PHD2 settling issues, Observatory slaving magically gets unchecked and few propositions

Hi,

I started to experiment SGP over a week a go, got few successful nights, but there are some things I don’t get. Its a great software and I would gladly pay for it, if I can get these few issues sorted out.

  1. PHD2 guider failed to settle: This is odd. I increased it to 0.5 pixels and 30 seconds and still get failures, SGP gives this error, still the PHD is guiding normally in the background. I have 200mm guidescope.

  2. Observatory slaveing gets unchecked when start sequence. Its checked when its gray and equipment still disconnected. Minor thing: I can tick it manually each time, but still bit annoying.

  3. Sometimes SGP slews the scope to target when the roof is still closed! it has not even tried to open it! (roof is connected normally) This won’t matter on my small APO, but when I put my 12" RC back on mount, it will crash on the roof!
    EDIT: Just tested: I pushed open shutter button many times, nothing happens. Then I pushed close shutter, Seletek logs says its alluready closed. After that I push open shutter and its starts to open.

  4. Proposition for update: Continue sequence when weather is gets clear, if I make object list, it would continue to pick up the most suitable object on that time.

  • When the start of evening is cloudy, I can’t put the sequence to start on timer later on that night, because “its cloudy” can this be fixed so it would not judge weather to be cloudy whole night, but take the measurement when sequence starts.

For several issues you mention, we will need more information to be of any help. Please have a look here:

Maybe in a future update… 2.5 or beyond.

This sounds more like a bug than a feature request. We will take a look.

Settle at 0.5 pixels for 30 seconds sounds pretty stringent (though without knowing your guider image scale we can’t say for sure). It means the guider error must stay below 0.5 pixels for at least 30 seconds. If the guider exceeds 0.5 pixel error, the timer starts back at zero.

To get a more permissive setting you should increase the amount (pixels), and / or decrease the time. For example, settling at 1.0 pixel for 10 seconds would be a lot easier to achieve. You should look at your peak and RMS error pixels values on your PHD2 graph and choose values for settling based on what you see there.

Hope that helps.

Andy

Thanks Andy. I try with more tolerant values.