Equipment Profile Manager setup

General
1

Hi, I’m evaluating SGP for use in our club’s observatory. I’m have a very difficult time understanding how best to set up Equipment Profile Manager.

Suppose one has four imaging cameras (with different sensor and pixel sizes) and there are two telescopes available that allow imaging at a total of six focal lengths. Would we need to make profiles for all 4x6 combinations of camera and telescope configurations? Or is there a better way to set up the EPM?

2

Hello davevenne,
welcome to SGP. What is it you’re finding difficult about the Profile Manager?

Not being an expert on SGP, I would say from my experience, that it would suggest you set up one profile for the configuration you use most often or are most likely to use next. Remember that the Telescope setup refers to the mount you are using with only one reference to the focal length of the scope. If you are using just one mount, than only the focal length data changes if you use a different scope. When you change the scope you also need to change the “Scale” parameter under Camera.

Once you’ve set up one profile, you can take that profile and change the details for the next setup and save the altered configuration under a new name and you have your second profile etc. Fairly straight forward.

Creating a profile for each configuration, does help to not forget to change the focal length under Telescope and recalculate the Scale under Camera, which could lead to issues with plate solving and image scaling (been there :0)).

But, if you want to work with only one profile, you can change all the details in either the Control Panel or the alter which equipment you want to connect to in the Sequence Panel. Up to you.

Also, have a look under the Help drop down menu, there is a lot of helpful information there.

Hope you have fun working with SGP.

Regards,
Allen

3

Hi, Allen,

The problem we face is that the laptop with SGP will be used by a variety of club members and will be secured so that they can’t alter settings; there can’t be any creation of profiles by them. We need to anticipate the cameras (mostly DSLRs) they will use and set up SGP ahead of time.

When I first looked at SGP I assumed camera and telescope profiles could be created independently from each other. I had thought SGB would allow one to pair a camera and a telescope when a sequence was created and SGB would take care of the calculations like image scale automatically. That seems not to be the case?

Dave

4

Dave, no, that is not the case as lots of settings can vary between different cameras and different scopes. So in your case it really depends on how much the gear changes and how your users will use it. We define profiles as a collection of gear and settings, image scale can be calculated automatically if you’re using a blind solver, which would likely simplify your setup and need for lots of profiles.

Thanks,
Jared