Last night one of my equipment profiles “went bad”. This isn’t the first time it’s happened so I wonder what I should be doing differently. By “went bad” I mean most or all of my device settings disappeared. What I did:
Started SGP
Clicked on Profile Manager and selected my location, clicked “Save”, clicked “OK”
Opened a sequence I’d created a couple of days before
Clicked File → Apply Equipment Profile to Sequence
Chose an existing profile, clicked “OK”
I noticed all the devices I expected were in the list on the right side of the Sequence window
Clicked Tools → Connect All Equipment, clicked “Yes”
All devices connected
Only after trying to start collecting data did I notice my focuser wasn’t working (settings had reverted to the defaults), my camera wasn’t working (didn’t cool), plate solving didn’t work (none of the algorithms I’d selected were selected.
I started troubleshooting and found out all my camera’s settings had disappeared (gain, offset, binning, chip data, etc.). My filter wheel information was also blank. I started reentering all my gear’s settings from scratch. Even some of the settings stored in my Gemini mount controller had been changed.
All the troubleshooting and profile rebuilding cost my 90 minutes. I’m really interested to know what I should do differently to keep this from happening again.
I’m afraid I am not sure. We don’t seem to have any other reports around corruption issues. That’s not to say there are no issues just that we are currently not aware of any and don’t have any way to attempt reproduction.
Have you ever received any error messages when saving or loading profiles? Is there any chance profiles values may have been accidentally saved over? Anything odd that could help us tack an issue like this (even if it doesn’t seem related)? Crashes, etc…
Ken, I understand your not having any way to recreate the intermittent problem I have. What I hope for, is something in the work flow I described looks wrong and somebody could say, “That’s it, user error”.
I have definitely “saved over” profiles in the past as well as made changes and exited without saving. That’s why whenever I open my Equipment Profile, I click the Save button immediately, before doing anything else.
I don’t recall getting any error messages when creating, opening or saving an Equipment Profile.
Something tangential I noticed in the past few days: every time I start SGP, open a sequence and check the Autofocus settings my Step Size is 10. I have to change it back to 350 every time. The rest of the settings I leave at the default values.
Sure. I read over the steps you posted again and there is nothing odd about them. Even if it were wrong, there are zero cases where a mistake should delete data. I will do some testing on application of profiles to existing sequences today. Of course, if you have a sequence and profile combo that can show the problem you see, they would be extremely helpful.
That is very odd for sure. I went and took a look here… opened a test sequence, set the steps to 20 and saved. Reopened the sequence and, just like you said, the change was not persisted. The very very odd part is that after this single time, I was unable to reproduce this behavior again. When I went to go do it again it has started saving correctly every single time now.
You say this happens every single time for you?
If yes, could you do this:
Before opening the sequence or SGPro, make a copy of the sequence
Open the (original, not the new copy) sequence and then AF settings
Observe step size is 10
Alter the AF step size and close the AF settings
Save the sequence and ensure that the status bar reads “Seqeuence successfully saved”
Close SGPro
Then if you could make both of those sequences available, it would go a long way in identifying the root of the issues.
Appreciate it. Of course, your timeline is perfectly OK… just a note that the steps I outlined above don’t require clear skies (unless you just simply won’t be in proximity to SGPro until then)
Clouds last night prevented me from trying anything new, but here is the sequence I used most last week. I looked but didn’t find where SGP saves various profiles. I’m pretty sure that address appears in one of the windows, but I’ve forgotten which.
Can AutoFocus settings be incorporated in a Sequence or Profile, so they are saved with one of those files? I’ve only ever saved my Auto Focus settings in the Module, so perhaps they aren’t saved.
Thanks. Do you have the other sequence requested? Related: which did you attach? I assume the “after”, but just want to be as precise as possible for stuff like this.
I’m not sure I follow this, are you asking if profiles and sequences save AutoFocus settings? If so, yes, absolutely.
I think I just answered my own question while getting ready to try re-answering yours. I found, in my Equipment Profile Manager, where to modify and save my Auto Focus settings. I didn’t have the Use Auto Focus box checked, so those settings didn’t appear. I’ve checked the box, updated my Equipment Profile, saved it, clicked OK and exited. I think I’ll have that working properly next time.
In answer to your first question: the Sequence I uploaded is the “original” of that particular sequence. I think you’ve helped my find my user error, though, so I won’t take any more time with this.