Autofocus - trap for young players

I couldn’t get autofocus to work last night. I thought it was a driver issue with the focus controller at the time so I gave up and focused manually in the end. On checking the logs this morning I realised that SGP thought the focuser was at the limit of its travel and therefore couldn’t move it as part of the autofocus routine. In reality this was not the case (I use the same controller on two different scopes so the absolute position reported by the driver is meaningless).

This issue was not immediately obvious from the information presented on the main screen - the autofocus routine just appeared to hang so I cancelled it. It becomes more obvious if you open the focus tab in the control panel where the focuser position is depicted on a slider or if you go into the “Other settings” dialogue where “Override maximum steps” option is located.

No real harm done but very frustrating at the time. It might be good to flag this limit has been reached in some way on the main screen or in an error message in the autofocus routine?

Cheers,

Peter

Peter,

Not really a trap per-say, but not handled well either. The request to move would have timed out eventually and failed (had you net been there to help it along). It is still not a great way to handle it though. The next release will check both high and low ranges prior to starting AF and fail immediately with proper feedback.