Hi folks,
I'm coming back from a much needed break (at a bit of a slower pace). The first step for me is to get back in touch with our users. Honestly, I have lost the pulse of the community, the feature request category is in a bit of a mess and I'm not 100% certain where most of the needs, wants and pain exist.
The easiest way past this hurdle is probably just to ask... Below is a list of stuff that, at least at one time, had been pretty popular requests. This is the first pass. Please add to this thread with feature requests or links to existing ones that are not included. Once we have a decently complete list together, I will post a "poll" and give folks a couple weeks to vote on stuff. Hopefully this will aid in terms of getting back in touch and re-prioritizing our backlog in some type of meaningful way.
If at all possible please avoid making requests that try to compensate for inadequacies in gear or other software (some exceptions to this are made). Example: My whizbang swirls like it's supposed to but sometimes it will report that it is done swirling when it is still swirling just a little bit... can you add an option that that allows me to set a swirling delay before the sequence continues? SGPro trying to compensate for all of these idiosyncrasies is a very quick way to make an unusable application. If you're not sure if your request falls into this category, please go ahead and post... not a super big deal.
Stuff our users want (in no particular order):
- Auto focus frame cropping (for cameras that support it)
- Multi camera sequence capture (coordination of dithering, target change, meridian flips, target synch, other options, etc...)
- Target options for specifying start and end times with methods other than local time (altitude, etc...)
- Proportional event rotation, instead of just normal rotation or forcing a filter to finish, the target will move to the event that is behind... when all are equal, will proceed with normal rotation
- Smarter dithering decisions (i.e. not dithering if filter changes, after other mount movement, other small time savers here too)
- Dither every N frames option
- Seed the MFW canvas with any arbitrary image and make it easy to expand its borders
- Ability to use 32 bit FITS files as centering and MFW reference images
- Flats Wizard overhaul: Scan the entire sequence for a comprehensive set of flats that would be required to cover all light frames. Be able to select / deselect easily (in case you have already captured some prior to running the wizard). Other items here too (like consideration of camera rotation).
- Event profiles: Make predefined events, add them easily to a target, multiple targets or to an existing equipment profile (i.e. when the equipment profile is chosen, it might populate events with the chosen event profile)
- Sequence merging tool: Merge other sequences into the current sequence (at the target level)
- API enhancement: Right now the API is designed to control equipment that is attached to it, but has little to no control over ACTIONS... like starting / stopping a sequence, running AF, centering a target etc...
- SGPro auto updater: If a user option is selected, have SGPro automatically download, install and restart new versions of SGPro (user is still involved in the decision)
- SGPro memory consumption: Allow for SGPro to have a very large number of targets without consuming much memory.
- More "target wizard" type behavior. Help selecting targets based on location, time of year, object type, etc... (extra cost addon)
- Smart target execution: Given a sequence with a bunch of targets, create a run list to maximize data capture (extra cost addon)