More than 10 filters

[Kevin Lucas]

ACP Planner has slots for 10 filters whereas I'm using the GRAS suite of remote telescopes where there are 12 or so.

Does anyone have any special tricks for using ACP Planner with more than 10 filter options perhaps?

Many thanks

Kevin

[Bob Denny]

Kevin -

I don't think any of the individual GRAS scopes have more than 10 filters, and some fewer. To avoid mistakes (selecting a filter not present on the particular observatory you're using), my suggestion is to create separate Observatory Profiles for each of the GRAS systems you use. In each, list only those filters that are present on that observatory. Then when planning, select the profile for the observatory first, then plan. By doing this you can set up the varying lat/long and timezone for each, and once you get sick of trying to time your run, use the timing and visualization features of Planner.

If you need guidance on separate profiles, reply and I'll try to point you in the right direction. It is in the help. Tip: Look in the File menu for save/load profile. Everything in Preferences is saved out and loaded in, even presets per observatory.

[Kevin Lucas]

Bob
Thanks for this.

Although no single GRAS scope has more than 10 filters, the entire GRAS facility does and I'd assumed that I would need to load all the filter types and then choose from these when planning a run. I'd not realised that I could place filters against scopes (by treating each scope as an ACP Planner observatory) so I'll check that out.

Although it sounds as if there'd be a bit of extra effort to add the same filter to a number of scopes, I suspect that the number of scopes won't prove overwhelming.

The saving out and saving in also sounds interesting and I will check out whether there are facilities for exporting the observatory/filter sets since I'm working with a number of youngsters who have their own copies of ACP Planner so it'd be great not to have to set them all up by hand. (Initially they only use 2 scopes so even the manual method should be too onerous).

Many thanks for the tips above therefore.

Kevin

[Bob Denny]

Kevin --

I will check out whether there are facilities for exporting the observatory/filter sets since I'm working with a number of youngsters who have their own copies of ACP Planner so it'd be great not to have to set them all up by hand.

Yes the entire profile is exportable (Save Profile :-)) and can be loaded into other copies of Planner. You might want to ask GRAS if they already have pre-made Planner profiles for their observatories... I encourage people to do that.

[Bill Mattil]

Bob,

Always thinking ahead ! That is a great idea.


Regards

Bill

[TRAPPIST]

Hello Bob,

Apogee is making now filter wheels with up to 20 filters.
We have for our TRAPPIST experiment a custom made double Apogee FW (in fact 2 AI-FW50-7S, stacked together by Precise Parts with a new double FW plugin made by MaximDL - it is working nicely).

So it would be nice if planner could allow more than 10 filters,

Best regards
Emmanuel (TRAPPIST team)

[Bob Denny]

Already on the list ... I have added an entry pointing to this thread and your need for 20 filters. That's surely going to make the configuration dialog big! I'll probably make two columns of 10 each.

http://gemini.dc3.com/Gemini/Default.aspx?p=21&i=390

[TRAPPIST]

thank you Bob !
ej