Change Camera Capure Settings?

AstroBox Questions
#1

I currently use a Webcam (Microsoft LifeCam VX-2000) with AstroPrint. When I look at my Print Captures the quality is pretty bad. Is this a camera issue or does AstroPrint take images with low quality to reduce data size?
I asume, the webcam is capable of a better output than AstroPrint produces.
Is there a setting for the quality of the single pictures?

Bonus Question:
Is there a way to get different timelapse settings? 1 picture every layer, next one is “1 min”. Anything in between this? like… every 2 seconds would be awesome.

#2

Currently it’s not possible to change the quality. We’ll release real time video at some point, 1 pic every 2 secs will be too much for most prints I think

#3

Yeah real time video is not what I want :slight_smile: Not that it wouldn’t be nice, but I’m looking into the timelapse stuff right now.

1 pic every 2 secs will be too much for most prints I think

Shouldn’t it be in the power of the user to decide what’s is too much and what not? Sure 1 pic every 2 secs will be too much sometimes. But sometimes not. Sometimes maybe 1 pic every 10 sec would be good, or every 20, or every 30. (Non of the mentioned is possible right now) That’s something I would want to decide.

One pic every layer is very unconsistent for me. Sometimes it’s a picture every 10 sec and then 5 layers laters it’s a picture every 1 min… and so on.

#4

@Spiernik valid user experience points but we’re running a free service and that can easily create an insane amount of data for us with, in my opinion, very little added value.

What would be the use case for more frequent pictures when we have real time video? If you do a 10 hr print with a 10 sec interval, would you really sort through 3,600 photos? That’s over 175 MB with current quality for one print time lapse.

We have 1000s of users creating multiple ones every day. It gets expensive really quick :wink: we’re just trying to find the right balance.

Of course we’re wide open for feedback.

#5

Yeah I get whats the problem, but I acctually don’t understand why every picture is going to your servers and stored there? (Is this right?)

Wouldn’t it be easier to store the pictures locally on the astrobox or in my case - the raspberry pi?
Sure you couldn’t access the pictures from everywhere, but I don’t think that’s really important (It isn’t for me.)

Maybe a dual system would be a great solution. Allowing a high quality/lots of pictures stream loccaly (because everything is stored on the local hardware) and staying with your cloud solution for everywhere access. This wouldn’t mean any more load on your servers.

I hope I got the system right :smile:

#6

Yes, you get the system right. I think it would be a really complex UX if you have some pictures stored locally, some remotely and different intervals for each. We strive for simplicity and ease of use and unfortunately that means that sometimes, certain use cases might not be satisfied.

There is however an alternative to your needs. We are planning to open up the API to create apps in the AstroBox, one of the apps could be offline timelapse collection.

#7

Okay yeah you are right. Every questions answered. Thanks :smile:

I’m hoping for an app then!

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#8

I’d really like to see live-streaming. That and terminal is two major misses in my book.

The live streaming is actually a huge letdown, as I primarily use Astrobox to check in on my printing Progress or if it has stopped or encountered problems like object popped free or something…

I don’t understand the logic behind not having live feed. Everyone, and I do mean everyone in our local Space is using live-streaming to check on the printing Progress and no one is using time-lapse… maybe it is a geographical thing, but it means people are not making the shift from Octoprint to AstroPrint.

Not having terminal in Astroprint is really annoying as I have to unplug my raspberry and plug in USB to a computer to use terminal instead of just doing it by webinterface like previously mentioned alternative.

I just love the fast nice and much more responsive UI on AstroPrint, so can’t wait for the above fixes to be implemented :slight_smile:

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