Andromeda Galaxy M31

Lagoon Nebula M8

Ring Nebula, M57

• Enhanced Vision for bright planets: Would it be possible to provide the ability to automatically select and stack very short exposures (only 100’s of milliseconds) when imaging very bright objects like the planets Mars, Jupiter and Saturn?  Currently, Enhanced Vision only operates with very long exposures – obviously necessary for dim, deep sky objects.
• More Enhanced Vision improvements: Would it be possible to improve the Enhanced Vision processing to better deal with highlights?  Currently all the brighter stars in a field quickly develop into very over-exposed(?), large solid balls.  Perhaps there’s some more finesse that could be done automatically to improve or retain the dynamic range when combining exposures?  Or perhaps provide access to some more advanced exposure controls?
• Allow information overlay on saved images separate from cropping option: As of version 1.0, you can now choose to save the full, uncropped, undistorted image by choosing to not apply the “image overlay” option under General options.  However, this also removes the useful information text like the object name, exposure time, location and date which would often still be nice to have appended along the bottom of the image.  I suggest that the cropping option and the information overlay option be separate options.
• Goto support via SkySafari: Would be wonderful to be able to use SkySafari to browse, select and go to targets with the eVscope (as you can with many other telescopes/mounts), as well as to be able to easily see and explore where the scope is currently pointing.
• Fix “Do not show again” message: This is the message that displays after the message to confirm whether you’d like to save the currently generated image when exiting Enhanced Vision mode.  Two things here: 1) Change that message to “Do not ask again?” which is less awkward and easier to understand what you’re referring to and 2) please stop asking every bloody time!  Once (or at most, once per session) is enough.  If I answer “Yes” that I want to have the confirmation to save, that means “yes, I do”.  So please stop reconfirming over and over again.  You provide the option to turn off the save confirmation in preferences and that’s enough.
• Display useful status/info: Please provide more status info in the app like current sky coordinates and battery charge state estimate.  (The coordinates are only currently available after the fact in the saved images. There is now a battery charge state icon – no percentage estimate, but still useful – and Enhanced Vision mode now displays elapsed exposure time.  Thank you for that!)
• “Picture was saved” notification interferes with usage of the app:  (I need to verify whether this still happens in version 1.1.)  After saving an image, a little notification appears at the bottom across the modal tab buttons for a couple of seconds, forcing you to wait until it disappears.  Please move this message elsewhere where it doesn’t get in the way and/or reduce how long it’s displayed.
• Improve catalog display: The current style of displaying catalog items as a grid of large icons requires that the object names often be truncated.  Also, the large generic icons to indicate the type of object aren’t a great use of the available space.  How about a list-oriented view (and a smaller icon) to make better use of the screen real estate?
• Shared WiFi connectivity: Would be nice to be able to optionally configure the eVscope to use an available WiFi network instead of its own WiFi so as to 1) support extended WiFi reach, 2) allow devices to access both the internet and the telescope simultaneously, and 3) to avoid the need to always switch to the telescope’s WiFi.

These options or features are now available:

• IMPLEMENTED – More expansive view through the eyepiece: Unistellar has now announced the eVscope 2.0 which, among other things, now includes an apparently improved eyepiece and display.  I haven’t seen it personally but it sounds like they’ve tried to address this.I’ll leave my original request here:
  I can see that the design of the eVscope was to very much provide an optical, telescope-like viewing experience – which is of course why there is an eyepiece on the scope at all.  However, I think it is a mistake to not maximize the apparent field of view in the eyepiece to provide more of a grand and wondrous view.  To that end, I wonder if you could use a different lens with the eyepiece to really open up the apparent magnification and field of view of the image you’re able to generate.

Currently you see a small constrained view far down the end of a tube.  You should really try to shoot for a big gorgeous panoramic view, a “spacewalk vista”, like what you get with TeleVue’s fantastic, wide apparent field eyepieces.  Could you simply make use of the same kind of optics and/or display technology inside the electronic viewfinders that Sony and other camera manufacturers use in their digital SLR cameras?  These digital display viewfinders do a fantastic job of enlarging the apparent view on these tiny little displays.  They’re a joy to use and provide a much larger, clearer, detailed view than you get from the displays mounted on the backs of these same cameras.  I realize this would require a hardware change but oh, what a view that would be!

Along these same lines, could there be a way to make use of the full uncropped image in the eyepiece?  With relatively large targets, the uncropped view on the phone’s display is much more expansive and enjoyable than the much constrained circular cropped view.  Could there be a way to present the full uncropped rectangular view and allow it to be rotated in the eyepiece to deal with changes in the telescope’s orientation?

• IMPLEMENTED – Simplify data upload procedure:  This is not something I thought to ask for, but I want to call it out as it’s a very nice improvement.  As of version 1.3, you now just click an “Upload Data” button and the eVscope will park the scope, connect to your available WiFi network and directly upload its data before eventually shutting itself down.  You no longer have to go through a tedious transfer process to your phone and then again to upload it to their servers.  Very nice!
• IMPLEMENTED – Send Observation Parameters: As of version 1.3, there is now a mechanism to load observation parameters into the app by merely clicking a link/URL.  This is very nice to see and use, thank you!  Given the eVscope’s ability to participate in “citizen science” observations and data collections, it seems like there should be a more direct way to send observation parameters (like RA/Dec coordinates and exposure/gain settings) to the scope from an emailed observation request.  Perhaps encoded in a URL that’s interpreted by the Unistellar app?  It’s kinda silly that you have to transcribe lengthy coordinates from an email on the phone to the Unistellar app on the phone.  You can’t even copy/paste right now!
• IMPLEMENTED – Option to save full, uncropped image: As of version 1.0, there is now an option to choose between saving the full frame image or the circular cropped version with the info.  Yay!!  However, it would be nice to get the textual info with the full uncropped version too.  Currently there is only an option to save or share the circular cropped image.  It’s both heavily cropped and mildly distorted around the edges to give it a sort of eyepiece lens effect.  Please provide a built-in option in the app to save the full uncropped, undistorted image!  I should not have to go to the trouble to capture a screenshot of my phone and manually crop it to get the full image.
• IMPLEMENTED – Allow panning of zoomed view in the app: You can now pan around when zoomed in on the current image in either Live View or Enhanced Vision mode.  It works really well and smoothly and shows your current zoom level.  The app display’s zoom feature currently only zooms into the center of the image.  You can’t zoom in anywhere else in the image.
• IMPLEMENTED – Allow image save during live sky view: As of version 1.1, you can now save an image based on the current live view, not just an Enhanced Vision view.  The option to save an image is only enabled during the Enhanced Vision mode, not during live sky view.  This would be useful for very bright objects (like the moon and planets) when Enhanced Vision mode doesn’t produce useful results.
• IMPLEMENTED – Dedicated iPad version of app: As of version 1.1, the iPad version of the app is no longer merely a scaled up version of the phone app.  It now uses the whole screen and takes advantage of all the additional screen real estate.  It looks and works really well and is definitely now my preferred device for working with the eVscope, given the much larger display.  The current iOS app is just scaled up from the phone version on the iPad and does not take advantage of all the additional screen real estate.  The iPad would be an even better platform for viewing/controlling the eVscope if the available space were well utilized.
• IMPLEMENTED – Display useful status/info: As of version 1.1, Enhanced Vision mode now displays elapsed exposure time. They’ve also added a calculation of remaining time that a given object will be visible in your sky view.  As of 0.9.3, there’s now a battery charge state icon.  No percentage estimate, but still useful.
• IMPLEMENTED – Improved data upload process: As of version 1.1, they now have changed how the upload data process works: You now provide your internet-connected WiFi credentials to the eVscope, press a button and the telescope performs the upload directly to their servers, without further involvement from your phone or tablet.  And it will optionally park the eVscope and shut it down when it completes the process.  This is a great improvement over the old, incredibly slow download to phone then upload to internet process.
  Why are the download/upload functions so incredibly slow??  Even over local WiFi from the telescope to the phone?  How many gigabytes could that possibly be? I don’t have enough storage on my phone for it to take that long. Is there a bug here?
• IMPROVED – Allow interaction with other controls when picture adjustment controls are present: As of version 1.1, a simple tap into the image display area will dismiss the controls so it’s not as annoying as it used to be.  Might still be worthwhile to change the interface design so that the picture adjustment controls don’t prevent interaction with the display area.  This could be accomplished by making the bottom area into a tabbed interface, so you can switch between info display, adjustment controls, etc.  Showing the picture adjustment controls (gain, exposure, contrast, brightness) blocks the ability to zoom the image or save it.  I find this inconvenient since I’m always making little tweaks to these controls and want to zoom in or out and save the image in between the adjustments.
• IMPLEMENTED – Finer positioning control: As of version 1.1, this has improved.  Short taps on the directional arrows does now seem to provide small enough movements of the scope to more easily adjust your view.  Currently, the smallest possible position adjustment is with a single quick tap on the directional arrows around the joystick control but this still moves objects in the display about 1/6 or so across the field of view.  In other words, it’s not possible to move the scope by a smaller amount.

As of May 2021, these are the issues I currently see on version 1.3 of the Unistellar app for iOS 14 (iPhone 12 Pro and an iPad Pro):

• While waiting for the start time of a scheduled “citizen science” observation event, I’ve had the observation parameters (coordinates, gain, exposure time, etc) get cleared after returning to the Unistellar app.  I was able to switch in an out several times over 5-10 minutes and not lose the loaded parameters but then, one minute before the start time, all the settings were cleared out and reset.  Worse, selecting the link to reload the parameters didn’t work!  I had to quickly force quit the app and relaunch it to get the observing parameters to load again.
• While scrolling through the catalog list, the display will frequently and seemingly randomly jump back to an earlier point in the list – forcing you to have to try to find where you just were again.  Annoying!

The following issues all seem to be addressed – or at least haven’t happened again yet as of the given version.

As of version 1.3:

• The Unistellar app has trouble reconnecting to the eVscope while Enhanced Vision is still processing after temporarily switching out to another app.  It can take several false starts before you regain control of the eVscope after switching away and back.
• I’ve had the Enhanced Vision mode hang up after an extended run (28 minutes).  The elapsed time stopped updating (stuck at 28 minutes) and while I could still interact with the app, any pictures adjustment changes would not apply and the controls would just jump back to where they were.  I had to exit Enhanced Vision mode to get things working normally again.

As of version 1.1:

• Sometimes lots of large random distortions and smears of light and color appear in the display. (I’m not talking about while slewing which would be expected.)

As of version 1.0:

• The gesture to pinch zoom is buggy and at times it jumps around or refuses to stick.  Strangely, at other times, it works just fine.  I haven’t picked up on a pattern as to when it doesn’t work.  As of version 1.0, this is working much better.  It can still act a little wonky at times but it’s much better.  As of version 1.1, it’s working great and allows you to pan around the zoomed image.
• The app will immediately crash/exit when you return to the app after being disconnected from the scope or wifi or after having to leave the app for some reason and come back.  The app will also occasionally crash/exit for other unknown reasons in the midst of using it, but I haven’t tried to maintain a list of each circumstance.  Hopefully you’re receiving the iOS crash reports from Apple.
• I’m seeing a patch or trail of green pixels on most images in the same place.  I’m guessing I’ve got a hot/stuck pixel on my image sensor and the random walk pattern of the pixel is just the effect of combining many images as the field shifts and rotates while tracking the target.  Is there support for subtracting out hot/stuck pixels?  As of version 1.0, the “Take Dark Frame” action also results in removing any stuck pixels from the eVscope’s imaging.
• Adjusting the contrast/brightness controls while enhanced vision running usually results in the slide control jumping back to its previous position while it completes current frame, and only then it jumps to where you set it.  If you don’t realize it’s going to do this, you’ll try to move it again and again and only get even more confused as to why it keeps jumping around.  It needs to at least stick in the new position even though the next frame is still being generated.
• On one occasion, the joystick/slew buttons seemed to stop working but after quitting and relaunching the app I found that it had actually slewed but had apparently stopped updating the displayed view.
• On another occasion, the joystick slew buttons stopped working and the scope view began shifting randomly.  Had to quit/relaunch the app to fix it.
• Another time the app got stuck in a goto/skewing operation and none of the buttons worked any more and I couldn’t select another target.  The telescope seemed to be no longer tracking the sky, the star field just drifted in the display.  Force-quitting the app didn’t help.  I had to power down the telescope and restart it.
• Seems like the app or the telescope gets confused if you exit the app while enhanced vision mode is engaged.  Are you supposed to be able to exit and come back while enhanced vision is in progress?
• Often the app will forcefully halt the enhanced vision mode without warning and without a chance to save what you have so far – it just returns to the live view.  Sometimes there is no message at all and other times there will be an error message like “too bright” even when it appears there is still much more light that could be captured over most of the frame: only a couple of bright stars in a large field of dim nebula, before the nebula has even really become visible.  Please don’t forcefully stop!  (Also, how is it that we were instructed to leave enhanced vision mode running for hours during the recent exo-planet transit when I have had it quit after just 10 minutes or so on a nebula??)
• I found that both the download and upload sequences would sometimes stop processing after many minutes and I would have to quit and restart them.  This happened several times (4-5 maybe?).
• On a couple of occasions, the “goto” catalog list would jump or reset its scroll position while trying to scroll through it making it difficult to select the desired item.  Usually it’s fine – I haven’t figured out when this happens yet.
• Please rework how those three sequential messages work asking whether to automatically save the image after running enhanced vision.  It was frustrating trying to get it to just prompt me to save the image without also asking me two follow-up questions every time.