I’m now using a mono camera and filters. It appears my filters aren’t parafocal or at least not the RGB and SHO set.
Last night I did a long focus on each filter and clicked the tab that said something about “saving for this filter”. It seemed to save the filters focus point. I did this for all LRGBSHO. Then I ran my sequence and all that seemed to be gone? It had some old numbers I entered long ago.
WIth my old camera OSC… auto focus worked great. I got a nice U shape and it always found focus. Since changing to mono camera and filters even with Lum in… Focus has gone south. My nice “U” on the graph is a WWW it’s crazy. I have tried to change “STEPS”. But changing from 10 to 50 and 100 for fine setting still results in auto focus seemingly only stepping 10 steps? This is my one irritation of SGP. There are multiple places to make “changes in settings”. But most of the time I must be in the wrong place because they don’t stick.
I try to load and edit the equipment manager that I originally setup. ? I Also do it in the manager pop up (But I believe this is temporary only).
How to best set filter focus differences? The actual focus point of each filter as in 32478. OR the difference between Lum and all the others?
How to best aquire those focus points. It’s been tough since my focus routine now results in W pattern rather than U pattern. Here’s some captures. This first one put auto focus in “WAITING” mode? Never seen that before. Probably the result of me clicking to see what happens. I could not click “focus”.
THEN this is my focus pattern I often see, but it can vary wildly. It also appears to me that steps are set to 10. (WHERE DO I CHANGE THIS TO 60 or so?) I’ve found 2-3 places but none actually change autofocus steps.
I spent several hours last night trying to tweak this and image something and I got “nothing” not a single sub. = ( Between this and crashes (freeze ups) it was a nightmare.
After it freezes or crashes I look at the other aps and often they’re running fine. (eqmod and phd etc). So I try to reboot only SGP. Closing it with ctrl-alt-del and selecting it. Only to find when I try to run it again I get errors that don’t allow it. Like this. It stats my DEBUG data will be sent to you? If I have JIT debugging enabled. So then I went looking all through the options and settings for JIT DEBUG ENABLE… (nothing found).
While waiting for help I try to figure out the problem. But this makes no sense. According to this - every 20 steps is GOOD focus (or best it reached).
So how can sub steps between these focus points be WORST areas?
Best was 32453. 2nd best point was 32433 (20 steps appart) so how can 32443 be WORSE?
We could possibly see this occationally (random) due to seeing. But not every other focus point.
Crazy thing my old OSC focused perfectly. every time. All I did was swap to mono camera and added a filter wheel.
This happens with all filters, even lum. But if I only focus with lum. I lose focus with a narrow band.
As mentioned in your other thread, and as you have found, Course and Fine settings do NOTHING for auto focus. You need to set those values in the Auto Focus Settings area of the focuser. Course and Fine are only “convenience” movement options when you’re manually jogging the focuser around.
Set the actual focus point, but set all of them at the same temperature (so try to get all the values at the same time). The focus point has dual use:
It is used as a fast way to get close to focus by clicking the “Focus for Red” (or whatever filter SGP is on) button
These values are used as offsets when the “Auto Adjust Focus Per Fitler” option is set.
They’re not. What you’re witnessing is the seeing jump around and 0.4 HFR is not that dramatic. Your best HFR is likely better than this and if not then your worst is certainly higher. Graphs like this indicate that your step size is way too low for the seeing/equipment…nothing more.
Ok if you read my msg you saw that I tried and asked how to change from step 10 to step 60-100. I tried that and every time I refocus is steps by only 10. What would you suggest for fine step size? I have a feather touch and their boss II focuser. And how do I get the larger step size to actually “TAKE” Where should I enter it? I have found 2-3 places and it’s not sticking.
ok thanks I have had “this confusion” since day one. I THINK I now get it.
tell me if I’m right.
tools-equipment profile manager. fill this out I had and thought it was primary info point).
It appears it is? IF you create a new sequence it pulls these default settings?
so I create a few sequences. All was well. Now I want to change them all by adding filters.
I THOUGHT tools-equipment profile manager would edit and update all these sequences with my new updated data.
(I Was wrong).
In testing right now, it seems only NEW sequences will use the tools-equipment profile manager. ?
So I then tried “VIEW show control panel”. I made the changes there. I thought that was temporary? and not saved?
But in testing just now it appears if I SAVE the sequence those edits are now saved/updated in the sequence?
I loaded another sequence and the changes were gone. RELOADED the edited sequence and they were still there.
OK - I just started to get this.
But then - how do I take my 10 or so sequences I had set for my old OSC camera and mod them to the new filters/focus settings?
MUST I do one at a time? using control panel and resaving them?
It appears I’ve been doing changes, then changing to another target and my changes weren’t sticking - because the new sequence I loaded for another target wasn’t updated.
Better luck with focus last night. I got the change to 75 steps to stick. I got a decent but lopsided curve. It did achieve focus but was time consuming.
It spent a lot of wasted time. Its starting point was typically way off - first result HFR of 7-8 ! Each image then would bring it down .5 to .75 of a HFR step. Took a long time with each filter to get down to HFR of 2 or less.
Is there a way to make it not back up so far before starting the autofocus? I hadn’t noticed that before… I did try checking a box about backlash for focusing? Maybe that is doing it?
So it would make a long line coming down, then nice smooth curve then maybe one point up and would stop. (kinda like a hook or golf club shape). Not a balanced “U” that I’ve seen in the youtube videos.
Also someone mentioned using binning? would that speed up exposures? Focus for a lum at 8-10 seconds is fine, but 35 seconds to acquire a narrow band frame x 7 or x 9 auto focus steps. do I have to configure binning? I see 4 places but do I put something in there? Or use hardware binning? Or not mess with it yet?
as well last night crashes were abundant. I’m wondering if it’s a win10 thing. I started out with good results but I think I was using my old win7 laptop then. I hope to try that old slow laptop instead.
The crashes seem to be when multiple program are all churning. Like PHD2 and SGP. The other day I did some sun exposures for the upcoming eclipse (tests) and no crashes. I was using only eqmod and sharpcap. (due to its easy exposure adjust for rapid exposure changes we’ll see for the eclipse and for its ability to record .ser files. No crashes… (SGP and PHD were not being used). fyi ?
First - updated steps for focus to 100. Working GREAT (a bit slow but thats the nature of the subject matter. Maybe I should look into binning?
So CRASHES had me down. (ever 10-20 minutes). I was narrowing it down to USB traffic - as it only happened with all programs running and guiding taking place. I read various places it’s the blue-tooth dongle (nope) and that it was win10 (nope)…
So last night I unplugged the guider camera from the 3.0 hub. (that takes the focuser and imaging camera as well). And using a 2.0 cable I plugged the ASI290mm directly into it’s own laptop USB port. I then ran ALL NIGHT without a single hiccup! I think it’s solved. I shot over 100 subs, guiding worked well finally and no pauses or freezes.
Other threads on here talk about crashing. TRY separating your gear so that your USB traffic isn’t being over saturated.
PLUS… mid way shooting the pelican last night the image saved SGP did a plate solve, did a meridian flip, did another solve and continued. HOLY CHIT - Watching SGP last night was a thing of beauty. auto focus on filter changes… filter to lum upon plate solve shots. Focus often in the 1.5 -1.6 HFR range. Was a Joy to watch.
HOWEVER if anyone is still reading… I had to nurse maid the setup and watch the HFR after each frame. If it got up near 2.0 HFR I would hit the focus “IN” 100 steps and bring it back down to 1.5ish. I had to do this maybe every 20 minutes. And I tried to watch the temp to see how they correlated. I suspect I can automate this with a focus/temperature setting. (I’ve not ventured into yet). I suspect everyone’s gear will be differenet… but wondering is there some school of thought on this?
Seemed almost that around a change of 20.60 to a temp drop of 20.50 - I needed to bump the (fine focus) 100 steps to drop HFR from 1.8 - 2.0 down to 1.5 1.6 area. I could click “FINE IN” during the sequence (stabilizing guider) without any issues. I watched the F&F window to keep an eye on the blue HFR graph and had excellent luck keeping the occational rising HFR points down along the bottom edge of the graph. But I’d like to leave it unattened at time, sleep etc. My next step will be to explore the temp/focus setting.
My focus offsets I aquired for each filter the night before seemed to work very well… keeping the auto focus for each filter change happy enough to allow autofocus to work well.
I suspect “IN” as things cool - and “OUT” as things might heat up.
thanks - if there is something “FEATURE REQUEST” I could ask for… it would be REALLY EASY to allow us C or F temp readings.
I have no idea what 20.50 vs 20.60 is without goggling the conversion. I KNOW I KNOW the pro’s use “C” - but we’re amateur astronomers right?
To old at 60 to learn new temperature scale.
(-10 mean 10 less than ambient right?) NOT REALLY -10 below 0?)
Also for the focuser read out - I see “C” and I’d like to see “F” so I’m seeing changes in temp for the focuser of 20.40 to 20.50 (and I find I need to move it 75 steps)
I’d like to see “F” instead of “C” so I understand what the readings really are. If freezing for F is at 32 and for C it’s 0. Then I can just add 32 to all C reading and know the F reading?
I don’t think that works when I try it in my head. Or 20.50c + 32 isn’t 52.5 F outside.
So in the main “Settings” it would be nice for a over all option to have ALL TEMPS display in “C” or in “F”.
I think this is generally a bad idea. While it might help to understand the actual temperature I would argue that your understanding of the temperature is less important than maintaining a standard with the astronomy community.
Let’s say you’re on a forum and say “I’m having issues with my camera cooling to -20” the assumption is that you’re discussing Celcius temps. Likewise of someone recommends a temp to set your cooler to that will also be Celcius. There is really no discussion of Farenheight temps in the scientific community.
