Plate solving in the middle of meridian flip

Sequence Generator Plate Solving
1

Am I missing something? in the plate solving that occurs in the preparation or middle or post meridian flip…if I get a bad image…such as cloud goes by, dome in wrong position, etc…it first fails the plate solve then goes to the more extensive all sky plate solve, then fails that too…before it quits and tries to shut down the whole thing is there any way to make it try taking another image (x) times ??? without intervention…I would think this is an obvious workflow pathway…but I cant find it? BTW it is using pinpoint.

Thanks,

Franik

2

Frank,
In the control panel, under the Plate Solve tab, how many times do you have SGP “Attempt to Center/Rotate”?

Having pointed that out, I don’t believe that this will affect the plate solve attempts surrounding a meridian flip but I could be wrong about that. To my knowledge, there isn’t a way to retry the meridian flip plate solves X number of times. Prior to the meridian flip, you wouldn’t want SGP to keep trying to plate solve because if enough time passes there would be a danger of the scope/camera striking the pier/tripod or reaching the mount limits. It does make sense though to be able to try multiple plate solves AFTER the meridian flip.

3

Joel,

Yes I am aware of that setting, but it does not work/apply in the context of a m flip. The immediate point after the flip is when I am running into the problem. Saying that, I think I have put enough delays in now that the dome should be caught up and more importantly the program seems to be getting the position of the dome right now???

Frank

4

That’s what I thought. It seems that there could be some delays incorporated for dome movement to catch up. That’s beyond my scope of understanding since I don’t have a dome. Why don’t we see what Ken/Jared have to say and perhaps you could make this a feature request.

5

The dome reports when it’s done moving and we don’t continue until it says the move is complete. Sounds like you dome is still moving when it reports it’s done. But I can’t say for sure without logs.

Also you may want to enable recovery mode as it will try to get you back on track of something weird happens.

Thanks
Jared

6

No … dome not moving and reporting stopped at directed position…cloud
in the way or any other obstruction … …no plate solve then end.of
sequence. …would love for program to retry to take picture X times if
then still not successful then end sequence. …

Frank

7

This is what recovery mode is for. Do you have it enabled?

Thanks
Jared

8

I will activate now and try tonight…Please consider a feature as above…(retry x times) …for those of us with crummy skies and weather… it is very effective in other pieces of software…

Thanks for listening.

Frank

9

This is what recovery mode does.

10

Frank,

I use a settling delay to fix this. My delay is set to 30 seconds and it seems to help prevent this problem.

Ken is right though, recovery mode is effective especially now that they have weather support to close the observatory if your weather goes south.

11

Doesn’t recovery take 10 to 90 minutes. Seems to me one more attempt would be enough for dome to align with slit.
Or is there some way to do the flip and delay 60 seconds for the dome to catch up.

Herb

12

No. Subsequent attempts are 10 min apart. The first is in 60 seconds.

13

You put in a settling delay. It’ll take effect each time but it’s better than waiting for a recovery mode.

Either way I’m usually sleeping so losing a few minutes ain’t gonna kill me :stuck_out_tongue:

14

I don’t believe this is the issue here. SGP waits for the dome to stop slewing prior to continuing for a slew or flip. So if SGP is continuing then and the dome is still slewing then it’s likely that the dome is reporting that it’s not slewing. If putting in a long settle time fixes things then this is likely just masking a deficiency with your dome driver.

Thanks,
Jared