Taks and Autofocus, again

[AstroScience]

Buzz,
you made me smile Because just 4 months ago you put exactly same request as me in Feature Request category:

Focus frame cropping proposal

I know the focus settings can trim down the outer margins before measuring the star HFD. With my Tak scopes, the best place to focus on is about half way out from the center. One suggestion would be to also exclude a middle proportion too, effectively creating a rectangular donut of measured stars. For the greater good, it also occurred this may be a simple way of avoiding the focusing issues with HFD measurement of bright central galaxy/nebulae and in particular, globular clusters, by excludin…

Here is another one, from a year ago:

Specify focus stars in frame

This is somewhat related to the request to be able to specify “focus targets”, but isn’t exactly the same. What I’d like to see would be the ability to specify (probably by clicking on them) which stars in the frame to use for AF calculations. This would allow me to exclude the nebulosity that I’m trying to image from being used as an AF target. An alternative (or additional) way of achieving the same thing would be to allow specifying an area of the frame that should NOT be used for focusing. T…

Autofocus problem with globular clusters

I really having a hard time when focusing on globular clusters. The problem is caused by the following: when starting the autofocus routine with a globular cluster inside the crop box of the autofocus images, SGP doesn’t use the core of the cluster because it’s way out of focus and just a blob. When nearing the focus point SGP doen’t only use the outer stars for focus, but also sees the core of the cluster as a star with a HFR with an extremely high value, throwing of the focus graph. I imagine…

This one old as 2017, describes same problem:

Focusing using eccentricity / subframe focusing

I know subframe focusing has been requested previously, but I would like to propose something a bit different which addresses the root problem. This kind of request arises because some optics are not perfectly flat at best focus as determined by HFR. For example, with my FSQ85 after autofocus the corner stars are slightly oblong, which can be made round by half a stepsize worth of focuser movement inward. This minute focuser movement will make the stars round across the field but does not severe…

Another from 2017:

Finally some success autofocusing FSQ85

I would like to share my recent tests with autofocusing a FSQ85 at native focal length. I have posted in a couple of threads recently documenting the problem with autofocusing my FSQ85 as the best focus by HFR is different from best focus for round stars. It is a documented problem with some Tak and the standard takahashi response is to focus 2/3 of the way from centre. However this is not currently implemented by SGPro. A feature request has been previously lodged for user selectable subframe …

Old as 2016:

Add exclude center to autofocus (in same pane as "crop auto focus frame")

Add “exclude center” to autofucus. This, along with “crop auto focus frame” should reduce the focus effects on the edge of field. i.e. if focus is maxed in the very center, the edges will be out of focus. If you max focus half way between edge and center, both the edge and center will be similarly focused. I saw a discussion that almost touched on this, but it wasn’t explicitly described. See these mock ups. [image] [image] …

As you can see, the list can go on and on, so it does got overlooked, but not because it never mentioned anywhere of the forums.