Tried the new betas, first .744 and confirmed same behaviour with .750. All sorts of odd behaviours with frame and focus. Instead of the usual smooth progress countdown indicator from 10s to “Downloading” the display was jerky, freezing randomly (e.g. 2s) and remaining stuck there for 4 or 5 seconds. Progress indicator would actually move backward, from say 4s to 9s for example, before running forward again. Freeze on download for a minute or more, then finally seemingly finishing and moving on to next frame and focus frame after the long delay. Odd behaviour of the display when I click on other windows - the lower menu bar briefly disappearing and SGP window flickering. Not usable. Rolled back to stable version 4.1.0.700 and everything is running normally.
Im not sure what is going on here… most folks don’t see this issue, but we also have one other report of it. In the logs you attached did you ever use the “Take One” button on frame and focus or did you just click “Start” with 10s exposures?
Also, we have added a log and bug reporting tool into SGPro if you’d prefer to do that in the future. It will save you the trouble of having to find and upload logs yourself.
I started with a single “Take One” then started the repeat exposures, if I recollect correctly.
It seemed more like a display driver conflict, with the display unable to keep up with the information coming from SGP and the odd behaviour when I clicked outside the SGP window (lower menu bar disappearing, SGP flickering, etc.). Is there something about the new graphic interface that could be causing this? Version .700 with the old interface exhibited none of the display issues.
I honestly have no idea what is causing it. We have 2 of these reports so far and the new interface has been functional in beta for more than 5 months now. We are investigating though. Ideally we would be able to reproduce it, but if we can’t we’ll need to take some educated guesses.
I have noticed this behavior also in loop mode. In particular, download progress is interrupted when flat panel is open/closed during exposure. Then it appears to fast forward exposure progress and try to “catch up”. For long exposure of 30sec it just catches up and continues as normal. However, for faster exposures of 5 sec or less it’s a problem because it seems to never be able to keep up with the status. I’ve seen it lock up a few times.
Almost seems as though camera exposure is a single threaded process and cannot run at the same time as other actions.
Regardless, I mostly use longer exposures so it hasn’t been a showstopper. But when testing, it can be detrimental. Please investigate further. If an official bug report is needed, I will submit one. Thanks.
@MicroAstro@hxpi beta 751 will be available in about 30 minutes. We were unable to produce any similar behavior in testing so we made a couple of guesses as to what might be causing this issue. Please let us know if 751 behaves the same or better. Thanks.
Tried out beta 751 and was able to loop 10s exposures in SGP while also doing 2s guiding exposures in PHD. Behaviour is comparable to stable release 700. Only difference I notice is that in 700 the countdown timer graphic (in both the Frame & Focus window and the lower left corner of SGP) runs quite smoothly as the seconds are counted down. In beta 751 the progress is more jerky with the countdown timer graphic jumping in about 0.8s intervals (I counted 13 jumps in a 10s exposure) - it’s not more or less continuous movement as in 700. Doesn’t make any difference as it was still able to loop exposures without freezing as in the previous version. Just thought that observation might be interesting to you.
Thanks. In the release notes, I mentioned that we pulled the refresh rate for the progress bar WAY down. In this case, where we dont know what is happening and can’t reproduce, we overcorrected just to make the problem go away. Now that it has, we will start to add some of these niceties back in before release (but in a controlled manner so we can understand what it is if it reappears).
Installed and test the update and the status bar performance is much better now. There was no stutter or “catch up” behavior with 1 and 5 sec exposure loop. Quite fast download and updates using ASI1600MM-Cool. When flat panel is open/close during exposure, the status just pauses until the panel stops and then continues without incident. Excellent work. Thanks.
Just out of curiosity, why does the status stop when the flat panel is open/closed? I wouldn’t think the exposure is stopped during the middle of capture. This is not anything someone would do in normal operation but the software automatically opens the panel before exposure and I want it closed during exposure for testing, so I have to select close during exposure. I appreciate that the panel will automatically adjust for the appropriate exposure type during normal imaging, but having the option to select this behavior in frame and focus would be nice.
I am not sure what this means. Once an integration begins, it is not possible to end it until the requested exposure time has complete. Please start a new thread for this issue.
@MicroAstro
Also, wrt the original issue, note that beta 752 restores some of the things that 751 disabled for testing. P)leas let us know if you see the issue return.
Also tried 752 and didn’t see any of the strange behaviours while looping (2s and 10s) or while looping PHD (2s) while running 10s loops in SGP. So all appears good on my end.
I have had the same issues. Delays downloading frame and focus images, screen blanking out but no image download. Rebooted but same happens each time. I’m using the dark background option.
Assuming you are using the latest beta, the issues you are describing are not related to this thread. Please go ahead and start a new thread and include logs showing the issue.