First Night problems

Sequence Generator
41

Thanks Andy, nice job!

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42

Thank you very much Andy.

Kind regards,
Horia

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43

A public big thank you to Andy for his patience and skill in getting ansvr to work on my laptop. Top man.

Now back to my earlier posting, is there anyone out there who can look at my posted logs and tell me why Platesolve2 refuses to work for me? It might be that I am just a sort of guy who attracts “bugs”.

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44

Hi Jared and any other experts.

Based on my earlier posting and the attached logs, does anyone have any suggestions why Platesolve2 didn’t work?

There is a chance that the stars may be seen over the east coast of the UK in the not too distant future and hopefully I can try out the good work that Andy did to de-bug ansver software.

Thanks

alcol

45

Andy,

My ansvr seems to be working just fine. Should I do the Update anyway ?? :sob:

46

It’s not immediately clear, just that the solve failed with no software error. This typically (but not always) points to data and hints. Can you reproduce and then right click the image that failed to solve, save it out as a FITS file and then send the logs showing the issue along with the offending FITS file?

47

Hi Ken
Too long ago to find actual images where it failed to solve before. As my earlier posts indicate Platesolve2 works to solve individual images it is its when it goes for real ie. Centering an image or solving and then moving the scope and taking another image to solve that it fails to complete a solve.

Still no answer as to why setting the catalogue to ATM and saving it, it always reverts back to UCAC3? (see earlier post)

Next time I get stars in the sky, I will check out Andy’s debugged ansvr first to make sure it now works, and then give Platesolve2 another try, and save the logs if it doesn’t

48

I’m not sure unless this is a bug is PS2. I don’t have the UCAC3 catalogs but I have noticed some weirdness with my settings changing around when I open up the PS2 settings.

Thanks,
Jared

49

Thanks Jared
Good news, I ran the debugged ansvr last night and wonderful it worked - so relieved. Thanks again to Andy.

I did have some issues with other aspects of SGP but these were probably down to my lack of experience of setting it all up. One this that did happen a couple of times, was when I paused the sequence, SGP seemed to go to sleep and the only way I could operate any features was to turn it all off and on again. I’m sure it isn’t supposed to work like this?

alcol

50

No, pause should either complete the current action or cancel it (depending which thing you choose). If you decide to complete it will just finish that frame and then go into a paused state. If something beyond that happened we’d need logs to check it out.

Thanks,
Jared

51

Morning Jared

Had a chance to run a sequence of SGP last night - until high cloud appeared. Much to my surprise and for no reason I can think of, Platesolve2 decided to work. Must have been something I changed but I know not what.

The sequence started, solved image went to M13, focussed, started to take images etc and then for some reason Aborted the sequence, got it going again but stopped again after a few more frames.

Then noticed that PHD was having trouble with high cloud and presumably the reason SGP stopped. I assume this is normal and presumably if the set up was being left unattended then I need to enable “Recovery”?? Can you confirm that this would, under these circumstances, allow SGP to continue taking images if conditions improved?

Thanks for your help, all beginning to look a bit more promising.

alcol

52

Hi Jared and ken and all experts I urgently need your help again. I thought all was good tonight, set up a sequence to take LRGB images of M13 set the sequence going and it plate solved fine, auto focus all fine. PHD running fine an away it all went to initially take 20 Red frames of 60 seconds each. It got to Event1 Frame 6 all fine and I was thinking that I had cracked it. Little did I know.

It downloaded Frame 6 then nothing else happened, at 22.18pm I paused the sequence as it was doing nothing. stooped at Event1 Frame6 now 22.22pm

The Sequence said “Pausing”

22.23pm Frame 7 starts, SEquence still says “Pausing”, then said “Paused” after finishing Frame 7

22.25pm now says at the bottom of the screen “running sequence” but nothing can be seen to be happening! PHD running fine through all of this.
22.27 then out of the blue it says running dither and starts Frame8
22.28pm downloads Frame8 and says Image complete Event1 Frame8. Then seems to stop again with nothing indicated at the bottom of the screen. What is going on???

22.31pm still nothing going on. PHD still running fine.
22.34 Still the same screen says Image complete Event1 Frame8

22.35 I click Pause Sequence and it says "pausing"
22.36 Frame9 starts Hurrah,but still says Pausing at the bottom of the sequence window.

22.39 In frustration I click "Abort the current sequence"
Abort is greyed out but the bottom of the screen says “Running sequence” but nothing visibly is happening. PHD still running happily

22.42 Still the same, why doesn’t abort actuall abort?? So far I have obtained 9 X 60s images in nealy an hour???

22.45pm I stop PHD makes no difference. Restarted PHD made no difference.

22.49 Gave up in frustration and started to turn the equipment off

Please, please have a look at the log and tell me what I am doing wrong or what is going wrong. I have 21 days left of the free period and so far it has been very very stressful. Another night of stars lost.

Grateful if you could get back to me as soon as.

Thanks Alcol

Log to follow - hopefully

53

Hopefully the link to the log file only the section from around 21.30 hrs is relevant Login - Dropbox

54

Wondered why no reply, just going to politely ask about any feedback and had forgotten to send the link late last night - stupid boy!!

55

Yes. SGPro will continue to attempt recovery (for 90 minutes by default… longer if you want).

We will typically ask for logs (it’s not why we didn’t respond)… we try to provide support often, but, as of now, SGPro is done during our free time and sometimes we don’t have any.[quote=“alcol, post:54, topic:5513”]
and had forgotten to send the link late last night
[/quote]

The dropbox link you provided is not valid.

56

Hi Ken
Apologies I didn’t realise that your responses were in your spare time.

I will try and sort out the link to the log.
I have run the set up again tonight with the same result. The sequence is started 22.00 hrs, it plate solves successfully, auto focuses and then starts imaging. The following happens, 22.10 hrs the first 20s red Frame is completed and downloads, the second 20s red Frame is completed and downloads, the third 20s red frame is completed and downloads but then it all stops. 22.11 hrs The message at the bottom of the screen says "Image complete Event1 Frame3 but nothing happens. The Sequencer gives the opportunity to “Pause Sequence”.
22.14 hrs Frame 4 downloads
22.15 Message at the bottom of the screen " Image complete Event1 Frame4 and all stops/sleeps again.
22.19 still nothing happening, I turn off PHD but it makes no difference
22.21 I clicked pause sequence and sequencer says “Pausing” nothing happening, still says “Image complete Event1 Frame 4”
22.25 still says the same
22.26 Give up and turn everything off still says “pausing”
22.32 All off

log link from yesterday Dropbox - sg_logfile_20170523125017.txt - Simplify your life

Log from earlier this evening :Dropbox - sg_logfile_20170524215245WED.txt - Simplify your life

Desperately want to get this working
alcol

57

No need for apology… we sell a product and expect to support it, I was just letting you know a delay in response does not mean that we won’t get to support requests.

I will take a look through the logs and see if I spot anything.

58

@alcol

Still not 100% sure what is happening here, but I can say that it is almost certainly related to your dome acting up… either SGPro loses its connection with it or the driver is simply in a bad state. In both logs, the problems you describe correlate pretty exactly to this (or similar) error:

[05/23/17 22:06:36.314][DEBUG] [Dome Thread] Dome: Caught exception while updating status: CheckDotNetExceptions ASCOM.Pulsar_Observatories_Dome.Dome CanSetShutter Get System.TimeoutException: The operation has timed out.

SGPro can almost certainly handle this failure case better, but the first step is figuring out why that’s happening. The dome’s logs may give insight into other issues…

59

Thanks Ken
Lat night I thought I would try the whole set up but control the dome with EQMOD and the dome utilising POTH. I am never 100% sure of what I am doing but thought I would give it a try.

Much to my surprise the SGPro sequence that I had been running and which slowed and came to a halt the other night, ran right through to completion. ie. platesolved, autofocused, took images with 1 filter, moved to the next filter and so on until completion. During this the dome is obviously being slaved independent of SGP and utilising the POTH software.

Presumably I am simply excluding the link between SGP and the Dome slaving?

You mentioned looking at the dome log, where do I find this so that the dome actions can be checked?

60

Hi Ken
I managed to find the Ascom dome log and it can be found here:

One of the SGP logs you have is for the same period as the log for the dome. Hope you can find something from it that will solve the problem.

Best regards alcol