Global start time, we currently have a global end time, but sometimes the automatic target adjustment can adjust the target time prior to say twilight, so a global start time would prevent that from happenning. The other benefit would be if you know that the sky is going to be clear by a specific time, you can set the global start time for then.
Sky quality as a variable for the filename. This would be really useful especially when sifting through the files, it give a bit more visibility of which files to review for quality if you know what I mean.
Only start sequence when Sky-Quality metric is met, again this would be good for cloudy conditions set to clear, obviously knowing your “Normalized” sky-quality value would be ideal, for example, I would never image with a sky quality of less than 19.70 mag /arcsec
Option to “Vent” the observatory, for example I am using the Talon RoR and an option to say open the roof by 50% to help cool down the observatory, and then fully open the roof when the sequence starts.
@STAstro, 1 and 4 have been requested by several people, including me. 3 is a specific case of an outstanding request for a more robust Sequence and Target start/stop capability that would also allow start/stop relative to sunset/sunrise times.
In the meantime, I have an initial “Target” in my sequences that doesn’t slew to anything but simply takes a binned 3x3 bias using no filter and has a hard-coded start time. Because it’s always first it acts like a “sequence start time”. It also means I can run the other targets in any order and never have to worry about them starting too early. My “START” Target also runs a script that updates my website to say the observatory is taking pictures.
I haven’t tried it, but it may be possible to start that Target, for example, 1 hour early and have the script open the roof, then wait for the appropriate darkness, then exit. From what I can tell, SGP waits for the script to finish before continuing. It does not, however, check the return code (another request) so the script has no way to tell SGP to stop, for example if it’s raining.
For number 4, I am uncertain if we can provide this without native drivers. I could be missing it somewhere, but I think ASCOM only provides open and close for the shutter and does not support partial open.
My TalonRoR supports Goto, so it’s possible if a Roof / Shutter supports goto that a user could define what Goto parameter is needed for the “Vent” mechanism. For example, for my roof I would specify 50%, so then the roof would Goto 50% and then when the imaging sequence starts, a command to “Open” the roof would trigger the roof to open fully.
Ken,
I believe you are correct that ASCOM only allows open and close.
However, # 4 could be done if SGP called a user script at “start time” minus X minutes, and that script opened the roof half way (assuming of course the user has something other than ASCOM to open the roof). At “start time” SGP could call another script to open the roof all the way (or let the dome driver do it).
I have a DLI switch that opens the roof so a script called by SGP could call a DLI script that opened the roof half way. A second script could open the roof all the way.
