I’m trying to improve my unattended operations and have gotten closer. Several times I leave the scope to SGP’s care and wake up to find it’s parked. A few questions
It parks quite inverted often. How is the park position set in Celestron ASCOM control? I’m using v5 of the ASCOM Celestron drivers
Is there a method, other than the log files, to see major events that occur overnight?
Why did my SGP sequence sit for 5 hours on a centering command yet end up in an inverted ‘park’ position?
I think I sorta solved this and someone tell me if I needed to RTFM or not.
I was only using “Center Here” and not "Slew"
Turning BOTH ON for each target removed this.
The symptom was the 1st target would complete, normally by 'end time’
And then the camera/mount would do a solve on that target before moving to the next target.
Upon 1st ‘mount move’ probably via a HUGE centering error, the mount would slew nearly upsidedown (aka pointed ota at ground)
I simply hit both Center and Slew for each target and was successul in the 1st to 2nd targets while watching and then again for 2nd to 3rd trargets while sleeping. It would have been flawless but for the lack of autofoucs on the JMI and the windows updates at 3am!
I consider this a big step for me, thanks all for the help and thanks to the fine SGP folks for such great software!
The answer to this question is almost always yes in all seriousness though we put a TON of work into the documentation and it answers about 90% of the questions in this forum. Things that aren’t in there get added fairly regularly to fill gaps. If you haven’t yet I would certainly recommend perusing through it as well as the “SGP The First Week” tutorial that can be found on our support page.
This particular issue cannot be found in the documentation though…
I will say that I have a similar issue to yours if I only use Center from a Parked position. Apparently my G11 “loses it’s mind” when it’s synced very close to the pole…it’s not hard to understand why though as if your polar alignment isn’t perfect the mount will likely not be pointed right where it should be…which could be under the pole or to the side of it. Pointing at the pole is very critical and a tiny move can make your mount think that it’s “upside down”.
I don’t really get how this is happening when you’re not pointed very near the pole though…so that’s a little odd. But it sounds like you have things working well. There’s certainly no harm in slewing to the target prior to doing the Center. This will likely make your centering require less iterations to be correct.
in all seriousness though we put a TON of work into the documentation and it answers about 90% of the questions in this forum. Things that aren’t in there get added fairly regularly to fill gaps. If you haven’t yet I would certainly recommend perusing through it as well as the “SGP The First Week” tutorial that can be found on our support page.