A couple of betas ago, this started to pop up whenever I start a sequence:
Is there a way to make this go away and stop warning me? I can’t find a setting for it. I do not have a rotator and have figured out my camera angles and stored them in the equipment profile. I really don’t ever change it. This warning box is rather annoying.
Thanks,
Chris
I can see where you’re coming from… BUT… It’s even more annoying to spend an entire clear evening at the wrong angle capturing hours of worthless data. Small price to pay IMO (for the click of one button to make sure this is really what you want).
I am pretty much “anti-setting”… it’s a slippery slope. Adding a whole slew of options on whether or not you want certain warning to appear or not is not really something we’d like to support.
Anyhow, if you don’t want to see it, check the box to auto rotate. If you don’t change your camera’s angle, you won’t be hassled by the quick validation check that will happen (it will be completely transparent to you).
Thanks,
I see your point… BUT… There is a slippery slope as well when it comes to warnings and dialog boxes popping up all over the place. Just look at the evolution of Windows. More and more warnings… Are you sure?.. Are you really sure?..
There are so many places in SGP which are just as important as the camera rotation, yet I have not seen warnings about them. And any one of them could cause my night’s imaging to be lost. Maybe they are there but I don’t see them because I have the proper things enabled. I think by our nature, imagers are fairly obsessive about these things.
I love SGP and think it’s a great piece of software. I don’t mean to nit-pick (too much anyway). I just don’t want to wade through an increasing number of warning boxes just to get a sequence started.
I really only mentioned this one because it was new and very obvious. Did this come from a feature request? Maybe I’m the loner here with this issue.
Thanks for all your help and your continued development of a great product.
Chris
I am not sure why this seems like an issue. SGPro is not software designed to do something quickly and then rely on Ctrl-Z if you mess up. It’s not really fair to compare it to Windows applications like that. There is no undo in SGPro and I think folks can live with a few clicks before capturing 8 hours of data with no human interaction. On top of this, as you mentioned, we don’t really have warnings that can’t be made to go away by altering settings or habits.
I’m not sure I buy that, but feel free to bring them up if you are concerned with particularly sensitive areas. I assure you just about every one of our warnings is written in blood.
No, it came from angry people that had just wasted many, many hours of imaging because they had forgotten to click a single check box.
could the warning be linked to the profile? what I mean is, if the profile used doesn’t contain a rotator then the angle clearly cant be set anyway so no real need for the warning?.
Just a suggestion as I personally prefer to have the warning as I use the F&M wizard and a manual rotator always.
I noticed this message for the first time last night as well. It certainly isn’t a big deal to click once and move on. But logically speaking, for me it doesn’t make a whole lot of sense because I don’t use an automatic rotator, or manual rotator for that matter. In my mind, not having a rotator enabled logically means that I have already set the approximate angle for my gear, and will leave it at that. In actual practice I always have the angle at 0 for all my setups. I just attach the camera once to the scope and leave it at that. Until I get a rotator, there will never be a need for me to mess with camera angles (but maybe that’s just me). So again, it would make more sense to me that if no rotator was selected in a profile or sequence this warning is unnecessary.
Also, since there is no auto close delay, it demands user interaction before the sequence will continue. I can see scenarios where that is problematic, such as if I just get lazy and start the sequence and immediately turn my monitor off and run into the house on a cold winter night and never notice that warning.
This is NOT a big deal to me, but just thought I’d share my use case scenario and why this warning isn’t necessary for me. On the other hand, I can certainly feel the frustration of those who do use rotators and who have lost a night’s imaging because of one lonely checkbox.
Have to agree here, non timeout warning boxes are not a good choice for a semi automated system, worse because it is irrelevant to my setup., So far I always start a sequence manually so can deal with them though wonder what happens if your sequence contains a 2nd F&M target later in the session - if that pops up again could be very problematic - will have to check that.
I’ll add my two cents to this thread. The new dialog is annoying and unneeded. If you think this is necessary, perhaps the warning could be presented when you add a FMW item to a sequence that does not have a rotator defined. That would give the user fair warning without the popup at run time.
I realize you guys are anti-settings whenever possible and I agree for the most part, but this hobby, with so many possible configurations / etc. somewhat mandates everyone is a power user. Power users like settings, though I understand and appreciate the desire to keep it to a minimum.
Overall I think the warning is good, but, perhaps all pop-ups / warnings should have a global auto-dismiss setting. Perhaps a setting of zero would be don’t show it at all (at your own risk). Yes, this requires some more settings, but at least it would apply on a global level and not require settings for each little thing like AF HFR, rotate, and whatever else. (And if someone wants warnings for HFR but not rotation, too bad.)
Also, these warnings could be sent with notifications, right? So if I really care, I could have SGP text me and while I may lose a sub because it continued on, at least I could go in to correct it.
(Just thinking about it, maybe a notifications dockable widget, with color coding, so if I log in a few hours later I can see the activity I missed over that time.)
Unfortunately not. One of the problems this warning is trying to correct is not just that the user did not select auto rotate, but that they don’t have a rotator selected in the first place.
Please see above… this is half the problem.
This doesn’t make sense, you can only be prompted with this if you click Run Sequence. You will never be prompted with this during sequence execution.
There is no other way to start a sequence
This will never happen.
Try to have at least a little tact. You are, after all, talking about my idea (designed to help people). The fact that you say it is unneeded makes me think you didn’t read a single bit of the justification I typed above. That said, I like your idea about a warning when the sequence is created and I’d like some time to consider any possible pitfalls.
SGPro is not designed just for the power user audience. Most of our users are not at this level. It may not seem true, but this is probably because power users tend to be the most vocal. Secondly, options are not free… every one we add, we have to be willing to support.
Also… if anyone is interested, in the total time devoted to thought and complaints around this single warning (designed to save people from capturing hours and hours of worthless data), you could have clicked on it and dismissed it ~3600 times.
Funny post 
Seriously, it’s probably time we all let this go. Ken is saying it’s here to stay.
Sorry @Ken, I did not mean to offend - that is the challenge of written communications. I understand the delicate balance between helpful and annoying warnings. Perhaps an idea for this dialog and other warnings that are non-fatal would be to add a check box to the dialog “Do not show again”. Often when this type of checkbox is present, there is a global feature somewhere that enables all warnings again.
Not necessarily. I would seriously like to consider pushing the warning back to the sequence creation (as @DesertSky suggested). I just need a little bit of time to think about it.
Maybe, but then we just move this argument to the definition of non-fatal. Is it fatal if the sequence runs perfectly, but captures useless data (because you acknowledged this warning 3 months ago with a different sequence, sleep deprived in 20 degree weather)?
@Ken - Certainly a valid consideration. On the other hand you could say, that if the user suppresses the warning, they asked for it. To me, a fatal warning (error?) is one that prevents SGP from logically continuing. There are lots of things I can do as a user such that SGP can’t prevent me from spoiling my images.
This is a self created problem from me, I am basically trying to make the software work differently to how it was designed. I am working on ways to start a sequence based on the output of my AAG and the forecasts that say it will clear at 1 or 2am, easy enough to do with products like AutoIT but the reminder pops cause some aggravation - so auto sequence start is a possibility for me.
Know I could do this with the ACP/Maxim combination but a damn expensive way of doing it and SGP is to my mind virtually perfect and would hate to give it up.
Thanks for the confirm that a 2nd target would not throw up a box.
@Ken, another issue with the current implementation. I got this error with only one target selected which only had flats in it. So the error seems to have been triggered by other targets that where not selected.
This is no longer relevant. The warning has been moved to the sequence
creation part of the MFW.
Ken,
quick question. If I decided not to check the rotator option , is there anyway I can go back and change this setting once the mosaic sequence has been created or should I just start over ?? Thanks.
Dennis
Dennis, you can change it in the target options.
great thanks…I need to read more carefully.