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Standalone app · Open source · Free

PFR Sentinel

Your observatory's eyes, all night.

Live monitoring, overlays and automation for observatory sky and pier cameras. Built to run unattended, every night.

Download for WindowsSourceWiki
PFR Sentinel
Latest release
v3.7.9
Platform
Windows 10+
License
MIT

Watch the overview

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Every frame auto-stretched, constellations mapped onto your own lens, meteors flagged, and each image sent to the web, Discord, a nightly timelapse and N.I.N.A. at once.

Scrub back through any night, with the all-sky overlay and every event on a timeline.

How it works

One pipeline, every frame

Each capture cycle follows the same path, and it keeps running unattended for days at a time.

  1. Capture

    A frame arrives from a ZWO ASI camera or a watched folder.

  2. Process

    Resize, MTF auto-stretch, auto brightness and saturation.

  3. Classify

    Local ML models read roof state and sky conditions.

  4. Overlay

    Text, image, compass and all-sky layers are composited.

  5. Publish

    Every active output receives the frame at the same time.

Capture

Two ways in

Let Sentinel run the camera itself, or sit it alongside the capture software you already use.

ZWO Camera

Sentinel drives a ZWO ASI camera itself.

  • Auto-exposure, gain and white balance
  • Recovers when the camera drops off USB
  • Scheduled capture

Directory Watch

Sentinel processes whatever lands in a folder.

  • Works with NINA, SharpCap or any camera
  • Reads FITS, JPEG and PNG
  • Also runs from source on macOS and Linux

Features

More than a timestamp on a JPEG

CasPegAndCepAlpheratzPolarisSaturn

All-Sky Overlay

Constellations, stars, deep-sky objects and planets, placed by a lens model fitted to your camera.

Read the docs

Meteor Tracker

Beta

Finds single-frame streaks and rejects planes and satellites. You confirm or dismiss each one.

Read the docs

Roof & Sky Classifiers

Beta

Local ML models report roof open or closed, and grade the sky. No cloud service.

Read the docs

Nightly Timelapse

An H.264 video encoded as the night goes, with optional automatic YouTube upload.

Read the docs

Image Library

Every night archived and scrubbable, with a band showing roof and sky conditions.

Read the docs

Overlays & Tokens

Text, image and compass overlays that fill in from camera metadata and weather.

Read the docs

Outputs & integrations

Publish everywhere at once

Every output can run at the same time.

Community & support

Built in the open

The docs, the roadmap and the conversation all live on GitHub. Ask a question, follow a dev build, or tell me what broke.

Wiki

Guides
Browse the wiki

Discussions

Latest
Join the discussion

Issues

7 open
Report a bug or ideaAll issues

Get started

Running in a few minutes

Quick start

  1. InstallRun the installer. It bundles Python, every dependency and the ZWO ASI SDK.
  2. Choose a capture modeDetect your ZWO camera, or pick the folder your capture software writes to.
  3. Switch on outputsEnable file, web, Discord or any combination on the Output page.
  4. Add overlays and startDrop in text tokens, press Start Capture, and watch the live preview.

Requirements

Operating system
Windows 10 or later
Camera mode
Any ZWO ASI camera (SDK bundled)
Timelapse
ffmpeg — installable from inside the app
Weather overlays
Free OpenWeatherMap API key
All-sky overlay
Your latitude and longitude
NINA plugin
NINA 3.x on the same PC
Download v3.7.9Free and open source under the MIT license. Release notes
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