PHD Guiding is Restarted and Fails immediately after Step 4 Validation in Center on Scope Reference

Well I have lost another hour spent in total frustration. I have had many memos exchanged between your support team and myself on many facets of SGP But this one is one BIG hurdle not willing to go away quick.
So here’s the scenario:

  1. I start PHD (V 2.5 Dev 5) and start guiding before anything else. Like 500 times before, my guiding is always satisfactory until I started using the Frame & Mosaic Wizard. Is this my first mistake by starting PHD Guding right away even before running SGP?

  2. When I start my pre-formatted sequence and get the camera warmed up…etc., I then hit he Pause/Resume sequence button. Then up pops the “Center Scope on Reference” window.

  3. Everything is fine right down to step 4…VALIDATE.

Remember, I have successful guiding at this point which takes about 10 minutes or so to complete.

  1. Then SGP stops PHD and then resumes and another unecessary guide calibration begins.
    I have tried to override it and I managed to intercept PHD somehow to make it’s guiding remain “legitimate” without SGP taking over again and attempting another guiding calbiration again. Very frustrating and a waste of valuable time.

In other words, why does SGP want to force another guide routine after the Validation step when the guidng was already good to begin with?

  1. Any ideas…I’m going crazy.

The MFW simply creates a sequence… any problems you might have are related to a sequence… not the MFW specifically.

No, this does not matter at all. PHD2 can be in any state.

There are some steps missing here. How did you get from “Run Sequence” to “Resume Sequence”?

What takes 10 min? I don’t understand this.

As with this request and several others you have posted, we cannot help you without logs (in this case the PHD2 debug logs as well). If you are interested in saving time, you should always remember to send logs describing the issue (on the first post). My first response will always be to ask for them and then the entire process takes longer. The logs tell the entire story and prevent 20 questions.

Hi Randall,

Sorry to hear of the frustration. I think you can avoid those unnecessary calibrations by confirming that you have the following settings:

  • In SGP: clear this option (make sure it is not checked, as displayed below:)

  • In PHD2, enable these two options:

With that combination of settings PHD2 will never recalibrate unless you explicitly force calibration.

The recommended practice is to calibrate once near declination zero, and don’t recalibrate at all unless you change your guider setup (like if you rotate your guide camera.)

Andy

Hi Andy,

11:26 PM here in Nanaimo, B. C. I just checked the Control Panel for my
current running

sequence and I see that “Re-Calibrate auto guider when target changes” WAS
checked.

The other parameters you specify are as you show. So that is the culprit one
would think…eh?

Thanks Andy and sorry to be such a bother.

Also, Do you know where the SGP log files are lcated?..I don’t want to put
Ken off again!

Randy

yup, that was it!

Menu: Help => Open Log Folder.

Andy

You’re wonderful…I owe you a 6 pack of beer.

R

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You’re not putting me off. I am just trying to shorten the time between when you have a problem and when you don’t. All the info you need about where to find stuff (like logs or other things… problem dependent) is in that link I send out called “How to ask for help”.

Hi Ken,

OK…here’s the attached log file that I ended up with around 3:00 am this
morning.

I found out from Andy that I had “Re-Calibrate auto guider when target
changes” checked which shouldn’t have been.

That was most likely the problem.

The good news was that my meridian flip worked perfectly and landed me up
very very close to the “pre” flip.

All I had to do was a 180° rotate in processing to stack with the rest of
the frames. Very exciting!

Randy
sg_logfile_20150929181913.txt (955 KB)