NINA vs APT

Thank you Jonathan.  I spent some time with NINA yesterday and it connects to my gear without problems so I will keep at it for the time being and see how it behaves under the stars.

Oh thanks!

well, both are great. I used APT up to just about three months when i switched to NINA.

Both are easy but i like more the interface of NINA and the features including mosaics planing. Up to now no problems.

Okay - I went back to the user guide another time and now I see the auto focuser setup in the user guide……silly me.  I like the mosaics planning and I'm not committed to any interface yet, so I think I'm going to hang out with NINA for a bit and see how that goes.  

Stefan Benz:
I have been using APT for years and I am quite happy with it. It has all the features I need.Some months ago I had a closer look at NINA, and I personally did not like the user interface. But that is a very personal thing.

I would recommend to try them both, and stick to the one that fits to your own workflow best.

CS
Stefan

I went ahead and paid for the full version of APT, so I plan to fully configure both and see which one works best for me. I haven't ruled out other options yet either.

I've been out of the hobby for over five years now.  I'm amazed how things have evolved.  I used to run Bob Denny's ACP for years, then ran John Smith's CCD Autopilot for a while.  I ran my automated observatory remotely - even though it was in my backyard.   I'm happy to see the number of options available today - and the lower barrier to entry for the new user that the current projects offer.

Ara Jerahian:
I switched to NINA after months of using SGP, so I can’t comment on APT.  I’ve been using NINA since April, and I love it.  If you do decide to try it out, I would recommend you download the latest 1.10 nightly build, which includes some great additions to the auto-focus, parabolic and hyperbolic fitting, as well as some UI/UX improvements throughout.  I know it’s a nightly dev build, but it is quite stable.

Out of curiosity, why did you make the switch from SGP to NINA?  I am using NINA right now and have been tossing around the idea of spending the money on SGP.

Chris Barthel:

Ara Jerahian:
I switched to NINA after months of using SGP, so I can’t comment on APT.  I’ve been using NINA since April, and I love it.  If you do decide to try it out, I would recommend you download the latest 1.10 nightly build, which includes some great additions to the auto-focus, parabolic and hyperbolic fitting, as well as some UI/UX improvements throughout.  I know it’s a nightly dev build, but it is quite stable.

Out of curiosity, why did you make the switch from SGP to NINA?  I am using NINA right now and have been tossing around the idea of spending the money on SGP.

Chris-

Initially, it was because I was having issues blind solving with a local astrometry.net running on my machine.  I could see the logs in ansvr reporting a successful plate-solve, but that success message would sometimes (not all the time) not make it back to SGP and it would time out.  I spent a few weeks trying to figure it out and then just gave up.  NINA was a bit younger then, but the ASTAP plate-solver the devs recommended for NINA has worked perfectly from day 1 until now, and it serves as a blind solver as well, so no need to install ansvr separately.

Also, the other things I immediately liked about NINA were the manual focus targets list, the built-in sky atlas, the object elevation chart for a sequence, the flats wizard.  Some of these SGP also has and I had used, but I liked the way they worked in NINA better.

Don't get me wrong, SGP is a fantastic product which I have purchased and it has a large community of happy users.  But, personally, I like the NINA UI/UX and its approach to automated sequencing better.

- Ara

I haven't used NINA though Pavle from deepskydad has swapped SGP for NINA and loves it , i use  APT and wont be changing anytime soon im comfortable with it and next update should unlock the ability to use APT via a PI4 server  utilizing Indigosky , Ivo from APT is a member on AstroBin  https://www.astrobin.com/cq3rex/B/#c428527 .

regards Dave

One point I think needs clarification. Making mosaics in APT is extreme easy using Cartes du Ciel in conjunction with APT. You create the grid in APT and simply import the grid coordinates into APT as custom objects. You can then fully automate the capture process in APT (except for in-plan focusing currently.) I really like APT and we are fortunate to have multiple great options for capture software.

Randy Roy:
One point I think needs clarification. Making mosaics in APT is extreme easy using Cartes du Ciel in conjunction with APT. You create the grid in APT and simply import the grid coordinates into APT as custom objects. You can then fully automate the capture process in APT (except for in-plan focusing currently.) I really like APT and we are fortunate to have multiple great options for capture software.

Could you tell me a bit more about the steps to do this - would love to give this a go on M31.

Cheers

Todd Noseworthy:
APT’s interface is better in my opinion. Not sure how to explain that but things are placed together better and are simplier to use.

Yes, some parts of APT's UI and UX are better than NINA. The buttons in APT actually feel like you're clicking on them and getting feedback from it. The white space in NINA is also sort of jarring, like how buttons stretch to the entire width of the panel instead of having a maximum width, and sometimes there's too much blank space, while other times there should be more padding to separate things.