Solar Eclipse Workbench 1.9.0 — USB GPS & GPS time-offset correction

Released 2026-04-17

Version 1.9.0 of Solar Eclipse Workbench introduces native USB GPS support and automatic GPS–computer time offset correction, making it easier to capture precisely-timed eclipse photography even when a laptop clock is off.

Key features

• USB GPS support — A new “🛰 Get GPS from USB Device” button reads coordinates and precise UTC time directly from common USB GPS receivers (e.g. VK-162, u‑blox). No gpsd is required; NMEA sentences are parsed directly.
• GPS–computer time offset correction — When a GPS fix is acquired, the measured offset between GPS time and your computer clock is applied to all scheduled actions so shots, bursts and voice prompts fire at the correct astronomical moments.
• New module usb_gps.py — Provides device discovery, permission checks, and a background worker thread that emits location_received, status and error signals. The worker auto-detects ports, checks dialout permissions on Linux, and times out cleanly if no fix is received within 120 seconds.
• Dependency — pynmea2 has been added to parse NMEA GPS sentences.
• Backwards-compatible API — Utility functions such as observe_solar_eclipse, schedule_commands and schedule_command accept an optional gps_time_offset so existing scripts keep working.

Platform support

Solar Eclipse Workbench runs on Linux and macOS, and on Windows when using the Windows Subsystem for Linux (WSL). USB GPS and time-offset correction were tested on Linux and macOS; WSL users can obtain coordinates via the same workflow when using a supported USB passthrough setup.

Get it

See the project and download the source on GitHub: https://github.com/AstroWimSara/SolarEclipseWorkbench

Released by the Solar Eclipse Workbench team — enjoy your observing!