SomeTechnical developments reported on forums for Occultation astronomy

2017/8
USB3 Occultation and imaging camera QHY174M-GPS coldmos (about £1000 from Bern at Modern Astronomy)

YouTube review by Steve Conard (IOTA): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s1aHx2sb51E
Boulder.edu: Set-up and tests for MU69: http://www.boulder.swri.edu/MU69_occ/
Collected notes: (rtf) from the forums: Download the file

IOTA Video Capture software: Download it from IOTA. Specified for occultation work. It can also check signal-to-noise ratio.
(requires analogue video and USB capture dongle)

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Older stuff:

Free Occultation iPhone App for timing a D-R event (IOTA)
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Elv2SX1VLGM

OccuRec is a video recorder for Windows that has been specifically created to provide better options for recording Asteroidal Occultations to the hard-disk particularly when using integrating video cameras. The software is capable of recognizing the integration periods on the fly and can read the IOTA-VTI timestamps also on the fly. A new AAV file format has been created to support the new features of the software, and the AAV format can be analysed with TANGRA 3 (BETA). The on-the-fly processor is intensive - read the min specs suggested and test the system. Resulting video files are smaller than AVI (and are uncompressed)

[ 2015 02 15 ]
Notes on FITS and File Sizes from the [TANGRA] group
In regards to FITS files - you simply need to put all FITS files into the same directory and then open the directory from Tangra using File -> Open FITS Sequence. There have been however recent improvement with FITS files and I will send you an early BETA version to try.

> I wonder too about the maximum size of avi files to be opened with tangra ?

The VideoForWindows engine has a 2Gb limit and DirectShow has no size limit.

> I own a watec 910HX and the size is nearly 1gb for one minute. Is it possible to stack individual exposure to get one exposure ?

The better way to do this would be to use OccuRec ( http://www.hristopavlov.net/OccuRec) which will do on the fly integration detection and stacking or can do stacking without integration (for example with PHEMU events where your exposures will be really short and will be running as 1 fps). Stacking 16 frames I get a filesize of around 2Gb for more than 3 hours recording - this is lossless AAV file with Lagarith compression.

Alternately if you measure your full frame rate AVI file Tangra can do "binning" which is si mply stacking of frame measurements into bins.

Other observers may have found different ways of managing the filesize problem with PHEMU events. I know for certain that people are also using lossy MPEG-4 compression which doesn't generally compromise the light curve quality too much and is a good alternative if file size is a problem. I am personally using OccuRec for all my PC astronomical video recording and it works really well with PHEMU events.

Hristo

Android App "TimeTheSat"
https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.satflare.timesat&hl=en
An application designed for visual observation of bright phenomena such as an occultation. GPS needs to be switched on etc.. Read further...
IOTA Message http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IOTAoccultations/message/53614. Result is stored as a text file

There is a review of TimeTheSat by Dave Gault here: http://www.kuriwaobservatory.com/pdf_files/TimeTheSat.pdf

ASCOM 6.1 has support to control video cameras. A number of planetarium programs have expressed an interest in implementing a video client and one of the very "popular" commercial programs has done it - not sure which though.

ASCOM VIDEO DRIVER
Hristo Pavlov (Sydney, Australia) is preparing free open source generic ASCOM Video Driver for analogue cameras that works via Direct Show.

ASCOM VIDEO DRIVER for Watec 910BD
Dave Gault, Tony Barry and Hristo Pavlov are working on a hardware interface and enclosure for the Watec 910BD (board-camera) that will offer full control of the camera (including exposures, gamma, gain etc) as an ASCOM driver - usefull for robotic observation.

**Now Tangra V4 using .NET v4.. Out of date: Announcing TANGRA 3 (BETA) for Mac, Linux and Windows (Light curves and analysis tool to replace TANGRA 1.4)
http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/IOTAoccultations/message/53532

Dec15, 2013 Hristo writes: The first beta version of the new generation of Tangra is now publicly available! 'Tangra 3' has been built on a new code base and now can run natively on a Mac and Linux (via the Mono Framework). It can be installed by copying the files in a location of your choice and can run side-by-side with the old Tangra 1.4. If you are currently using Tangra 1.4 only for light curve analysis then I would recommend that once you do the switch to version 3 to simply delete the old version 1.4. If you are using Tangra 1.4 also for astrometry then you will need to keep it for a little longer until astrometry becomes available in version 3.