I wrote a free program using lazarus need your thoughts

[vonskie]

I have listed it on

http://wiki.freepascal.org/Projects_using_Lazarus#Spacegetti

Please give it a try and let me know what you think, please give me ideas for improvements and bug reports.

[Ñuño_Martínez]

Quite beautiful. I (almost) don't use Windows though. 

[Phil]

Please give it a try and let me know what you think, please give me ideas for improvements and bug reports.

I don't use Windows so I can't try it, but your images are quite nice.

For distribution, I assume you provide your app for download as a codesigned installer (eg, use Inno Setup to create the installer .exe). Many users these days are very reluctant to download and install anything less than that from the Web.

It looks like you have some nice technology in your app that does the streaming of the updated images. Have you considered repurposing that technology into something less passive and more active for astronomers and enthusiasts to use? The iPad is a popular devices among amateur astronomers because of its portability and apps like Sky Safari. Maybe that would be a good target.

[vonskie]

Quite beautiful. I (almost) don't use Windows though. 

Thank you for checking it out.. I spent a few months on it, working on it in my spare time.  It was a good learning project, I learned about mulit-thread programming, using bgra, single instance and json. The forums here provided help when I got stuck on something...

 

[vonskie]

Please give it a try and let me know what you think, please give me ideas for improvements and bug reports.

I don't use Windows so I can't try it, but your images are quite nice.

For distribution, I assume you provide your app for download as a codesigned installer (eg, use Inno Setup to create the installer .exe). Many users these days are very reluctant to download and install anything less than that from the Web.

It looks like you have some nice technology in your app that does the streaming of the updated images. Have you considered repurposing that technology into something less passive and more active for astronomers and enthusiasts to use? The iPad is a popular devices among amateur astronomers because of its portability and apps like Sky Safari. Maybe that would be a good target.

Thank you for your thoughts, I have not code signed it yet.

It was more or less a learning project that would allow me to see the GEOS 16 images on my desktop, it recently came online.

I have not considered doing anything else with it other than having an apple watch app that displays the images on the watch as a clock background. But I would not know where to start with that.

Thanks for your input!

[Phil]

I have not considered doing anything else with it other than having an apple watch app that displays the images on the watch as a clock background. But I would not know where to start with that.

You would need a Mac, obviously, and you would not be able to use Pascal since FPC can't emit bitcode (watchOS and tvOS apps are bitcode). Ray Wenderlich's site has lots of useful tutorials. Here's one on watchOS:

https://www.raywenderlich.com/170177/watchos-4-tutorial-part-1-getting-started

And I see this about watch backgrounds:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27583708/apple-watch-set-background-image

If no one else has done this yet for Apple Watch, it might not be a bad idea and a possible commercial app. Amateur astronomers who have spent thousands on building their life 'scope would probably be willing to pay for an app like that. (My brother just sent me a picture of the 16" Dobsonian he spent the last 6 months building.)

[vonskie]

I have not considered doing anything else with it other than having an apple watch app that displays the images on the watch as a clock background. But I would not know where to start with that.

You would need a Mac, obviously, and you would not be able to use Pascal since FPC can't emit bitcode (watchOS and tvOS apps are bitcode). Ray Wenderlich's site has lots of useful tutorials. Here's one on watchOS:

https://www.raywenderlich.com/170177/watchos-4-tutorial-part-1-getting-started

And I see this about watch backgrounds:

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/27583708/apple-watch-set-background-image

If no one else has done this yet for Apple Watch, it might not be a bad idea and a possible commercial app. Amateur astronomers who have spent thousands on building their life 'scope would probably be willing to pay for an app like that. (My brother just sent me a picture of the 16" Dobsonian he spent the last 6 months building.)

Thank you for the links will do some reading on it.