What am I doing?

The GUI will be split into four quarters. If this is run on a large screen the four sectors can be displayed simultaneously, but there should also be an option for each segment to be set to full screen individually for those running with smaller displays, particularly laptop users.

SEGMENT 1

This will be the image capture area with LiveView when possible. It will allow full manual control of the camera as well as the option to run imaging batches as defined by the user.

The main difficulty here will be enabling cross-platform support - Linux and OS X will happily run gphoto2, but if a user wishes to use this on Windows, they'd require Cygwin, which is likely to throw up a whole host of issues on its own. I should investigate command line camera control which runs under Windows and consider writing separate camera control code for each relevant OS. This will be a bit time consuming and, frankly, a bit dull. Taking this in mind, I will first address the Linux / OS X side of things. An important point to not here is that a part of the motivation for creating this app is that a) I'm getting a Mac and b) I'm not sure the astro software for Mac is as well developed as it is for Windows, so I think the Mac user market deserves more attention. P.S. I use the term 'market' in the loosest possible manner. I don't think I intend to create a sellable product, nor do I particularly imagine I'm up to it.

SEGMENT 2

This area of the screen will handle autoguiding. The guiding (pun intended) principle here will be simplicity, and I have already begun coding my own autoguiding program, so I've got an idea of what to do here.

SEGMENT 3

This segment will be concerned with displaying a star atlas and enabling GoTo functionality. My initial thought here is to obtain some kind of star catalogue, along with DSO catalogues and ephemeris data for the planets and minor bodies, and then allow the user either to select their object of interest (OOI) from a list or to click on it from the star map. Communication with the equipment should then slew to the OOI with the minimum of fuss.

This, along with the guiding, will require the use of ASCOM telescope control, and, as such, is likely to be my biggest stumbling block. I only have a single mount (NEQ6 White) and so I'm unable to create the functionality to operate other equipment. However, I suspect some of this may be handled by ASCOM itself. This will require further investigation.

SEGMENT 4

This last quarter of the screen is for an as yet undetermined purpose. I thought I could either allow the user to perform real time stacking of the images as they come in (not as a finished product, but as a guide to whether or not they need further data), or, more likely, a control panel with manual scope and camera controls, application preferences etc. I'd really like to try the real-time stacking option, but I guess we'll see.