I mostly use timed sequences, kicking off at dusk, to start imaging a few hours later. When I run the sequence, the equipment connects and PHD2 similarly connects to the mount and camera.
Quite often I find myself aborting the sequence before it has got under way, due to sporadic weather events and have to do some manual intervention. If I abort a sequence before it has started the process of slew, center, guider, focus etc, I lose the synchronization with PHD2 and normal start up activities if say put back the start time and hit resume. If I do a full abort - preserving progress, then when I hit run again, everything is good.
Specifically- when I hit resume - SGP behaves as if it has already been imaging - and assumes the PHD2 state rather than query it (guiding, connected etc). Similarly I’m pretty sure it does not do the AF routine either, even if the AF on start is enabled, when you hit resume.
I think all of this would go away if the start up logic assumed that if the user aborted during the initial waiting period, before the start time, hitting the resume button would behave more like a run sequence, rather than a resume sequence? In that way, it would capture all the appropriate connections, synch with PHD2, autofocus and so on before going on to capture the first image.
I would also like to be able to simply “end” a sequence either before it actually starts or after a pause. Currently, once you click “Run Sequence” the only option presented is to Pause. However, sometimes I need to pause to do some changes that really require a resumption of the sequence from the beginning. I would like to be able to end the sequence, do my stuff and then start the sequence fresh as if I had just loaded it. There have been times when a pause caused centering, auto focusing, etc. to get out of sync and I have had to kill SGP and restart it.
Once I have clicked “Run Sequence”, I would like to be able to either Pause it or End it. If I click Pause on a running sequence, I then want to be able to End or Resume. Resume works as it always has but End gives me the option to run end of sequence and then resets the sequence to the state it would be in if I had just loaded it from disk.
Of course there is always the option to, following initiating a pause, to hit ‘reset sequence (preserve progress)’. Trouble is, late at night, after a day’s work, I’m tired and I get caught out easily, resume the sequence and then have to fully abort again as I realize it has left PHD2 behind and perhaps not autofocused. Of course there are ways around it but to my mind, if it is only waiting for the start time, it hasn’t really started yet and ‘resume’ should really be ‘run again’ in this case.
There is almost always a work-around available to do something atypical but at 2 AM in 27 degree weather, I will not remember that I can click A, click B and then click OK to get something done. Is this issue killing me – no, of course not. But it would be nice to have.
One reason I gave up on MaximDL was that every time I needed to do something, it was three dialog boxes and two popup menus away.