This is really not SGP’s fault but I though there might be a ‘work around’ available.
Last night while ‘practicing’ on M45 at some point a merdian flip was called for. Since the next frame was longer than the time to a flip the timer popped up.
I went ahead and clicked the ‘flip now’ button and the scope slewed over, that’s when everything went bad.
Evidently I have like a mile and a half of backlash and the plate solve was failing. After glancing at the plate solve image it was obvious why. Star trails in the order of 6 or so arc minutes. Not only that I could see the stars moving in the PHD screen while looping. Almost as if sidereal tracking had been turned off.
I could see PHD sending pulse after pulse but the dec axis was way out like 7" or so and it wasent coming back. This required manual intervention to get back on track.
The only thing I can think of is since before the flip the weights were on the east side of the pier and balanced slightly east heavy. When it flipped it was taking a long time for the gears to mesh and work out that backlash.
What I was wondering is there any way to set a delay of a few minutes after a flip is done to let the backlash work out before attempting to solve and center?
Not specifically for a “post-flip” action. If you know that the flip will be the last slew movement of the night (often this is true), then you can set “Mount settling time” to whatever you need. This, of course, applies to all mount movement.
That said, it is pretty common for solves to fail after flips (because the hints are no longer accurate enough). This won’t help with the trailing starts (that’s an entirely different issue), but, in general, this is why we implemented the plate solver backup (local or remote blind solve). I know this is not your issue specifically, but I’m writing about it anyhow since others will come upon this post when things go bad after a flip.
The other thing of note, and what would help you, is using recovery mode. SGPro will fail to center after the flip and then enter recovery mode. The next attempt (presumably 5 or 10 minutes) should be plenty of time to work out the backlash and recover properly.
Mount setteling time wont work out too well for me as I usually shoot 2-4 targets a night. My ‘window’ only gives me about 2 hours on a target each night so I catch them as the get above the tree lines then move on to the next. SGP is a wonderfull tool that allows me to do that.
I do have recovery enabled I dident think of that. I suppose it would have eventually come around if I had not intervened.
It is weird that I have had many successful flips before just something went wrong that time.