One of the features that the Smart Telescope Working Group is including in the evolving AAVSO system for accepting smart telescope photometry is the ability to send a message back to the observer with feedback about the data that they submit. Right now we’re working towards sending one message in response to each observing session (overnight observing period).
At first, we were setting this up so that the response would be sent by email. But over the years, I’ve heard a number of amateur astronomers complain about organizations that don’t honor their personal preference for SMS text over email. And so we’ve talked within the STWG about letting each smart telescope observer register their preference for email vs SMS text. But now that we’ve started putting these messages together, we realize that they contain multiple paragraphs of information and multi-column tables that summarize information about the session. We have trouble seeing how that could ever be packed into an SMS text message. Or even a series of SMS text messages.
And so, here’s my question: how upset would you be as an observer if we only provided feedback in the form of emails? Is this a problem for you? What if we offered a choice of either a big “meaty” email or an SMS text message that just had a URL link to your own personal browser version of the email (so no email would be sent)? What’s your preference?
considering that the owner of a smart telescope can possibly not use a laptop but just use his/her phone/tablet to control the scope I think that a SMS with a link to a web page with the data to display can be a good solution.
Mark, I’m not involved in the Smart Telescope Working Group, so this is just my personal opinion. I like email better than text messaging on a smart phone. My fingers work better on a computer keyboard than my thumbs do on my Android phone.
Seeing as there are so few responses to the question despite it being 30 days old, my personal preference would be a big meaty email I can review on my pc/laptop - I hate using my phone for things like that! Though a text would be good as an alert if there was something seriously wrong with the data I submitted so I could stop and make corrections as soon as possible. Preferrably not sent in the wee hours so the system would need to know my timezone.
EDIT: meant to say, no texts in the WEE hours of the morning, not week hours of the morning. DOH!
Thank you, everybody, for the feedback that you’ve provided (both here in the forum and via other channels)!
Based on what everyone has told us, we have absolutely no plans to pump out anything significant by SMS text. We’ll either send feedback in an email or – as several people suggested – send short emails that have personalized URLs embedded in them that will take you right to an observer-specific web page that contains both the detailed feedback as well as links to graphs, curves, and other displays that show your data and the summary analysis of what you’ve provided.
Once we get some sample feedback put together (which could easily take another month – we’re seriously short-handed), I’ll post some samples here so you can see what it’ll look like.