Hello all, looking for best practices here. My sequence will end up running for multiple nights. This includes a sequence of Lights and Flats chained together alternatively (3 nights of Ha with flats for each night etc.). And I have not figured out a good way to do this.
Ideally, I would have start and end times for each light type (right now I see that I can only set this on the target level but not an event level?). This way each light frame goes till just before dawn. At this point it will switch to the next event which is a flat. I would like to park the scope before the flats and pause the sequence after flats. But I notice that I can’t have any light events after an event which has park as one of it’s options.
Am I missing something? If not, would these be good features for a future release? What would be even more awesome, is if SGP could also suggest start and end times based on the target (assuming of course that we have entered the RA/DEC for the event). Of course the start and end times will shift forward from night to night, but this is easily adjusted manually on a per event basis if we had the option to set start and end on each event.
Also is it possible to control power switches like the Belkin Wemo from within SGP? Or the data loggers webswitch?
You cannot have any active Lights after a park. If you plan on doing multi night imaging like this it is probably best to disable the targets/events that you won’t get to.
We plan on adding Start/End altitudes and allowing those to fill in the time or vise versa.
Not directly through SGP. You could write a VB script and have SGP call that script.
Thanks Jared, never struck me that disabling future events would enable me to do what I needed to do. That should let me do what I want to do. Will look into VB scripts for the power control. Start and end time suggestions would be awesome!
And wrapped that with a vbs script and now SGP can power off equipment
I do have a couple of questions though. Is it necessary/possible to disconnect equipment from SGP before powering them off? If so how do I do this automatically using sequence options?
Another question I have is on the warm up of cameras. Is it necessary to warm up (QSI683 & FLI ML Cameras) once sequence is done? I have just been powering them off, but not sure if a warm up is needed before power off to make sure camera electronics are safe etc.
If a warm up is needed, then not sure how to thread that in so that the power off script runs after warm up.
I too would be interested in an automatic equipment disconnect at sequence end or after camera warm up. My ideal situation would be … park scope, close roof, warm up CCD, then when CCD at +5 deg disconnect all equipment, then run script to shut off power to equipment… any thoughts? Anyone?
Could you be kind enough to share a script to control WEMO switches? My wall mounted flat is connected to one, and I’d like to turn it off and someday with SGP Pro