Hey folks,
Anyone willing to take a stab reviewing a couple log files to help me with this?
During my last two sessions, the dome did not park itself at end of sequence (ie. following morning, the dome shutter is still open). On first night, the mount did not park itself either (SGP set to “Mount Park closes shutter” which might explain why shutter didn’t close the 1st night). On second night, there was an SGP error/crash (woke up to sound of rain - was in too much of a tired stupor to take a screen shot!).
Only changes before these two sessions were:
(1) swaped in QHY5Lii guide camera, swaped out Lodestar X2
(2) changed the mount (EQ8) USB cable (Shoestring)
I am suspecting there is some kind of usb communication issue (bad usb cable(s)? bad hub?) but perhaps the log file can give better clues?
Aug 15:
Aug 17
For both sessions, everything was working fine when I went to bed (actively capturing images, guiding was working well etc.). Dome is Foster Systems control (Exploradome).
I suspect the failure to close on the first set of logs is because SGPro seems to have crashed (or the logs are incomplete). The last thing the logs recorded there was an exception trying to communicate with the mount:
[08-16-17 09:15:49.584][DEBUG] [CP Update Thread] Caught exception in CanPierFlipNow : Object reference not set to an instance of an object.
Ideally a dome should have an independent dead man’s handle that would close it if it stopped getting messages from the PC. Then when something goes wrong on the PC side the shutter will close after a minute or two.
Something to ask your dome hardware controller manufacturer for.
I do something similar with my ROR but the dead man’s handle is also linked to a rain sensor. In that way, I can simply open the roof to cool things off and regardless of the PC state, knowing that, as long as the mount is below the roof line, also detected by a sensor, it will fire a warning beeper and close up.
You might also want to look at these two: The Hydreon RG-11 (I think CCDman has one of those too) - or one of the heated resistance strips, with a relay. The Hydreon can be programmed by dip switches to work in different ways. I have this as a direct feed into my roof controller and duplicates my cloud/rain detection system with the AAG cloudwatcher. That means that even if the PC goes down, I can still activate the roof (if the mount is parked opposite a sensor)
The Hydreon RG-11 is what I have waiting for install. Should wire directly into Foster Systems control (ie. rain detection will override all other control and close observatory). One benefit of dome is not having to worry about position of OTA/Mount when closing the shutter.
Also have Lunatico AAG system - not sure yet how I might integrate that into the dome control.
I have the AAG writing the Boltwood compatible file format and use Chris’ ASCOM safety drivers. I use the ‘safe to image’ with SGP and the ‘safe to open’ with a small application that controls my roof system. The nice thing is you can use both in parallel and set them to different thresholds of light, rain, wind and cloud. I use a PMX, which can park anywhere, so I have a sensor that detects the right, safe park position and combined with the ASCOM at.park status, forms an overall safe to open/close status, along with an amalgamation of the AAG and rain sensors. In that way, I hope never to have a roof clash.
The RG11 is definitely the way to go. I recently had a rogue cloud pop up and the RG11 picked up on the first drops and the parking strategy kicked off. I monitored the AAG cloudwatcher and it only noted the rainfall after several minutes.
I’ve got my RG-11 installed - seems to recognize the rain well enough (green light). Unfortunately it looks like the latest version of AstroMC (Foster Systems - Exploradome) is broken with respect to weather/safety inputs (detection of rain from RG-11 causes dome shutter to go into an endless cycle of closing and then opening).
Also now have AAG Cloud watcher up and running. Have not had a chance to test it yet. @Buzz - did you consider using the “Overcast” option in AAG also as a safety monitor (not just rain detection)? You could also use the AAG “Wet” vs “Rain” to trigger safety close - or does this give false positives?
Yes - I set cloudy/wet as the ok to image limit for the safety monitor for sequences. At the time SGP was not running and I just noticed that the RG11 was immediate and the AAG followed on a little later on.