Enable Flip Flat brightness level control 0-255
Issue #743
resolved
Currently arduino controlled flip-flat panels brightness can only be controlled by NINA with a 0-100% scale in 5% increment. This limits the brightness range especially in the low end and becomes a limitation when dealing with a wide range of filters with strong transmission variations (L and 3nm NB for example)
Suggestion is to enable an option to use the full 0-255 scale to control the flat panel brightness
Comments (10)
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The latest nightlies have the accuracy set to 100th of a percent. So it is possible to enter 7.78% and keep that value. The flat wizard also uses this resolution to determine the brightness value for the panels. Could you see if this works? If so, keeping a uniform interface for all panels would be easier, as not all panels have a 0-255 range. For instance the Pegasus flatmaster goes from 255 to 20 darkest to brightest.
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I think the point is that while we can set it by fractional percentages, it’s cumbersome to do when you’re trying to get the brightness to a specific level. It’s also a departure from other range-based settings in the app, such as gain or offset.
The range-based inputs in the app could use some improvement, though. Right now it’s impossible to know what the range of possible values that are available for a given control, so perhaps the design of this control can be redone to inform the user what the min and max of the range is without having to resort to doing things on a percentage basis.
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I can experiment with a different control. The slider gets ridiculous with 255 ticks on it. Perhaps a simple input with +/- is better. Thoughts from everyone?
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repo owner
just have it like in the camera tab. also indicating min-max (added that today) -
Is a slider really what is needed? Thre seems to be some inconsistency throughout the app with range selection. In some places it’s the - + button like with Gain and Offset and others, but in other places it is a slider. Honestly, this should be a consistent control type across the app.
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Ironically I was for the 0-100% scale before I was against it. The official Optec/Alnitak flip flat EL panel is pretty dim and bit of a meme with 3nm filters. I was needing around 102s for the TEC140 (at f6.3) with 3nm filters, per flat, on the 6200MM and 76s on the FSQ at f5. Conversely the Oiii flats were about 4s long. Clearly the EL panel they use has a shit CRI index and favors green/blue over red. This led to 45mins of flats for the Sii filter and there was little reason to ever delve into the lower end of spectrum so 100% for NB and maybe 25% for the LRGB were all I ever needed. Now with my new panel that is color corrected and fair bit brighter (12v power), the lower end of the dimming is exceedingly critical and hundredths of a second make a big difference in the flats. The custom sketch that Nik and I are using has a logarithmic scale that kicks in at the bottom but for whatever reason there has been some conflict with how NINA and it communicate and the automated flats have been inconsistent. And perhaps it is how the two “describe” each others brightness level to each other. At any rate, I seem to remember the original 0-100% slider went in 5% increments and this was not fine enough so I think it moved to 1% increments and this is not fine enough still. Now we are at hundredths of a percentage increments and I am not sure that I agree 1.72% is easier to interpret than say 7 on a scale of 0-255. What the interface should look like I am not sure but I can say that even typing in 121 into a box, that says enter a value between 0-255, is not that big a deal and that those of us who use this set-up only do it once in a while and then just always run with the same settings per filter per rig so making it super simple is perhaps not that big a priority. Anyway you make it it will still be used the same way and that is by experimenting with exposures and brightness and recording the values and then dialing them into the sequence or flat panel settings and never touching the settings again for the next long while. I left mine alone for most of last year.
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Sounds good everyone! I’ll work on a PR for a slider-less UI over the next few weeks.
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reporter
I am in the same situation as oaklandish. NINA currently doesn’t like using fractions of percentages in flats wizard. So we ended up with a logarithmic power scale in the Arduino that controls the panel brightness such as 5% in NINA corresponds to 0.8% power and 100%NINA=100%power. Hvaing the native scale of 0-255 would make brightness control more accurate
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repo owner
- changed status to resolved
Adjusted for next nightly with https://bitbucket.org/Isbeorn/nina/pull-requests/911
Trained flat settings will be auto migrated once the panel is connected
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Agree on this. The 0-100% percent scale is not accurate enough and it is causing conflicts with flat panels. The driver is intended to work with the 0-255 steps and this percentage scale seems like a problematic change to the communication with the driver that is not very NINA-esque and is not working well at all. I think we need to go back to the 0-255 steps.