Question: Automated captures?

If your spectrometer uses a webcam, you can use a webcam program that does interval shooting or timelapse. I tried a couple of these a few years ago and made timelapse videos of things: https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/04-20-2013/crocuscam
https://publiclab.org/notes/cfastie/4-8-2013/bean-cam

I'm not sure if the free programs I used are the best choices now, but you can find current options by searching for webcam timelapse, or webcam intervalometer, or phrases like that.

Chris

There's a macro for interval capture, though it hasn't been used in a while.

https://gist.github.com/jywarren/4945996

You can paste it into the "macros" pane accessible by a button in the left column if the capture interface. It has a "seconds" parameter you can tweak. Hope that helps and happy to help you configure it!

Hi Warren,

great! That's exactly what I wanted. A time-lapse plug-in for the spectrum capture software. (The bean-cam is nice for videos, Chris, but would not help me with my spectra.)

I pasted the macro into the pane, set it to 6 seconds delay ( $W.timer.countdown = 6 // seconds until next capture) and hit "run". It asked for a frame name, took a capture but only one. It did not take a second capture. Do you know what went wrong?

UPDATE: it did take a second capture, exactly 1 hour later. Have I set the timer wrong?

UPDATE 2: it took a few more pix in 4 minute intervals...

Hmm, so it did a one hour wait, then started running on 4 minute cycle, without changing it from countdown = 6?

Oh, i think there's a bug in the code. I'm making a new version, check out the same link. There's another spot where timing is set: https://gist.github.com/jywarren/4945996#file-periodic-js-L33

Can you try that? I also added a better note for how it should be configured.

Ah, made another adjustment. hang on i'm going to test it

OK, i believe it works now. Same URL - default is set for 1 hour, in seconds (60 * 60 seconds).

Please don't leave it running though! It can eat up a lot of data real fast :-)

Thank you Warren, I will try it out tomorrow. It's bed time here.

And I promise not to "abuse" this macro. I had just set it to 6 seconds to get a few quick captures for testing purposes and I was observing the progress closely.

This macro will just help me to test the spectrometer quality without interruptions even under the most difficult conditions (i.e. when there is StarWars on tv...) ;-)