Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

This works fine !
Nice feature !
The only con is that it is slow, after clicking on a mode it takes sometimes over 30 seconds to respond.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

skatebiker:

Thanks for the short feedback. I am not experiencing the delay that you mention -- I would say that sometimes it might be as long as 5 seconds, but not 30 seconds (for me), so that is unusual. We need to wait for more people to respond with their experiences...

I can say, though, that it is not possible to make it any faster, without taking away functionality, or without using something other than Python. My hope is that people will not be tempted to do a lot of 'mode changing', but will typically just leave it in one of their 'favorite' modes most of the time :)

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I did not exactly measure it but it is definitely longer than 5 secs. Is Python so slow ? I also notice that you calculate sun/moon rise settings with an accuracy to 1 second. Reducing accuracy to a minute (which is enough for normal use) will save a lot of polynomial terms, particularly with lunar coordinates.

I have some Javascript ephemeris which run in any standard browser (including MicroB), but are much faster (and use less accuracy).

http://start.nicejewel.com/astrotools/astrotools.html

On this page the last two (Quick Ephemeris and Eclipses) are made by myself and the other three by Oleg Nielsen and slightly modified by me.

But still my opinion is the MChronos is a nice tool with nice graphics.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

The delay I have between modes is on the order of five seconds, also. Perhaps skatebiker has a lot running on his tablet?

At any rate, it's fun switching between the modes, but like you said, I'll usually keep the same one up.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I tried again and watched my watch, the time is really around 5 sec some a bit more.

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

Thanks, guys, for the timing tests. One of the 'disadvantages' of only having a single device, and being only one person, is to never be 'confident' that what works for me, will also work for other people. I rely on others to 'kick the tires' for me beyond what I have done :)

skatebiker, since I use the 'PyEphem' Python library (totally amazing), I have no choice as the the 'accuracy' of the calculated results. All in all, I think I am willing to settle for a slightly slower speed that this might generate. As well, I am not sure how much of the (lack of) speed is due to that, to using Python (which is 'scripting' language, and not 'compiled' like 'C' would be), or to the use of 'Cairo' to generate the graphics. If and when I purchase the next tablet device (N900), I am very much hoping that it will be MUCH faster. One of the things that I wanted to do was to generate a '3d globe' of the Earth using Python on the N800, but my tests show that it would take almost 1.5 *minutes* to do so -- which is way too slow.

P.S. Those Javascript astro pages are neat! You had never mentioned that you were also creating stuff like that!

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

I upgraded today and it works great! I have about the same time between different screens as the others; around 5 seconds. You added a lot more screens in addition to the buttons. Very nice. :)
Question - when the GPS mode is on, does the position get saved in the .ini file? I was thinking of turning GPS to on, connecting to my bluetooth GPS to set the location and time, then turning GPS off. Would it slow things down to leave GPS set to on?

Also, are civil, nautical and astronomical twilights listed anywhere? I know they're shown on the bar and circle graphs but I don't see the times listed anywhere.

Thanks for a great app!

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

slick204, I hope that you like the ability to toggle the text mode on and off, since you were the main reason that I tried to do something like that -- even though it may not be exactly what you requested in post #26 of this thread :)

As for the GPS mode, well, I have not studied that mode for a long time now, but referring back to the README file, it indicates that putting a GPS 'mode' of 'lock' in the 'ini' file will result in the GPS just trying to establish a *single* lock on the GPS, and thereafter ignoring it. This may be what you are asking for (?). No, no settings (including GPS stuff) is saved back to any file.

As for the 'twilight' times, no, I wasn't able to find any room to record those 'textual' values anywhere -- especially on the 'bar' display, which is already so full that I had to squeeze the lines closer together. Are you asking for a 'text-only' mode of some kind that would include that? Maybe some people don't want graphics at all? I can note, however, that I *did* manage to squeeze the sun/moon alt/az onto the screen so that people knew 'textually' what the current locations in the sky were...

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

That's exactly what I was wanting. Thanks!

I was going to to try it last night but I ran out of time. Maybe tonight. I'm wondering if when the GPS signal is gone (disconnected) does it revert to the position in the mchronos.ini file?

I would like to see the values available somewhere, but that's just me. There's already a whole lot of information shown, as you say. I do appreciate all your efforts and have rearranged my applets to be able to view the expanded version. :D

Re: ANNOUNCE: MChronos - Astronomy Clock Applet
 

No, the intent with the GPS 'lock' mode was to use the 'ini' file lat/long setting until a single 'lock' was acquired, and thereafter to use that single captured GPS coodinate -- only to revert back to the 'ini' one at the next restart of the applet. I am pretty sure it worked that way when I originally wrote it, but you will get to re-test it :)