I am encountering some unusual behaviour in PHD2; despite rather fine all of night guiding I am seeing it report settling every 8 - 12 minutes - which is both new and strange to me.
Both APT and SGP have dithering turned off - and I had thought it was the dithering process that triggers a settling period post dither move. All my gear is on a permanent pier - housed in a domed roof astrolab and there are no cable snags or anything mechnical that I can think of that explain this behaviour.
My imaging runs are started at the same time on dual cameras and scopes. APT runs through a series of 2, 3 and 4 minute shots on L,R,G,B whilst SGP runs though a sequence of 1, 2, 3 and 5 minute shots on a colour camera.
This behaviour only started around 15 May - which is around when I started to link SGP behaviour and display PHD2 guiding - so I think I accidentally introducing some settling behaviour between SGP and PHD2 that I wasn’t intending!
So I am wondering if a setting in SGP is sending settling commands to PHD - even though dithering is not activated. Can anyone confirm what I am experiencing and how to resolve it - thanks!
PS
APT has dither turned off - no dither in this plan flag set and auto dither turned off too - but I will ask the sam question in their forums too!
I believe in the equipment manager, under the telescope tab, they is an option for settling time for them mount. Is there something in there in your profile?
I doubt the MoveAxis command is coming from SGP. The exception to this would be if you were using the Direct Mount Guider, but you are not. We do ask PHD if it’s settled prior to each frame. I believe this is done even if you are not dithering but I’d have to double check. I would assume that PHD would just be like “yup, everything is great” and return.
Jared I expect you may be right - but I wonder if the communication is two way - in that PHD tells SGP what it is doing and does SGP say I can see some local jitters I will wait for you to settle - and does PHD understand SGP is waiting for it so merely reports it is settling whilst SGP waits for it?
I have never seen settling before whilst PHD is not active - in only takes a few seconds at the end of each shot for teh settling to stop - so it’s not too worrisome - its just new behaviour to me that has only happened in the last few weeks when I told both APT and SGP to integrate with PHD and show what it is doing?
It’s not nearly this complex. SGP is not analyzing images looking for jitters or anything like that. PHD2 is generally in charge of its destiny and how it dithers and settles. SGP passes those options from our UI to PHD2. So if you do not have the option to dither checked then SGP just asks PHD2 to settle. So in your screenshot above we’d say “Hey PHD, let me know when you’ve settled at 0.5” and it’s up to PHD to say when it has completed. Other than that we just display information that we receive from PHD2.
If you don’t want SGP to ask PHD2 to settle then your best option would be just to set the Auto Guider to None since you’re not really using any integration between SGP and PHD2.
Maybe a checkbox to not ask PHD2 to settle at all between exposures? (outside of the dithering settings) If you just turn off the auto guider in SGP, you’ll lose the ability for SGP to pause and restart guiding after slews and autofocus runs, correct?
PHD2 will definitely pause if it detects a slew. I don’t know if it will automatically resume. Won’t be able to check for a while as we’re right in the path of all the smoke from Canada at the moment.
Must say I am treating this more as a curiosity at the moment and certainly not a bug or even mild annoyance.
I have been working on addressing coma on my two imaging refractors - after someone pointed it out on the PixInsight forums. I had field flatteners on both my main scopes - but never read about their specific back focus requirements. So after a bit of research on one flattener (and a lot of research on the older one) I fixed the 110mm scope two days ago by adding one 16mm extension tube and the other by removing about 70mm of extension tubes.
It’s great when this hobby starts getting dialled in - loving it now!
