problem-opportunity
The problem and the opportunity
There is still room for improvement in the software available for controlling amateur telescopes
- The original commercial offerings are now dated and expensive (they survive in a small market)
- The open source / freeware choices are essentially very similar in style and limitations (monolithic, feature bloat, error-prone interfaces)
- The one outstanding offering, Voyager, is idiosyncratic and has minimal documentation
- Some of the offerings have “scratch-like” graphical scripting, but are not scriptable from outside the application
- Some important features are either missing, poorly executed, or available in very expensive commercial products only (e.g. the target scheduler)
Opportunities for astroimaging are flourishing
- Electronics, especially cameras and computerized mounts are advancing rapidly whilst becoming less expensive
- The worlds best observing sites are now available to amateurs through commercial “remote hosting”
Developing new and better software would be a worthwhile project
problem-opportunity.txt · Last modified: by admin