4.98
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Thomas Rox: Well, after digesting the comments so far it seems that I should try NINA (I've already downloaded and installed in fact, just haven't used it yet) and I guess if it's all good I'll make a donation for sure; |
1.20
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NA is fantastic. If my wife wants to go out to dinner for example, I can remotely power on my system from my phone and have it turn on camera cooling, dew heaters, open the flat panel at the appropriate time for slewing to target. With a camera rotator I can image multiple targets while sleeping and wake up to it completing flats based on trained brightness and exposure for all 7 filters. It'll also power off my equipment in the morning when the end sequence completes. I actually donated to the developer via Paypal 2 years ago. It is the developer's choice to make software free however. |
6.06
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Lynn K: I think this is a fallacy and to me TSX is one of the most egregious cases of it, though it sounds like MaximDL follows suit. TSX tried to be an all-things software. IMO it does some things well (tpoint modeling, and image link for example, and a great planetarium database). But it is very difficult for one (small) company to do everything well. Even Microsoft has learned that lesson, and started incorporating other products (still trying to make them a MS flavor, but at least motion in the right direction). TSX's guiding was a great example -- it worked, but it did not work well. I forget what it was missing (maybe dithering?), but it was generally klunky and just "ok". Multistar guiding in PHD2 works MUCH better. PHD2 receives a lot of love and change from dedicated contributors, TSX only got attention if a lot of people complain about something, because their small team has other priorities. Being able to pick best-of-breed software to use, and having inter-operability with them, is a benefit. It also can avoid having a small development team try to be experts in everything and develop everything. Consider: What if every product tried to build in native support (not SDK, really native) for every device? Sure, one could argue getting closer to the hardware could let you do amazing stuff but... nothing would ever be finished, nothing would ever advance. No one complains because all these tools expect you to use ASCOM drivers or a manufacturer's SDK. Why is guiding different? |
8.34
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I have used many image acquisition softwares since the days of the ancient DOS based CCDOPS in the early 1990s. I have used MaxIm and later MaxIm/ACP. Then I moved to SGP and about two years ago to NINA. My take: MaxIm and ACP are very "geeky" and very "1995". They work but the interfaces are old and I cannot recommended them any longer, especially at the price, which is pretty high. Support-wise, I have found MaxIm to be poor but ACP to be excellent. SGP was, for the time I used it (which was mostly pre-NINA), pretty good with decent support, reasonable stability, and not too high a price. A few years ago, the stability seemed to worsen, the cost went up, and several long-promised features never materialized. At that time I tried NINA. So far I am happier with NINA than with any other imaging software I have used. Is it perfect? No, nothing is. There are still occasional bugs (but not many) and developers are not always receptive to ideas (but no more or less so than with most software :happy-2  . At this time I would have to go with NINA.There is also Voyager, and many folks like that but it is quite expensive. I have never tired it since NINA does everything I need. |
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3.10
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I've been using APT for 3 1/2 years. It does it all. Very good ergonomics with a professional look. An excellent manual covering everything in the tool.
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2.81
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For me TheSky is the best in the market! Maxim is more suitable for processing. But since I can't afford both at the moment, I'm using APTools which fills all my needs for acquisition and PixInsight + Photoshop for processing! Cheers, Cesar |
0.00
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I have been running Nina for a few years now and I'm very satisfied with it.
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Well, I do use NINA in my fixed rigs, and it does everything I need + a lot of excellent plugins. I also love the fact that I can work several planning sessions using Stellarium, then I export (or call, as you wish) to NINA. I did contribute, so it is not free for me, and I could not figure out any deep reason why not to choose free software, in particular when behind what you see there is a huge work, with contributions from many people. Like GIMP, once you get used to, no need for any expensive software, particularly those that charge you every month (well, actually yearly but, it is presented as a monthly amount…). For my movable gear I use SharpCap, and I don´t care if it is not free if suits my needs for that equipment. I could use NINA as well, but I like some of the features of SharpCap, particularly when imaging the Sun. An finally, as it is also valid for the gear, the best software is the one that suits you best. CS! |
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Good Day! SGP for automation and flexibility, but The Sky excels in accuracy—depends on your priority! |
8.11
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The only thing I am missing with NINA (compared to EKOS which I was using previously) is the inability to do planetary capturing and the lack of support for planets and stars in its databases. Wanna target NGCwhatever, no problemo. Wanna target Jupiter or μ-Cyg? Sorry, need to do it via Stellarium. That's not true. Nina has a plug-in called Orbitals that will allow you to plate solve to any solar system object from the Sun to the Web space telescope. It works great. The only thing NINA really lacks is the ability to do ROI. Anyway, it's what I use for deep sky imaging and it works extremely well. Not sure what your thing is against free, open source software is. Heck ASIAIR is largely based on it. If weren't for the dedicated open source community making excellent software, our hobby would be far more expensive with far fewer choices. |
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8.11
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NA is fantastic. If my wife wants to go out to dinner for example, I can remotely power on my system from my phone and have it turn on camera cooling, dew heaters, open the flat panel at the appropriate time for slewing to target. With a camera rotator I can image multiple targets while sleeping and wake up to it completing flats based on trained brightness and exposure for all 7 filters. It'll also power off my equipment in the morning when the end sequence completes. Why do you do Astrophotography for free? |
6.04
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For me, there are two different options - one is NINA and the other is Voyager - why? Well, I use both and here are my personal experiences: 1. NINA NINA is free and rather easy to understand and use - it´s concept is logical and easy but still powerful if you use its advanced features. AF works fine with NINA and image grabbing as well. Sometimes, but not often, it hangs or crashes, but that is rare. It has got a large support community which is active and very helpful. If you are switching from an simpler system like ASI AIR to a much more complete system, I would suggest you to start with NINA. 2. Voyager It is very intelligent, complex and powerful and very versatile. You should expect some learning curve and some mishaps before you understand its many, very many possibilities and options. I like it for those targets which I want to grab over quite a longer time - once all parameters are entered and set correctly, you can forget it and go to bed. It works, stops, restarts and at the end it shuts down. It costs money, but it is worth every Euro - if, and yes, if you are prepared to work with a highly sophisticated excellent but not easy to understand software package. That´s in brief my personal experience. Just as a side remark - I also had used KStars/EKOS and ASIAIR - none of them convinced me - the first one crashes too often, and the latter one is a closed system - ASI and nothing else, that is not user friendly IMO. CS Georg |
