Autoguiding when delaying sequence start

Sequence Generator Sequencing
1

Hi, Sorry if I have missed this in the help files.

I thought I had read somewhere that when a sequence sarts, SGP will start PHD2 in guide mode. Is that correct?

If I delay the start of a sequence (perhaps waiting for moon to set), does SGP inform PHD2 to start guiding when the sequence starts?

I am assuming I would have PHD2 running and connected to equipment; perhaps calibrated too?.

thanks for any info on this.

Paul

2

Yes

Yes

You don’t have to be present for calibration, but you should be if possible. If SGPro starts guiding with no calibration, PHD2 will recognize this and perform one.

3

Thanks Ken, this is very helpful.

Paul Kirk

4

Reviving this topic as I’m having some problems with delayed start and PHD. @Ken

I tried it for the first time last night, everything seemed to work fine everything connected before the delay counter begun with PHD saying ‘server started’ or ‘server connected’. Once the delay was over PHD just sat at the same screen. It was late and I had work in the morning so I didn’t retry to prove it wasn’t a phd problem rather than SGPro. At around 23:15 in the logs is where I restarted the sequence without a delay.

The log file has been uploaded to the onedrive link below:
OneDrive - SG Pro Log

5

Looks like we told PHD to start guiding multiple times but it never did for some reason. It did respond to us so it seems the connection was up and running.

Do you happen to have the PHD debug log so we can see what it thought was going on?

Thanks,
Jared

6

Thanks for the quick reply. I’ve just uploaded both PHD2 logs to that same onedrive folder.

It could just have been a glitch, going to rerun the same sequence again tonight (if the weather stays reasonable) to see if the same thing happens

Having a quick look it is complaining that the equipment isn’t connected. Does SGPro connect all equipment before or after the delay period?

7

According to the PHD2 debug log there were 4 attempts to start guiding before 23:15. The first three returned the error

“all equipment must be connected first”

Earlier in the log (22:39:35.013) there was a request from SGP to disconnect equipment, so that is why the equipment was not connected.

The fourth failed attempt to start guiding (23:13:29.615) says:

“failed to find a suitable guide star”

The log shows that for that camera frame you got a nearly fully saturated image (min ADU=229 max=255). The frame was saved to your PHD2 log folder, PHD2_AutoSelectFail_2016-06-01_231336.fit so you can inspect it if you want.

Andy

8

Now you mention it. Once I reloaded the sequence without closing phd id did give a strange white image, closed all the software and reopened which cleared everything.

So for the stuff previous to that, does it sound like a random glitch, a bug or something Ive configured wrong?

9

Reran the sequence and the same thing happened so I guess that’s the glitch theory ruled out. I have a theory that once the delay starts I could click connect all in PHD2 and see if that solves the problem.

I was just about to try the above method, reduced the delay to 300s and strangely when it started PHD instead of saying server connected it now says mount connected.

Currently rebooting the PC to see if that resets it, perhaps manually connecting to PHD2 has triggered something