Introducing a new application: PicPlanner

Software
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Hi everyone,

I want to introduce my new free and open source Linux app made for photographers called PicPlanner.

The idea:

Probably most of you know the photography planning apps like “PhotoPills”
, “PlanIt”, “Sun Surveyor”, or all the other apps available for Android or IOS. These apps are used to calculate the position of the sun, moon, or milky way to find the perfect spot for a picture in advance.

Until now, at least to my knowledge, there was no free and open source software for this task. Therefore, in 2020, I decided to write my own application to fulfill this purpose. I am only using open source software like Debian as operating system and ART as my main RAW converter. Furthermore, I will probably use a Linux Smartphone in the future. Therefore, my main goal was to create an application that should run on desktop Linux devices and also mobile Linux devices.

Technical details:

The app is written in C with GTK as the graphical toolkit. It uses Libadwaita to be fully scalable and to work perfectly on mobile devices like the Librem 5 from Purism or the PinePhone from Pine64.
As a map source, I use OpenStreetMap. Further information can be found on my GitLab page:

How to test the app?

Yesterday, I published the first Version 0.1.0 on Flathub. Most of the Linux stores which have Flatpak support built-in should be able to download the app. In the future, it will be also available through the Debian repository.

If you are using Linux feel free to test this application. I would love to get some feedback or even bug reports. But please be patient. I am not a professional programmer and this is my first app ever :smile:.

23 Likes
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Great, ten years ago I was using on my PC The Photographer’s Ephemeris
I will test your app. :clap:

2 Likes
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Never heard of them thanks for mentioning. My app is probably much simpler and not as feature rich but for me this is enough for most cases. But let me know if you are missing something. It is only a first beta version so there will be more features in the future.

1 Like
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I managed to compile on debian bookworm/sid with wsl2.
Bad luck, too demanding

No provider of glCreateShader found.  Requires one of:
    Desktop OpenGL 2.0
    OpenGL ES 2.0
    GL_ARB_shader_objects
Aborted

edit : eureka
thanks to :

export LIBGL_ALWAYS_INDIRECT=0

picplanner
picplanner888×868 122 KB

1 Like
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It seems that there is a calculation problem somewhere: rounding or algo
Sunrise and sunset times differences of 5 minutes compared to the data calculated on others services.
For example, in Paris, today sunrise and sunset was at 6:12 a.m. and 9:41 p.m. PicPlanner calculates 6:19 a.m. and 9:36 p.m.

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Maybe you can reach out to me (zwarf@mail.de) and explain directly how the above error happend. I can not follow when this exactly happens.

Regarding the “wrong” times: What I found out during writing my calculations/creating the formulas and checking then with other data, the “problem” is a matter of taste and not wrong or right.
My definition of sunset is when the center of the sun is at 0° elevation. Some programs define set when the upper point of the sun “disk” is at 0°. However, always keep in mind that this is never the “real” sunset because nearly no program takes your environment into account for example if you are in a valley it can happen that you never see the sun however the program says you have a sunrise.
Maybe compare it with reality on a flat field for example and give me some feedback how you experience it if you like.
I already try to find a solution to calculate the “real” sunrise and sunset (see my issue on GitLab).

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Yes, indeed, we should know the choice made for the calculation of sunrise and sunset to be able to compare the different results obtained.
What interests the most the photographer is the azimuth drawn on the map in order to prepare his shooting. And to plan the right day to shoot.

The problem I had is independent of your code. It is rather the problem of wsl2 which has trouble transferring OpenGL processing to windows

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Version 0.2.0 is available on Flathub.

I mainly made some UI changes which makes the app better suitable for Linux Phones.
Furthermore, I tried to make the UI more user friendly and consistent.

Flathub—An app store and build service for Linux

2 Likes
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@Zwarf awesome! I’ve been using this to check the direction of the sun lately instead of suncalc.org than you!

1 Like
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Very cool, it’s good to hear that it is useful.

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Version 0.3.0 is available on Flathub.

I added German a as supported language. Futhermore, I added location services to get the users (GPS) location.
Moreover, the precision of sunrise and sunset times have been increased by taking atmospheric refraction into account.

1 Like
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really cool app, thanks a lot for creating this!
I’ll package it for openSUSE asap :slight_smile:

1 Like
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Thanks a lot!
That would be awesome :blush:

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PicPlanner will be available in the official Tumbleweed repo starting with snapshot 20220926 :slight_smile:
For Leap, one can always use opi picplanner to install it.

2 Likes
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That’s great news! Thanks for the effort :blush:

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Thank you!
Nice app.

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Thanks!
If you are missing any specific feature just write me. No guarante that I can add it but it gives me a clue how people are using programs like this or what features are most important.

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Version 0.4.0 is now on Flathub.

Just a small update but the support for touch screen input should be better now.

I am already working on a big update with a lot of improvements. I also received a lot of feedback lately which I try to consider for the next release.

4 Likes