====== Settings ======

Across the bottom of the the Home Screen is a menu of icons with some useful and some not so useful  buttons. The most useful one is on the far right, oddly labeled Me. It takes you to Settings which is oddly labeled Log In.

===== Bottom Menu =====


__Seestar (Star Icon)__: This button will take you to the Home Screen, your central hub within the app, the digital command center of your spaceship. It provides immediate access to all essential functions and information. From here, you can initiate an observation session, review your image gallery, adjust settings, access tutorials, and more. "Captain’s Log, star date 2024…"

__Sky Atlas (Constellation Icon)__: Take a virtual tour of the night sky with the SkyAtlas. This dynamic map showcases stars, constellations, planets, nebulae, even comets, aster-oids, and satellites. You can scroll around or search for a specific target. The blue rectangle is where the scope is pointed, the red one is your target.

__Community (Cyclops Saturn Icon)__: The Seestar Community, according to ZWO, is your connection to a vibrant network of fellow astronomy enthusiasts and Seestar users. Share your astrophotography images, exchange tips and tricks, ask questions, and engage in discussions. Learn from experienced users, find inspiration, and celebrate your celestial discoveries together. It's a place to foster friendships and a shared passion for the cos-mos. They wish. Most people use Facebook, cloudynights, Discord, or Reddit. 

__Nearby (Map Pin Icon)__: Discover the backyard astronomers around you who use a Seestar, and see the images they’ve shared. You’ll also find a dark sky map showing 15 levels from “Excellent dark Sky” to “Inner city sky.” Why they don’t use the much more common Bortle 1-9 scale for the same thing is beyond me.

__Me (Unidentifiable Icon)__: The quickest way to Sounds, Focus, Anti-dew, and Watermark settings. It’s also the quickest way to reach the ”Slide to shut down” button which is hiding down at the bottom, off the screen. You have to scroll down the page to get to it. 

=== Settings Page(s) ===
 
This settings page is conveniently labeled Log In. To what I don’t know and it doesn’t say. Tried several different combinations of ZWO, ASIair, and Seestar names and password and got nowhere.

Next down the screen is a picture of a Seestar with indicators for battery charge and available space for new images and movies. Each RAW (.FITS ) image takes up 4.2 MB. MP4 movies are relatively small because they’re compressed, but RAW (.AVI) movies can get huge, depending on how long they are. I have a typical movie of the Sun that is 838.1MB, for example.

**Now, for the settings…the ones you see when you tap the iconic, recognized everywhere, cogwheel** in the top right corner of the settings (Log In) page.

__Language__ gives you the choice of six mostly Oriental languages or Follow System, which is what you want.
Clear cache apparently clears some quick access data. When I tapped it to see what it might be, without so much as a by your leave, it erased something. Scared me to death because I thought I’d just erased all the pictures and movies saved on the Seestar. (Yes, I have backups.) But the memory space available didn’t change, so that wasn’t what was deleted. Thank goodness. Still don't know what //was// deleted.

__Help & Feedback__ takes you to the official ZWO tech support forum, also available from a browser at https://bbs.zwoastro.com/t/seestar. Curious place. Mixture of unanswered question, lots of bitching, and some very smart useful replies. Go figure.

__About__ reveals your current app version and provides access to a Statement about the open source software they use. Well, some of it anyway. You’ll also find a long list of ver-sions and related enhancements.

__Version Update__ takes you to either the App Store or Google Play where you can download an app update. If your mobile device has “Automatic Updates” on it will have already done that. If there’s a firmware update too, it will make you do that (unfortunately). There have been a few glitches in updates which creates quite a runchus among social media denizens—especially those who can’t be bothered or don’t know how to read. Such issues are usually resolved quickly

**Now for the settings…the ones you see when you tap the Me button** in the bottom menu on the Home Screen.

__Wi-Fi__ shows you the name and password for the Seestar’s Wi-Fi hotspot. And this is where you set up Station Mode to connect your Seestar to your home network for remote control and image transfer.

__Firmware__ is the internal software that controls Seestar's operation. Updates are available to fix bugs and add new features.  And occasionally glitch drives everyone nuts when the update has a problem. Can you spell QA? To ZWO's credit, issues are usually corrected quickly. In one case someone(s) even came back in the midst of a week-long holiday and fixed the problem overnight.

__Device Info__ provides information about your Seestar’s serial number and the current firmware version number.

__Sound__ is where you control the volume of the Seestar’s voice. After the first couple of sessions I put mine on mute, mostly because I was worried the neighbors would be concerned if they heard voices in the middle of the night.

{{ :img_4679.png?nolink&200|}}__Focus__ allows you to turn on the focus panel so you can manually adjust the focus of the Seestar's camera. Note the Current POS ((That's __pos__ition not Piece Of S...)) number after you’ve focused on a bright star. If you’re fooling around with the focus and get lost (I have) you can just go back to that number and know your spot-on or very close. If you're way off, autofocus may not save your bacon. The Sun. the Moon, and DSOs all focus at minutely different places/numbers. And yes, the focus point for any of them changes with temperature. Refocus when you change targets to keep stars sharp. Poor focus is the most common problem with beginners images, so focus on focus when you’re starting out with the Seestar.

__Anti-Dew__ is where you turn on the Dew heater which helps prevent dew from forming on the Seestar's camera lens. It also uses up the battery big time((If you do get dew what do you do? DO NOT wipe ioff the dew or you're pictures will soon look like do-do—coating on the lens a delicate. Take your scope indoors and let the dew evaporate, or if you want to keep shooting, try a hair dryer on low temp or no temp and //don't get too close//. Don't blow on the lens because your breath is full of moisture and you might blow saliva.)) 

__Image Watermark__ is where you turn on or off a watermark that is superimposed on the bottom your images. (But not on the RAW or FITS pictures.) I kinda like it, actually. I just wish it provided a bit more information such as how many subframes were stacked and what was the to exposure length, what the clock time was  to get all the subs, which filter was used, etc. 

__Advanced features__, oddly, provides access to additional Seestar features such as exposure time. I would have thought it was a basic feature. But maybe they’re right, given the rejection rate with anything but 10 second frames. 

__Slide to shut down__,  conveniently hiding off the bottom of the screen, is where you turn off the Seestar.

===== Advanced features =====

__Enhance EXP__ which should be called Exposure Length, gives you a choice of 10, 20, or 30 seconds. When stacking, there’s a quality algorithm that decides whether to add a new image to the stack or throw it out. Quite a few get thrown out at 20 seconds, a whole bunch at 30 seconds. So I now always use 10 seconds and still lose a few. I recently col-lected 30 minutes of data, 10 seconds at a time, and it took 53 minutes on the clock! The algorithm is persnickety, so clouds, airplanes or satellites, or a slight jiggle are not used.

__Skip Horizontal calibration__ allows you to bypass the horizontal calibration process when the Seestar is getting ready to start stacking photos (which they call Image Enhancement).  Essentially, the Seestar checks three stars and determines with plate solving what level really is  regardless of how you’ve adjusted the scope. You can only use it with “Skywatch-ing Mode” (DSO) and it’s worth the short delay before starting hours of photon collecting. 

{{anchor:saveframes:}}__Save each frame__ saves every individual frame used during stacking, so you can use them in post-processing and stack them yourself. Rejected frames are not saved.

__Adjust Level__ opens up the the white/green circles so you can get the scope as level as possible  by adjusting the mount.

__Compass calibration__, well, calibrates the of Seestar's compass. That’s so it knows where to look when you tell it to GoTo a target. If your scope has trouble finding the Sun or Moon, try calibrating the compass. For Skywatching (DSO) it’s not important because the See-star is calculating where to point based on plate solving, anyway.

__Level sensor calibration__ lets you calibrate the internal level sensor. To use it you put the Seestar on a level surface (not just flat, level) and follow the instructions to rotate the scope until the green circle is complete. Like compass calibration, you should have to do this only once unless you’re lugging the scope around. The catch is, if you drove up a mountain and bumped over a dirt road to get to a really dark place, what are you goin to use as a level surface?

__Sky Atlas Sync__ (Internet access required) synchronizes Seestar with the online Sky Atlas database to update object locations and to refine comet and asteroid locations.

__Reset button__ long push restores Seestar to factory settings. Short push resets the Wi-Fi.

__RTSP__ (Real Time Streaming Protocol) and free OBS (Open Broadcast Software) will enable you to broadcast live video from Seestar for world-wide real-time viewing and sharing via Facebook Live, YouTube. This an [[streaming|advanced feature]]. When you have everything else under control, then tackle this. It isn’t straight forward.