SQM Reader Pro 1.0 is released

SQM Reader Pro has been released, giving owners of the Sky Quality Meter with Lens and Ethernet a new tool to read their meter. If you own an SQM-LE and use Windows, this software really can do a lot for you. You can check it out at http://knightware.biz/sqm/readerpro.htm

This project has been one of the most efficient in my 27 years of software engineering. The beta test went extremely well thanks to responsive, thorough team members. Even the resource and memory leak testing went without a hitch.

This has been a special project as it has brought together 18 years of experience in reading and managing data from meters, and the opportunity to empower people to argue the light pollution point with hard facts. It's also intriguing to be able to know how dark the sky is at any location in real-time - a boon for astrophotographers working remotely.

SQM Reader Pro entering beta test

Over the past few months I have received a number of requests for enhancements to SQM-LE Reader (released Sep 2008.) As a result, I have added these enhancements to a new product that will be called SQM Reader Pro. SQM-LE Reader will continue to be available for free, although the title will be changed to SQM Reader.

SQM Reader Pro will most likely be available in March. Details of the product's features will be announced on knightware.biz after the beta test is complete, but generally you can look for a Windows program that reads an SQM-LE device, displays the latest reading, a graph of recent readings and some elementary statistics (min, max, mean and standard deviation.) The product will include the ability to send an image of the latest reading or the latest graph as a JPEG file to a web site using FTP, or to a processing program, script or batch file.

This project has married together my years of experience in developing software for the electrical power metering industry and my interest in quantifying the darkness of our night sky.