Tracking on Sequence start

Sequence Generator Sequencing
#1

Hi - I noticed an odd thing with SGP that didn’t seem like the right behaviour to me. I queued up a sequence which I said to delay until 22.00hrs. When I hit “Run Sequence”, it gave me the usual warning about the fact the mount wasn’t moving or was parked. In my case, it was the former - I’d unparked the mount ready for the sequence, but it wasn’t tracking (not sure why SGP thinks that is a problem). The weird bit is that SGP told the mount to start tracking (at like 5pm when I hit Go, not 10pm). Sometime later, I noticed the telescope had moved, and so I checked - it has indeed told the mount to immediately start tracking. This is a concern because my mount is in an observatory, so I wouldn’t necessarily spot this happening, and ultimately could cause a mount collision even before the sequence was due to do anything (my mount parks west-wards to allow for the roof, so it would crash in ~6hrs).
To my mind, the logic would be that SGP does checks that the mount is all good to go (not parked) but doesn’t do anything to the tracking until the sequence is due to start. Clearly, I can work around this by saying to start, then stopping the tracking now I know, but it seems like funny logic. In all other respects, I continue to be really pleased with this software, not only in its features but also its reliability - invaluable in this scenario!

Cheers!
Peter

(Skywatcher 200p, EQ6 mount using EQMOD/SGP with ASI1600mm/filter wheel, flat panel and EAF focuser)

#2

Any replies? This seems like bit of a bug to me. In my mind, The act of starting a sequence shouldn’t start the mount tracking by itself - that should be started following slewing to a target. If the mount is stationary, and you hit start, then SGP should wait until the first target, then slew/plate solve as appropriate and start the sidereal tracking.

In my scenario above, I was starting the sequence at 5pm, but it’s not dark until 11pm, so that is 6 hours of unnecessary sidereal tracking which would easily crash a lot of parked mounts into something before the target even comes up!

#3

It doesn’t think it’s a problem, but SGPro won’t do anything implicit with the mount. All actions that can start any kind of mount movement are always explicit and controlled. For people that always answer the same way, this question is has a “Don’t ask again” option.

SGPro does not start the mount until the sequence starts. Using 4.1, I just ran through tests to verify that this didn’t recently regress. I’m not sure why your mount started tracking. It’s almost certainly one of 2 things:

  • Your mount contains settings and tools that may start tracking in certain circumstances (like “track on connect”)
  • There is a bug in SGPro that is caused by some odd combination of other settings.

In either case, we always need logs to help troubleshoot.