Since 01.27.24 auto focus has been failing most of the time. Smart focus not working as it should. Have reset focuser position and telescope tube x2, redone step size & still fails

[ipscgal11]

Auto focus usually completes in the 95-100% range. Several hours into my session on 01.27.24 it started to fail for reasons I can’t find. Eventually it would go back to the first focal position which was a good one so imaging continued. Over the next few sessions (01.28, 29, & 30) AF continued to pass and fail erratically.

On 01.30 it failed so badly that I found the telescope fully extended and the focuser still trying to move it. The focus position went from 12462 to 911359. Reset the tube back to 51.5 where it usually is (forgot to reset the position #'s) but AF still continued to fail.

The next session on 02.11 I went out to check on it and found the focuser vibrating very badly but the tube was not moving. I don’t understand why Smart focus didn’t stop it from continuing to move the tube until it was all the way out and still Smart focus didn’t tell it to quit. Unfortunately I did not have a minimum and max value set, but I’m not sure even that would have helped. Again I reset the tube and also reset the focus position back to 13245 and the tube to 51.5. All seemed to be fine except auto focus and smart focus still failed. Over the next few sessions 02.18,19 & 20 I tried resetting the step size, star size, and exposure times but nothing worked and I got errors saying the HFR was bad, and by the looks of the focusing imaging I believed that was true. I have screenshots of one of the AF runs illustrating this if you want to see them let me know.

Just to make things more interesting on last nights session besides all AF’s failing when it was on M101, the meridian flip that was supposed to happen failed and the sequence aborted. I have never had a meridian flip fail in all the years I have been using SGP. Not sure it’s related but there it is.

I’ll attach all the logs for the imaging sessions. Hope you can help. Thanks, Bonnie

Link to Logs

sgpro_log_archive_b38281e6-0c50-4739-9588-36c7885d6fd9.zip

Approx time of issue: 11:46 PM

Useful Info

OS: Microsoft Windows 10 Pro
Ver: 4.3.0.1305 (32-bit)
.NET: 4.8
ASCOM: 6.6.1.3673

[Ken]

@ipscgal11

Unfortunately I did not have a minimum and max value set, but I’m not sure even that would have helped

It would have helped for sure. SGPro cannot know when the draw tube is pinned, it only understands the range limits as communicated by the focus controller or the override limits in SGPro.

@ipscgal11

I have screenshots of one of the AF runs illustrating this if you want to see them let me know.

Yes please, they will be helpful. Also, please try to help in correlating any screenshots with the logs you have provided.

As a general note, the percentage value to refer to correlates with the “fit” of the regression and does not indicate success. A low value here, most definitely indicates failure, but the converse is not true. A fit at 99 or even 100% is not an indicator the AF run was successful. You have included quite a few logs that would be difficult to comb through without further direction. We can start with the screenshots though.