Would it be possible to add a “re-centre” option to the event and also prior to a meridian flip? The existing centering routines would do the job but it just needs a way to trigger these mid sequence. This would be a welcome feature for those of us that see some differential flexure and hence a steady procession of the image across the frame during the night.
I realise there will be a school of thought that will say fix the mechanical issue however I have thrown a great amount of aluminium at this and I know it is not a simple fix. Others will probably say switch to off axis guiding however this introduces other issues I’d rather avoid.
I have seen posts where people say this can be achieved by adding additional copies of the same target to the sequence however this does not solve the meridian flip issue as prior to the flip the routine plate solves an image of where the scope is pointing and therefore effectively builds in the error before the flip.
As the bulk of the functionality already exists in SGP I’m hoping the Devs will considering adding a couple of check boxes in the relevant places to trigger the existing routine.
I’d second that request. I’ve recently started imaging with a reflector and am noticing some differential through the night - certainly more significant than my refractor. Trying to solve the bulk of the flexure mechanically, however being able to re-centre periodically during a run would be beneficial for quite a few users based on previous threads I’ve seen discussing this feature request.
The pre meridian flip issue could be fixed by not doing a solve and sync just before the flip. Then the original position would be used after the flip.
It would help with the edge case of syncing after the mount has tracked past the meridian as well.
The sync prior to the meridian flip was removed a year and a half ago. Now only a solve takes place.
Unfortunately it’s a little more involved than that. I could see a couple of options here though.
in the meridian flip settings have an option for using “target coordinates” for the reference.
Having some sort of “center every X frames” option. (this is the harder one to implement with scheduling the “when”)
The first option is probably the most valuable as there isn’t a way to work around that at the moment and it’s also the easier of the two to accomplish. The second can be ineloquently done by creating duplicate targets.
Using the target coordinates for the flip would definitely resolve the flip issue.
For the other item, rather than re-center every x frames, would it be possible to add a checkbox option to the “Event Settings” dialogue box, Pre-Event Options to re-center before commencing the event in the same way as there is already an option to park, pause, run autofocus and run a script?
+1 - I always wondered why that was not the case in the first place for a sequence that starts off with slew and center. Thinking about keeping the interface simple and from your previous posts to make things intuitive, I would propose that no new dialog is required: if slew and center are enabled for the target, the same is true for the meridian flip. If centering is not enabled, then the meridian flip aligns to the solve position prior to the flip?
I think that’s a great idea and this would resolve the meridian flip issue.
I would also love to see the extra Pre-event Option added to the Event Settings if that is possible as adding duplicate targets seems like a clunky workaround.
A recenter option in the Pre-event would be very useful. My PHD2 tracking data looks really good, but I find my target still off center as subsequent events take place. I have considered creating a new target for each filter, but that seems to be a lot of effort for something that is hopefully easy to remedy.
Is there an API call that can be accessed through script that can provide this functionality? I have looked and cannot find anything.
Thanks,
brad