PySQM

PySQM is a multi-platform, open-source software designed to read and plot data from Unihedron SQM-LE and SQM-LU photometers, giving as an output files with the 'International Dark Sky Association (IDA) NSBM Community Standards for Reporting Skyglow Observations' format (http://www.darksky.org/night-sky-conservation/248).

PySQM is distributed under GNU GPL, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. See the file LICENSE.txt for details.

This software has been developed by Mireia Nievas <mnievas@ucm.es> with the invaluable help of:

• Sergio Pascual (UCM)
• Jaime Zamorano (UCM)
• Laura Barbas (OAN)
• Pablo de Vicente (OAN)

Thanks to Jens Scheidtmann, for making the installation more foolproof for beginners.

INSTALLATION

1. Download pySQM from its GitHub page at https://github.com/mireianievas/PySQM, by clicking on the green "Code" button at the top right and choosing "Download Zip".

2. Extract the zip in a directory of your choice.

3. Check that you've installed python2 (2.7):

   $ python --version $ python2 --version

4. Then install all prerequisits by running:

   $ python2 -m pip -r requirements.txt

   (If you don't have pip installed, check your Linux distribution, how to install it. If that fails, search for "get-pip.py")

Note that the software may need a few additional packages to be installed on your computer.

• A few of the python packages will compile some C code, so you need to have python-dev, build-essential or similar.
• If you want to use mysql, you need to install the respective client packages.
• If you want to be notified by email, you need to install the respective email client.

Again you'll need to check your linux distribution how to do this. (In case of mysql and email, you'll need to check the source code, too.) The error message should be verbose enough to give you an indication what is needed and then try "install python <package> on <your linux distribution>" on Google.

SETUP

After installing the software, you need to modify the file config.py. In this file you will find several variables that need to be configured to match your hardware settings. For example:

• Location of the observatory (geographical coordinates).
• Device identifier.
• Device address (either IP address for SQM-LE or COM/ttyUSB port).
• Location of the data files.
• Axis limits for the plot.

Remember that python (2.7) syntax is mandatory in this file

HOW TO USE THE SOFTWARE

After configuring the software, make sure you are in the parent directory were the README, LICENSE and MANIFEST files are located > ls LICENSE.txt MANIFEST.in README.txt pysqm config.py setup.py

And then run the software. > python -m pysqm

The program should find your SQM device and the data adquisition.will start (if it's night-time).

In some systems, where python3 is the default version of python, you need to specify python2 as the interpreter to use. This is done usually running it as:

> python2 -m pysqm

or

> python2.7 -m pysqm

Note: running the setup.py script is neither tested nor required. The program is currently being redesigned as a normal python package, but at present no setup is required.

HOW IT WORKS

In a first step, the program tries to connect to the SQM photometer and takes some 'tests' measures (metadata/information, calibration and data) to check that the device is working as expected.

After that, the program begins data acdquisition. In each iteration, it checks whether it is night-time. In that case new data is taken.

Each N measurements, the main program calls a plotting function to generate a graphical representation of the current nightly data.

PySQM known issues

Non-ASCII characters are not supported in the config.py file. Please, avoid using 'ñ', accented vowels, etc. In headless systems, such as the Raspberry PI, if you run the program without X, you may suffer from the following fatal error when the program tries to generate the plot:

This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin “xcb”. Available platform plugins are: eglfs, kms, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, xcb. Reinstalling the application may fix this problem. Aborted (core dumped)

In order to avoid this problem, you need to create (or modify if the file exists) in your HOME directory the following file:

.config/matplotlib/matplotlibrc

You just need to set the matplotlib backend to Agg: backend : Agg

Save the changes and exit. Now, PySQM should make the plots without issues. You may need to restart PySQM to apply the changes.

Path to EXE files (windows only): https://www.dropbox.com/s/xlbr6ktk8spjsse/PySQM.exe?dl=0

CHANGELOG

v0.3:

Added datacenter option (optional, disabled by default)

v0.2:

...

v0.1:

...