Near Real Time Imaging. Are these screen grabs or have they been post processed? If this is what you see on screen, it is fantastic.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 11:14:57 GMT
Lovely grabs Hemmi! The colour is awesome! LOL at the 8 minute exposures! They kind of exposures are a very distant dream of mine lol. Nice work!
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 12:49:56 GMT
yes, very good results. Astrolive is proving to be a very useful tool for Near Real Time Imaging. Are these screen grabs or have they been post processed? If this is what you see on screen, it is fantastic. They are direct from screen, however they are heavily histogram tweaked in Astrolive. This was not an easy task,
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 13:39:29 GMT
Its not supposed to be easy Lee (well actually it is, lol).If you could do this at an outreach event, it would be awesome for the public.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 14:22:35 GMT
I think it will be a great tool once the color balance issue is resolved. This is not an issue for video cams, as color balance can be controlled in the camera. CCD imagers just output raw data, and the software must do the color balance. Astrolive only allows color histogram tweaking at this time. And its a tedious process. You should of seen some of the ugly images up on my screen while tweaking.
The main issue is with the Green channel. Most CCD OSC cameras have more green pixels than red or blue. So everything including stars and the background have a green tint. Getting that green tint out with the histogram is a bit tough, as the sliders are real sensitive and you constantly overshoot. Then if you need to adjust luminosity after the color tweak, you have to star all over again. LOL
A pre histogram color balance to remove green tint would solve almost all my issues. Kyle is working on it, and I have to say, very keen on input from users. So I'm sure it will all get resolved in future revisions.
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Post by johnno on Jul 29, 2014 15:26:46 GMT
Lovely grabs Lee, must set the alarm clock next time and try and catch you on
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Post by davy on Jul 29, 2014 17:19:31 GMT
Great pictures lee..davy
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 17:44:25 GMT
I discussed this a lot with Hemmi and have come up with some improvements to make color balancing and processing relating to color much easier in the future. They're fairly big features, so don't expect them until AstroLive 2.0, but they're definitely on my radar. I'm incredibly impressed with what Hemmi is doing, this really is the sort of thing I'd hoped to see when I decided to add still ccd support to AstroLive.
Kyle
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 19:24:24 GMT
I think we discussed Binning also in the pro version, this would even increase the sensitivity and make it more useful as a semi live device.
Hemmi
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 20:44:35 GMT
Yes, I've implemented binning already, it's just not in a released version. The color wouldn't be preserved on all but a very few one shot color cameras if binned, however. I could also implement some software binning which will still have the sensitivity improvement and maintain color, but would not benefit from the read noise improvement or the download time improvement since it would have to be exposed/downloaded at 1x1 in hardware.
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Post by Deleted on Jul 29, 2014 23:54:35 GMT
Yes, I've implemented binning already, it's just not in a released version. The color wouldn't be preserved on all but a very few one shot color cameras if binned, however. I could also implement some software binning which will still have the sensitivity improvement and maintain color, but would not benefit from the read noise improvement or the download time improvement since it would have to be exposed/downloaded at 1x1 in hardware. The ATIK 314l+ I think does hardware color binning. But I may be wrong! Hemmi
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Post by Rick in NWArk on Jul 31, 2014 3:26:00 GMT
Fantastic results, Hemmi! And great job Kyle... I cant wait to try the software!
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Post by Dragon Man on Jul 31, 2014 4:42:32 GMT
Wow, all this great information from Kyle would be fantastic in its own section so everyone could see what Kyle is developing. It will eventually get buried in the normal threads.
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Post by davy on Jul 31, 2014 7:30:31 GMT
an offer was made
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Post by Deleted on Jul 31, 2014 16:53:15 GMT
Wow, all this great information from Kyle would be fantastic in its own section so everyone could see what Kyle is developing. It will eventually get buried in the normal threads. Feel free to move the relevant post to a new location. Regards, Hemmi
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Post by Deleted on Aug 2, 2014 0:55:28 GMT
I'd be happy to compile whatever information people would find helpful or informative in a post here, in my documentation, or on my website. I can even do all of the above. What sort of information would you like to see? Details on what's upcoming in future version? Troubleshooting tips? Something else? I'd love to get feedback on what would be useful to everyone to know.
Information on Upcoming Releases
For the info on future releases there's really 3 types of info: 1. Bug fixes, committed features, new equipment support. I'm comfortable talking about these freely since they're well defined and in a definite version plan. I generally won't comment on when the version will be released beyond generalities however since in this line of work there are so many variables and one never really knows, especially since this work is all done in my "spare" time. 2. Major new features, new software editions (upcoming Pro version, for example). I'll sometimes discuss these things, but there are reasons why I won't sometimes also. The feature may not yet be well defined or I might not know if I can actually make it work. I may not want to have others potentially implement the feature in other software before I get a chance to release it, etc. 3. New products. I don't discuss these ahead of time. When I announce them it will be at a time I'm ready to take orders and have all the details. I think the reasons for this are obvious.
With those constraints, I'm willing to share this info here in some consolidated location if you guys would find it interesting or helpful. At some point (fairly soon, 1.4 will likely be the last 1.x version of AstroLive) catagory #1 will be reset with version 2.0 being focused on catagory #2 type stuff and being a paid upgrade from AstroLive 1.x. In the future this will probably be about a once yearly occurrence, and version 2.0 will also likely be sometime about a year after the initial release of 1.0 back in February. This will allow me to continue to fund development on AstroLive without forcing anyone to pay again for the product if they don't find value in the new functionality. The other option is a subscription type license where you pay yearly and don't have to pay for major version upgrades at all. If you guys strongly prefer that model I could go that way instead, but my feeling is that the other model is what people prefer. Unfortunately the video astronomy market isn't big enough (yet) to support a one time purchase pays for it forever even with major new versions kind of license scheme. I would soon see a big decrease in license sales and I wouldn't be able to continue to support the product.
Discussions on Pricing
My current level of support is that I generally reply to all support emails within an hour of getting them while I'm awake. Frequently it's within a few minutes. Any bugs that are very serious or easily cured I will generally release a fix within a day or so of them being reported. Even major feature requests have seen a general turn around time of only a month or so. I have determined that this will be a difficult pace to sustain with the current level of revenue from the product which is why I will soon introduce the Pro version so that I have a place to put the things I, and others, really want to get done, but which are too much work to justify for a $69 product that sells in low volume. This is also why with the release of 1.4 the standard version price is going up to $99. I need to be able to make the revenue from the product meaningful in order to be able to continue spending my time on it. I spend at least 10 hours a week (generally much more) on AstroLive, which at my normal consulting rate works out to $2,000 to $2,500 per week of my time. I love this hobby, so I'm willing to effectively provide my labor at a discount to work on software that I think is really useful and important to the community and which I use myself extensively, but you can see from this calculation why the combination of small market (I won't go into detail on my sales numbers, but suffice to say I'm not selling the ~30 copies a week that would be necessary to break even versus consulting work) and low software price has to shift somehow to make it worthwhile. I have the software I want for my own use now, so I'm not really getting any further benefit in that direction, it's just for love of the hobby at this point.
In addition to the Pro version of AstroLive, I'll be introducing another new product at ECVAR which I hope will also help to bend the revenue curve in the right direction. It will be a completely novel product that will give an entirely new experience to live video observation and there is nothing else on the market that competes with it. I will post here with more details after I show it off at ECVAR. I hope some of you will be there to see it; I'm extremely excited about it!
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