I am unable to control my Pegasus Flatmaster 150 with SGP. After taking one image, the panel resets to 5%, regardless of what setting I have it set to. I have no problem controlling the panel with Pegasus software, so this seems to be related to the SGP native driver.
Log File:
Does SGP have a built-in, native driver, or are you using the ASCOM driver?
If you are using a native driver, try the ASCOM driver.
If you are using the ASCOM driver, see if there is a newer driver; if nilot, contact Pegasus.
As far as I know SGP only uses ASCOM drivers and does not support use of native drivers. Those are supported in other capture software such as APT and NINA, but not in SGP. I can fully understand why the SGP developers do not have the resources (time primarily) to build support for a basically endless list of native drivers, after all: that is exactly the reason for having the ASCOM platform. So yes, better contact Pegasus Astro and also verify that their ASCOM driver gives you the same problems when using APT or NINA.
Hi there, weāre happy to take a look if youād like to provide logs showing the behavior. I see that you attempted to do so here, but the link is invalid. To make your life easier, SGPro has an in-app issue reporter where you can select logs (over the last 30 days) and send them to us directly.
@Ken,
When I click on the link above it displays the contents of the log file, perhaps because I have a Google login. Thereās an option on the page to download the file.
Hi Ken - can you try again? Wondering if there was a glitch from google, as other seem to be able to access it no problem. Iāve redone the link just in case and it seems to work even without a google account.
Yes, I have access now and I will take a look.
The logs do show abnormal behavior here, but, even so, I donāt think what I see here is what you are reporting.
The normal, expected behavior for using frame and docus is that SGPro will automatically open the flatbox shutter and extinguish the flats lamp (this is where I see some odd things). In general though, it looks to be behaving as expected. The odd part is that the exposure should have waited for the shutter to open before starting the image, but it just started right away essentially exposing a flat frame. That is a bug for us to work out thoā¦
I think (and correct me if Iām wrong), that the issue is that there is use of a feature for a thing it not built forā¦ Specifically, frame and focus is built for light images so it removes all obstacles in the image train before it starts. Is that whatās happening? You are maybe attempting to use FF as a flats testing or taking tool?
Itās certainly possible that we can alter SGPro to allow for frame and focus in a āflats modeā, but would like to understand the use case first. If you are just testing or fiddling, one thing that might work for you is to close the shutter illuminate the lamp and then disconnect the flatbox before starting FF.
A while ago I was manually trying to determine good exposures for flats, and had to do exactly what you said. Once I realized what was needed, it was pretty easy to do. I did think, however, that it would have been nice if FF allowed taking more than just lights. AFAIK, itās the only way to manually take an image in SGP.
The FlatMaster 150 doesnāt have a shutter.
I have a FlatMaster 150 and didnāt have this issue the OP mentioned. Iāll check the settings and report back.
Mike
Unless I am wrong, SGP only supports dynamic exposure and not dynamic brightness.
I tested using SGP 4.5.0.1498 with the Pegasus FlatMaster 150 (FW version 2.5 as reported by Pegasus Unity)
ā¢ A new equipment profile was created with no filter flat values set.
ā¢ Running the flats wizard and selecting the brightness level manually and leaving the min and max exposures set to 0, it successfully went through its procedures to find the optimum exposure times for each filter based on the target ADU values set. At no time did the brightness value I manually set using either the āOverride flat box valueā¦ā or the flat panel docking module change.
Now I realize why I stop using the FlatMaster 150ā¦ā¦it had very noticeable banding that showed up in the master flats.
I went with the Deep Sky Dad FP2 instead and that has no banding, and flats are totally automated (no manual flat panel placement).
Mike
Hi Ken;
This log may have been from when I was trying to diagnose the issue - if I was just running flats in sequence, the same behaviour would happen - the first flat was fine, but subsequent flats were reset to the 5% illumination.
As one of the other posters mentioned, banding is a bit of an issue, so I have a set combination of illumination and exposure time for each filter to get me to ~30,000 ADU exposure. This lets me have a set dark library for those exposures to do flat-darks in my processing.
Hope this helps explain it - please let me know if there is a more elegant way for me to do this within SGP that I donāt realize! Until now, I havenāt had a flat panel that could be software controlled, so I may be approaching this in an unexpected way.
Ok, have done some testing, and I think I have figured out what was wrong. I was setting the flatbox via the flatbox module, taking a test image and things were fine. Then, if my next image was either via frame and focus, OR via a sequence of flats, the panel zeroed out, since I had not set a value in the filters for flats. (The default is zero).
Once I filled in values for the flats, things are working properly. However, it is tricky to test flat exposures if the flat panel resets to its lowest setting on the second image.
If I could suggest, perhaps an elegant (and simple?) solution would be a checkbox on the flat panel dialogue box to āfreezeā the flat panel at the current value on the next image? This would allow testing via frame and focus to find the optimal combination of values.
Thanks,
Ryan
Certainly open to suggestions, but would you prefer that over, say, a checkbox to place the āframe and focusā module in a flats box compatible mode? To me, this seems like the place where people intuitively go to because they think āI need a place that loops throw away exposures for somethingā and FF comes to mind first.
I like the āflats box compatibleā choice. If I needed to take flats using āframe and focusā to find a starting point for flats intensity, I had to remove the flats panel from the equipment profile so it didnāt open the flats panel cover.
That makes total sense to me Ken!
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