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bummer, yeah i tried to port a .net app to mono a while back and failed spectacularly. maybe mono has improved recently, i don't know...

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Hi Guilain, I'm sorry I wasn't able to test more than I did, but the weather just hasn't been cooperating...

Good luck with the program!

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Can the night vision be turned off? I use a red filter over my laptop screen.

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This looks great! I am interested in purchasing it, just curious about one thing though. What do you think your system requirements are for it? I am using an old, circa 2000 pIII 800 machine with winxp.

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I know the Canon 300D Rebel does not have a live view, but will this software down the line support the Rebel.

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Minimum screen resolution is 1024 x 768? So no good with 1024 x 600 Netbooks?

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thats unfortunate as I was about to purchase the software, thanks for pointing it out.

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Minimum screen resolution is 1024 x 768? So no good with 1024 x 600 Netbooks?

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I have had the same request on another Astronomy forum yesterday, I will be working on an 1024 x 600 version and should be available in a week or 2. I will however make it an option, or better yet auto-detect, because I want to want to keep using as much screen real estate as possible for the other users.

1024 x 600 is just around the corner

Thanks for support and interest.

Guylain

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Thank you Guylain. I will buy your software today. It looks very promising.

An iPhone version will be great. I am using Sky Safari for all the planning and for wireless telescope control. It works like a dream. Having a camera control on iPhone platform will help avoiding a laptop in the field completely. This is a suggestion for future development.

All the best.

Sedat

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I'm not saying no to iPhone or Android but I am saying not now I have enough on my plate to keep me busy for a sort while. I know I will definitely be reaching a new user base if I do and be a pioneer in doing do

Guylain

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thats unfortunate as I was about to purchase the software, thanks for pointing it out.

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Minimum screen resolution is 1024 x 768? So no good with 1024 x 600 Netbooks?

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I have had the same request on another Astronomy forum yesterday, I will be working on an 1024 x 600 version and should be available in a week or 2. I will however make it an option, or better yet auto-detect, because I want to want to keep using as much screen real estate as possible for the other users.

1024 x 600 is just around the corner

Thanks for support and interest.

Guylain

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Thanks. I'll definitely be looking into taking this for a spin when that feature is available.

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Hi Guylain,

That looks like an interesting piece of software.

But one note... the red type on a black background on your web pages is nearly unreadable. I just gave up and left the page.

You really need to change this and think of your customers.

Screen shots of the program that show the night vision mode are ok, but the rest of the text should be something that can be read more easily.

Jerry

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Guylain,

Great looking program, I'm probably going to buy it. Right now I use Nebulosity for frame and focus and then switch over to the Canon software for imaging. Looks like I can just use one program now. One question though, can you have the program shoot one second subs (or longer) repeatedly in frame and focus mode without saving the image? This is a neat feature of Nebulosity that helps frame objects as you are moving the mount in situations where live view isn't sensitive enough to pick up the stars.

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You have the same process I had last year and same tools too... and I ended up building my own software; go figure!

Anyway, the functionality is in BackyardEOS but it's not at a point where I can expose it through the UI yet. It should the there in a month or 2 (probably less ).


Currently you can shoot up to 30 seconds in Live view; you can set this parameter in the Settings dialogue.

Thanks for your interest.

Guylain

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I like the feature that prevents you from shooting in anything but RAW (made that mistake before). Now, if you could only prevent me from accidentally leaving the Bhatinov mask on the end of the scope and walking away for an hour

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Ummm... is this a challenge LOL

It is detectable... the bahtinov mask does leave a pattern behind... but this is for another time (or life), I have my hands full for now. This though may very well keep me awake at night... I have solved some pretty good software issues while sleeping in the past

Take care.

Guylain

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thats unfortunate as I was about to purchase the software, thanks for pointing it out.

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Minimum screen resolution is 1024 x 768? So no good with 1024 x 600 Netbooks?

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I have had the same request on another Astronomy forum yesterday, I will be working on an 1024 x 600 version and should be available in a week or 2. I will however make it an option, or better yet auto-detect, because I want to want to keep using as much screen real estate as possible for the other users.

1024 x 600 is just around the corner

Thanks for support and interest.

Guylain

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1024 x 600 is now available for download. Go to the "Brave Souls" section on the download page if you want to try it out. I will make it available in a real production release probably next week.

This should no longer by a non-starter for users with a netbook.

Thanks,

Guylain.

Edited by guyroch (12/01/10 11:44 PM)

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I'm not particularly computer savvy, which is why I've stayed with the simple route for so long. But this looks very interesting.
I own one of the camera's you have listed as tested, the T1i.
Just how is the camera connected to the computer for using with your program?
And can a non-computer savvy guy make this work for him?

Doug

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For the first time in my life I may be slightly sad to be a "Nikon Guy"

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I'm taking this as a compliment that you like what you see.

Thank you, and sorry at the same time I guess

Guylain

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OK, made my purchase. Awaiting license number to download.

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Thank you Doug. The license is in the mail

Enjoy!

Guylain

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For the first time in my life I may be slightly sad to be a "Nikon Guy"

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I'm taking this as a compliment that you like what you see.

Thank you, and sorry at the same time I guess

Guylain

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You are taking it correctly!

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It's pretty cool when you can talk to the creator, even better when he can walk a computer caveman like me through the install process. It Works!
He really went above and beyond for me.
My heartfelt thanks to Guylain. He is the essence of what a good entrepreneur should be.

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And it will be my pleasure to help him thru his first NEAF.

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Can a serial shutter cable be used for mirror lockup on a XSi (aka 450d)?

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Can a serial shutter cable be used for mirror lockup on a XSi (aka 450d)?

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Serial shutter cable is not yet supported... but I'd be interested to know if it works. Let me know if you try.

Guylain

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Guylain, I'm waiting for the parts to build my own cable to show up. I noticed some shutter shake in some of my eclipse shots, and I wondered if Backyard EOS would be able to use the serial cable to do mirror lockup on my XSi.


Tom

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Guylain,

I meant to post a reply to this before.

The serial cable I'm referring to is the one connects an RS-232 port to the shutter remote. If you use one of these cables, you can set mirror lockup in the menu, and then just active the shutter twice.

Unfortunately, my attempts to make a cable didn't turn out so well (basically I fried the optical couplers with my soldering iron). After having to order the parts and pay shipping for them, I'm probably going to order one.

I read somewhere that the Canon Rebel XSi (aka 450D) doesn't support mirror lockup via USB.

I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

From the code samples I've seen, it looks like it's just a matter of opening the serial port. Here is one of the pages with sample VB code: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/CanonRelease.html

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Tom,
Don't be so fast giving up on your homemade serial cable, at first mine didn't work because I was too cautious with the solder iron. The resistor and diode looked soldered to pin one of the chip, but only the resistor and diode were soldered together...nothing on the pin. I reheated the joint for about 3 sec and every thing worked fine after that. Actually, the chip's data sheet says it can take up to 10 sec of heat from a 15W iron before it fails.

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Mirror lock up is very tricky with the Canon SDK. Canon has not made this easy. It's a special property and *ALL* camera behave differently in a BIG way. It's on the list of features to-do for sure... but it won't be for tomorrow... 6 months from now maybe/probably.

Hope this helps... but keep me posted with the serial cable. I think I'll have to buy one sooner rather than later and give it a good run once and for all

Guylain

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Guylain,

I meant to post a reply to this before.

The serial cable I'm referring to is the one connects an RS-232 port to the shutter remote. If you use one of these cables, you can set mirror lockup in the menu, and then just active the shutter twice.

Unfortunately, my attempts to make a cable didn't turn out so well (basically I fried the optical couplers with my soldering iron). After having to order the parts and pay shipping for them, I'm probably going to order one.

I read somewhere that the Canon Rebel XSi (aka 450D) doesn't support mirror lockup via USB.

I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

From the code samples I've seen, it looks like it's just a matter of opening the serial port. Here is one of the pages with sample VB code: http://www.covingtoninnovations.com/dslr/CanonRelease.html

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Tom,
Don't be so fast giving up on your homemade serial cable, at first mine didn't work because I was too cautious with the solder iron. The resistor and diode looked soldered to pin one of the chip, but only the resistor and diode were soldered together...nothing on the pin. I reheated the joint for about 3 sec and every thing worked fine after that. Actually, the chip's data sheet says it can take up to 10 sec of heat from a 15W iron before it fails.

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Jim,

Thanks for the encouragement. I actually broke off the pins on the optocoupler, so I don't think that's fixable. I did, however, find a local place that had them, so I'm going to try again. Hopefully I'll have better luck this time. Either way though, I've now found a place that I can pop out to after work and pick up more parts if I wreck something.

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I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

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I love the look of Backyard EOS, but given the problems I've already seen in my limited astrophotography attempts, the mirror lockup support a key feature for me.

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Tom,

My understanding is that mirror lockup is most useful for short exposure, such as when doing planetary imaging. For long exposures of a few minutes and above the movement (if any) of the mirror slap will be washed out and mirror lockup would have little or no benefits. I’ll be first to admit though that I’ve done most of my imaging without mirror lockup so my understanding may not be the norm. I also understand that this may differ from one camera to the other and perhaps the stability of one’s setup as well.

Any thoughts?

Guylain

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Guylain,

I'm really just starting out the long road to decent astrophotography, but I have already noticed issues with camera shake from the mirror opening and closing. It does seem to be primarily on brighter targets like planets and the moon where a webcam is probably better used, but I have found it to be an issue.

Tom

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Guylain,

Great looking program, I'm probably going to buy it. Right now I use Nebulosity for frame and focus and then switch over to the Canon software for imaging. Looks like I can just use one program now. One question though, can you have the program shoot one second subs (or longer) repeatedly in frame and focus mode without saving the image? This is a neat feature of Nebulosity that helps frame objects as you are moving the mount in situations where live view isn't sensitive enough to pick up the stars.

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Doug,

The beta releases are NOT meant the replace your existing production installation; they are meant for testing prior to production or iron out the issues. For this reason the beta releases are only provided in .zip format; otherwise the beta setup.exe would install over the stable production version and if something goes wrong with the beta then you wouldn't have your stable production version to use as it would have been overwritten.

If you want I can package a special .zip file for you and provide your with a download link just for you. Drop me an email (or PM) if you want me to do that.

Thanks

Guylain

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New Feature: Mirror lock for cameras that support in-camera mirror lock. A configured serial cable is required to benefit from the in-camera miror lock.

In the event that that the in-camera mirror lock is enabled and a serial cable is not configured, BackyardEOS well fall back to a virtual mirror lock workflow and will flip the mirror for you.

The in-camera mirror lock with serial cable is preferred over the virtual mirror lock. If you have a serial cable you should use it if possible.

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So to me, this means that IF your camera allows you to enable/disable mirror lock via it's own internal menus, AND IF you have Hap/Shoestring/Generic serial cables tethering the camera to the computer; BYEOS will allow you to control this enable/disabling, right?

I'm curious as to why BYEOS cannot just ignore the in-camera setting and go on it's merry way doing what it does? For example, I leave my mirror locked up all the time. Now that I use BYEOS, I have to disable this feature when I want to focus (primary use for this software) and then remember to re-enable it for imaging (done without computer). Is it impossible to have BYEOS ignore this setting and still function? Maybe if it detects the mirror is locked up, send the 'open shutter' command twice?

Maybe you can elaborate on the 'virtual' mirror lock-up. How exactly does the virtual mirror lock-up differ from the in-camera lock-up?

If it's possible to just leave mirror lock-up enabled when using the serial/usb cable with BYEOS, that's fine. I'll just have to build a cable. I'm just wondering why having the mirror not locked-up during normal operation is a problem. I keep thinking of doors on cars. The car still works whether the door is open or not. I may be simplifying it a bit too much.

Again, this is not a critique, just curiosity. This software is great and making a cable to get what I expect is a small price to pay (in addition to the small *very reasonable and attractive* price of the software).

PS: For those with the same/similar question, I'm also posting this on the BYEOS user forum so check there for answers to this question, if they do not show up here.

Edited by hydrogia (07/20/11 04:18 PM)

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Doug,

All images are saved in "My Pictures\BackyardEOS\" folder. If something went wrong they may still be in the temp folder located in "My Pictures\BackyardTEMP\Downloads\"

Hope this helps,

Guylain

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