I’ve recently discovered the control panel and think I may be doing something not quite right.
I have set up 2 equipment profiles close to the same and saved them as -attended and -unattended. The only difference between them is that the auto meridian flip is off and camera warmup is off for the attended, and those are on for unattended.
If I have started a run with attended and decide to go in, I use the “apply profile to sequence” and select the unattended.
So now the question:
Will changes in the control panel override the settings in the equipment profile being used for the current sequence? So I wouldn’t have to apply a new profile, just make the desired change in the control panel.
You are correct. Changes to the control panel impact only the active sequence. Also, they are not saved to the Equipment Profile used to create the sequence. I found this confusing when I started using SGP, but other’s finally explained it so that I understood how the two worked.
Equipment profiles are templates for sequences. You can use a Profile to save settings and create a sequence. But the two are not linked other than that.
Think of the profile as a cookie cutter to stamp out cookies. You use the same cookie cutter to stamp 10 cookies all to exact same shape right? Then you can make each of those ten cookies different by putting chocolate/strawberry/almonds toppings on them or whatever. If you put almonds on one of those cookies, it does not change the cookie cutter does it?
Same with SGP. Your equipment profile has the most common and “main” settings for a particular combination of gear that you use regularly. That’s the cookie cutter - the profile. You do not want to change these permanently (the cookie cutter). But you may want to modify some of those sections for a specific target (longer exposures, different filters etc) and add a target (M31 say) to one of the cookies - this is then called the sequence. If you really like this new sequence for some reason - you experimented and found a perfect step size for the focuser for instance - you can save that in turn to be a profile if you like.