Understood. That would explain the ‘new’ behaviour. And it would explain why we don’t see it in Spain where we have not updated given all of the issues with the new versions.
I’m on the last but one update at home (I think - it’s difficult to keep up). But my question still stands: I’d like to trigger autofocus after a meridian flip (just in case anything has moved/slipped). How do I do that without double focussing before sequence start?
This happened to me last night for the first time as well. Is the solution to uncheck the box that auto-focuses on sequence start, i.e., will it still autofocus at the commencement of the sequence due to the centering associated with the plate solve? But, doesn’t that eliminate the autofocus prior to the plate solve? And, if you uncheck the box to autofocus after centering, will there be no autofocus after a meridian flip?
Yes, I noticed this last night too. The second autofocus seems superfluous.
Yes, this is intentional (at the moment)… it was pointed out to us why folks with big heavy mirrors need it. We will probably modify the option “Auto focuser after centering” with a little extra checkbox for “unless focus was triggered at sequence start”.
For now, most should be fine not requesting AF at sequence start… it is only really required to get you to a point where you can plate solve properly… other than that, it doesn’t have much use (when paired with the other trigger).
The whole country? Your power is vast… 
Ha ha. Very good, Ken. We have two rigs in Spain. Because we operate them remotely, we will not use Betas since we don’t want to run into any problems. Unfortunately, the latest ‘stable’ release does not seem to be all that reliable, as evidenced by the need for very frequent new releases of the ‘stable’ version. So my imaging buddy and I have not upgraded these rigs. I am not able to follow all the threads on a daily basis, so I was quite mystified when the second focus routine began (and you will no doubt have seen the other thread). I don’t know when you introduced this new way of doing things, but how well was the change of behaviour publicised? It appears to have discombobulated a few of us - and it is very frustrating to be having unexpected behaviour at sequence start up - especially when so many of us get so few decent inaging nights.
It’s a great pity because the stable version of SGP once seemed to be quite reliable. I appreciate that the mirror guys have specific needs and that you are keen to address their requirements. But a lot of us old guys still use refractors. I used to be a great advocate of SGP. However, as it is, I’m not entirely sure that I would recommend SGP to newcomers to the hobby as things now stand. It seems to have been a little bit too flaky, for too long now.
Well… I fear your expectations of SGPro and us are simply too high. We do this in our spare time (as I sit here on Sunday and do support)… it doesn’t pay the bills and we don’t have time to do all the things you are suggesting. I have explained this from time to time in the past (e.g.):
Feel free to to use whatever version of SGPro you are comfortable with or even to delay using a release for 6 months after release. The version you refer to as stable also went through a stabilization period… This stabilization cannot occur in beta because the number of permutations of equipment and sequences it is exposed to is just too small.
Didn’t intend to upset you, Ken. I am well aware that your have limited resources. In my view, you’ve tried to introduce too many innovations too quickly in an attempt to satisy demands from users. Perhaps users need to have their expectations about the possible rate of change lowered given that you are a modest operation.
I noticed this double focus myself last night.
I think the amount of changes is great, small changes are done, released and tested and if any problems are found they are fixed very fast. I do however understand what gnomus means and i wonder if there could be some “long time tested and verified” version that people worrying about bugs could use?
I control 2 remote setups myself, 1 in Spain and 1 here in Norway and i usually just upgrade to the latest beta version at least every 2-3 days, i haven’t really had much big problems except during the time when SGP kept resetting the target settings last fall.
I would like to thank Ken for the great work he has done the last few months in really making SGP great, it runs better than ever, especially the changes done to autofocus with the help of the community is a great addition, before these changes autofocus would often get lost and ruin the rest of the night.
The release is generally stable. I would argue that the double AF is not going to destroy your night. It may be annoying and it will get addressed but it’s unlikely to be a reason to revert back to a previous version.
The best approach to making the release stable would be more involvement in the betas. The more feedback we can get on the beta the better it will be when we hit release. We hit the release button once we are no longer finding issues with the beta and issue reports stop coming in. At that point we release and substantially more users begin using it and, not surprisingly, finding issues.
Thank you,
Jared
This is version 3.0. It is still available for download. Or do you mean something else? We don’t have time to make adjustments to it, but we do still support it in terms of help.
I don’t think I’ve claimed that my night was destroyed. In fact, I said…
The issues I’ve had - be it the ‘slow plate solve times’, the ‘deletion of targets’, or the ‘autofocus-reset-if-one-starts-too-far-outside-of-good-focus’ - are, as you say, irritations. But then I came to SGP because it had less irritations than the then alternatives.
I agree that most issues tend to get sorted, and I appreciate the effort that this takes on your part. But there is an impression that you seem to have bitten off a bit more than you can chew with this latest release. Responses such as, “Well… I fear your expectations of SGPro and us are simply too high.” tend to reinforce this perception.
I am not sure that I have suggested any new features - if anything I’ve tended to argue for status quo until such time as an ‘improvement’ is a genuine and stable improvement. The program is a commercial piece of software: its profitability is not the issue.
I have a suggestion…
Could the software easily produce a simple xml file or flow chart, showing each sequence step once the seqence is ready to run?
That way, the sequece could be looked at as a, well - sequence, a bit like an if/then flow chart? People could then scan this and see where events are taking place in an easy to understand way, and go back and edit within the main GUI if they want to remove a certain action, in this case the double focusing when not needed.
I appreciate this may not be easy but if it is, perhaps it coud be looked at?
Or, maybe this already exisits and I haven’t found it yet?
This is no different than any other stability period for any other minor point release that we’ve done. Whenever we’ve transitioned from beta to release there is always a 1-2 month period where things are getting found and fixed rather rapidly. Maybe it seems more chaotic now as we’ve changed our build process to be nearly hands off so deploying a new release is trivial for us…so we do it more, lots more. Where in the past we would batch up fixes into a new release every week or two.
I wish we had the resources to have a QA team but sadly that isn’t the case. We take a fair amount of effort to make sure that there are no major issues prior to a release but escapes certainly happen.
We’ve worked on something like this and it always gets difficult to go much beyond the first couple of events as we can’t predict what’s going to happen with focus runs, guiding, etc that will eat into time predictions. So you basically end up with something that is almost certainly incorrect. I think if we were going to do something like this it would need to be more real time and adjust as the conditions changed.
Thanks,
Jared
Ok, then consider this a feature request!
I also have noticed this double autofocus and it is indeed annoying when slewing to multiple targets.
Again, the only change here is that on sequence start, auto focus will trigger before centering and then again after centering. It does this because you have asked SGPro to focus on sequence start AND after a centering action. The “double focus” will not occur on subsequent targets. You can eliminate this behavior by unchecking the “Focus at sequence start” option.
To add another data point, I don’t like the new autofocusing routine that is occurring at the start of a sequence as it is being executed with these latest releases, prior to centering. I have a shed observatory that I control from the house. I only need to manually open the roof. but everything else is control from the house. Below is my workflow is:
I have a SCT scope so mirror flop is a concern for me. Because of this I have Autofocus after centering selected. I found even with poor focus plate solving and centering is not a concern but it’s important to have autofocus performed before imaging begins. In my experience and the way I start up, this first autofocus prior to centering is unnecessary. I prefer the old routine of autofocusing after centering. not prior to centering.
My preference would be to go back to the old method of running the autofocus after centering, to ensure good focus prior to imaging. I believe running autofocus prior to plate solving does not add any value/benefit.
Thanks,
Mark
I guess I don’t understand where you are coming from on this one. Maybe just turn that trigger off?
Hi Ken,
Maybe I missed a release note. but is there now a check box someplace that I can turn off “Autofocus prior to Centering”? If so that would be great.
Thanks,
Mark
The only time SGPro will ever run AF before centering is if you choose the trigger for “Auto focus before sequence start”