The AstroBin Marketplace: CLOSED BETA PHASE

Salvatore IoveneframoroLinwood FergusonDale PenkalaVitali
• AstroBin Beta Testers •139 replies•1.3k views
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Hello members of the AstroBin Beta Testers group!

Today I'm introducing the CLOSED BETA of the upcoming AstroBin Marketplace!

Please read this page to learn about the AstroBin Marketplace:
https://welcome.astrobin.com/features/marketplace

Familiarize yourself with the features and the reason why I created this section on AstroBin. You can see a tutorial and some FAQ on that page.


IMPORTANT!!!
  • THIS IS A TEST PHASE.
  • ALL DATA FROM THE MARKETPLACE WILL BE DELETED BEFORE THE OFFICIAL LAUNCH.
  • YOU CAN CREATE FAKE LISTINGS AND MAKE FAKE OFFERS.
  • NOBODY HAS TO ACTUALLY PAY OR DELIVER ANYTHING AT THIS TIME.
  • PEOPLE NOT IN THE ASTROBIN BETA TESTERS GROUP CANNOT ACCESS THE MARKETPLACE.



I would like to invite you to:
  • Test things out: put up something for sale, pretend to negotiate with each others, make offers, accept offers, reject offers, do the whole thing BUT KNOW IT'S JUST TEST DATA
  • Report bugs, missing features, and aspects that you find confusing



As a member of the Beta Testers group, you can access the Marketplace in the Explore menu.

When I stop receiving bug reports I'll know that it's ready to go live :-)

Thank you all in advance!
Salvatore
Helpful
Tony Jerig avatar
Tony Jerig avatar
No bugs yet,  but AstroBin misspelled in first paragraph:

"A cutting-edge platform built specifically for the astrophotography community. Designed to seamlessly integrate with your existing AstroBin experience, the AstorBin Marketplace provides a modern, fast, and scalable solution for buying and selling used telescopes, cameras, mounts, filters, and accessories."
Well Written Concise
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Gosh, 😅 if I had a dollar for every time I misspelled astrobin as astorbin, I could retire.
Well Written Respectful Engaging
Harold Freckhaus avatar
Harold Freckhaus avatar
On my "french" screen, at the beggining of the page, juste under the "Astorbin marketplace" the two buttons "Caractèristiques" (??)  and "Tutorial" overlap.



Harold
Concise
Harold Freckhaus avatar
Harold Freckhaus avatar
In the menu "Make an offer": if you choose to increase/decrease manually the price, at the first action a 0.01 is added to the original price.
Georg G Albrecht avatar
Georg G Albrecht avatar
Great addition to the platform. I actually made use of AstroBin 3 years ago when making decisions on buying a new OTA by reaching out to members with telescopes I was interested in and one of them was ready to sell his CT8. Everything went well and I got a great second hand scope I love. With this integration it will be even easier and hopefully safe to buy/sell our products. Looking forward to final release. Cheers.

I created a post and I am wondering if in the final release version, it will be possible to pull the gear images from your own AstroBin account directly or if only external images can be uploaded?
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Georg G Albrecht:
I created a post and I am wondering if in the final release version, it will be possible to pull the gear images from your own AstroBin account directly or if only external images can be uploaded?


If you create a marketplace listing by selecting from the AstroBin Equipment Database (instead of inputting as simple text), AstroBin automatically shows your images (and all community images) acquired with that specific telescope:



However, images "of" the thing you're selling are not automated. You probably want to take custom pictures for the sale, such as different angles, pictures that show cosmetic defects, etc.
Well Written Helpful Concise
Georg G Albrecht avatar
Georg G Albrecht avatar
Of course I would. However I clicked on the AstroBin equipment option and got only images off of my cellphone to select from… Will try once more to see what happens.
Vitali avatar
Vitali avatar
There are 4 minor things when adding a new item:
* The 'Find .. (optional)' says 'optional' but it is actually not optional. The site will complain that the field is required if you try to create listing and the field is empty.
* If I click on the 'Find' entry then the text cursor is unexpectedly misaligned: positioned after 'T'. It is with Firefox. See screenshot.
* I actually have to type anything in the Find field in order to see a list of available items. Would it be possible to automatically display the list if 'Search equipment used in your images' is selected?
* When adding an image, I can select only one image at a time in the file open dialog. Is it possible to allow to select multiple images in the dialog and uploaded them all?

Well Written Helpful Respectful Concise
Harold Freckhaus avatar
Harold Freckhaus avatar
The first added to an image date is not correct 

Nicolas Puig avatar
Nicolas Puig avatar
I accepted the buyer's offer on the small bezel and I noticed that on my page it is indicated as reserved although on marketplace the ad has completely disappeared.
Definitely a bug?
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
I accepted the buyer's offer on the small bezel and I noticed that on my page it is indicated as reserved although on marketplace the ad has completely disappeared.
Definitely a bug?


Yes, it seems that when I edited it for you, it changed the location to my geolocation, so you can't see if if your marketplace is filtered by your region (France?). You probably can see it if you set the region to WORLDWIDE (top right button). I'll fix this bug.
Concise Supportive
Nicolas Puig avatar
Nicolas Puig avatar
@Salvatore Iovene  THANKS,
The interface is great in any case. 
This is going to be great once the testing is finished.
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Harold Freckhaus:
The first added to an image date is not correct

Found the issue, fix in progress!
Kevin Dixon avatar
Kevin Dixon avatar
Hi Salvatore,

I accepted an offer for a Takahashi telescope and it seemed to work very well.  

This is a great idea.  I am looking forward to it going live.

Clear skies,
Kevin
Francesco Meschia avatar
Francesco Meschia avatar
Thanks Salvatore! Do I see it right that there’s currently no possibility to post a “want to buy” entry?
Well Written
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
Great new feature and interface is easy to use! I added a Takahashi and have 2 offers! Will test accept on one and reject on another and messaging too!

Gowri
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Francesco Meschia:
Thanks Salvatore! Do I see it right that there’s currently no possibility to post a “want to buy” entry?

Not yet, I'll add it later (soon). The beauty of AstroBin is that when you post a "wanted" item, AstroBin can notify the people in your country who have that thing 
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
I tried to message 2 offers for my scope I advertised to sell and the Message sent successfully, but I got another window to send a private message, which I was confused by, since the first message I think is private too.
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
gmadkat:
I tried to message 2 offers for my scope I advertised to sell and the Message sent successfully, but I got another window to send a private message, which I was confused by, since the first message I think is private too.


Can you please send me a screenshot with the confusing part?
Well Written Respectful
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar
It was the first time you send a message to a prospective buyer who made an offer, I unfortunately responded to both my offers and the UI is ok now, it shows the history, if someone else makes me an offer I can screenshot it, or I can add a new equipment and try again.
gmadkat avatar
gmadkat avatar



And then I think the below confused me first time since I thought it was prompting me to send the private message after I sent it, but on second look, it looks ok to me! 

Salvatore Iovene avatar
Salvatore Iovene avatar
Yeah you can have multiple conversations with the same person, and they are all grouped there. I think most people will be familiar with it because it's the same UI component that's used for image comments.
Nico Carver avatar
Nico Carver avatar
On mobile with my phone in vertical orientation, the slideshow of images on the welcome page isn’t displaying ideally with many images cut-off rather than scaling to the width of the screen.
Screenshots below taken with an iPhone 13 Max running mobile Safari:
Well Written Helpful Respectful
Taman avatar
Taman avatar
Hi Salvatore, looking good so far and a great new feature for AstroBin . One thing I spotted, could we have an "Edit" button on the messages and questions windows to amend typo's? Thanks Tony.
Well Written Respectful Concise