How to get PHD2's attention?

General
1

I’m new with SGP and PHD2, trying to get automation going. I’ve noticed that SGP sometimes sits waiting for PHD2. PHD2 is all connected to the equipment and sitting idle. Do I need to start PHD2 looping before it will respond to SGP? Any other foibles between the two I should be aware of?

Thanks,
Gerrit

2

There are many experts on this forum, I don’t consider myself one of the them. That said, it appears to me that PhD2 creates a virtual server. It is through this virtual server that messages are passed back and forth between PhD2 and SGP. The “server” is “Enabled” under the tool menu in PhD2.

Bob

3

Hey Gerrit,

Can you provide some more specifics on the problem you are seeing?

  • Are you able to connect to PHD2 from SGP without getting any error messages? (e.g. by clicking on the connect icon for the guider in your sequence view) (and BTW: You shouldn;t need to have PHD2 running for this to work - if properly configured, SGP will automatically launch and connect to PHD2 for you when you hit the “connect” button)
  • When you say “SGP sometimes sits waiting for PHD2”, what state is SGP in when this happens? Have you started and are you running a sequence? Are you already capturing images? Dithering? Something else?

And if you upload your SGP logs we will be able to see exactly what is going on.

Steve

4

@Robert_Kimball – I do have the PHD2 server enabled, and SGP does communicate with it for things like pausing during autofocusing. So that’s not it, for me.

@SteveWinston – I don’t see a connect icon for PHD2 on my sequence view; maybe that’s my problem. :grin: I do a “connect all” when I start SGP though, and SGP does control PHD2 sometimes. For example, during imaging SGP will say “waiting for guider” after dithering and then resume imaging properly.

My notes indicate that SGP doesn’t connect to PHD2 at sequence startup.
I had to start looping in PHD2 for SGP to see it and begin the sequence. I’ve been starting PHD2 manually before SGP, so maybe maybe it will help if I just start SGP and let it deal with PHD2.

Thanks for the help, folks.

Gerrit

5

No, it me who apparently was imagining buttons there - there is no button for the guider :).

When you click “connect all” equipment then you should see PHD2 auto launched - you are seeing this, but only sometimes?

Again, if you can upload you logs we’ll be able to see what’s going on. (they are at: C:\Users\user\AppData\Local\SequenceGenerator)

6

I’ve been starting PHD2 manually before SGP, so it’s already launched by the time SGP starts.

I found my SGP log file; thanks for the location pointer. It’s very interesting! I’m attaching the one from Monday night where I had connection problems. It looks like my “no dark library” error message from PHD2 might have been interfering. (I’m using a bad pixel map in PHD2 and a missing dark file should not be a problem, but PHD2 won’t shut up about it. I’ve logged the problem with PHD2.) I’ll browse through the log a little myself, and if you see anything please let me know.

sg_logfile_20190401203440.zip (33.7 KB)