I have had a few nights now when I have tried taking Flats with my Atik 383L and EFW 2 combination. The program will capture a few frames and then I get a message telling me that the program has stopped responding. I have not been able to complete any sequence of flat captures - and have had to resort to Atik’s Artemis program which seems to work fine.
This is a known issue. Several other very long threads cover in some detail.
Bottom line, make your delay 10 to 20 seconds and this issue will probably go away. Happens only with very short exposures such as flats or biases.
Thanks jmacon. I increased the delay between exposures from 2 seconds to 15 seconds. I was then able to do a run of 25 flats without any issue. I then tried to get cute and drop the delay to 10 seconds. SGP crashed after a few frames.
My camera generally takes a bit longer than 10 seconds to download - I have no idea if this is relevant. I did pause the sequence during a download and selected the finish frame option - the camera finished the download and then took another frame before the sequence paused.
I have a workaround and I am pleased about that - thanks again jmacon. It would be nicer if I didn’t have to do this though.
I don’t remember the last time I ran flats without SGP crashing with 7 second exposures. If I use type LIGHTS to shoot my 7 second flats it never crashes. Appears to be s characteristic of the type FLATS.
A brief update. I had another error trying to run some flats with my Atik 383L even with a 15 second delay. I went to a 20 second delay and have just been able to get 100 flats run off without issue.
Now, here’s the thing, a new Moravian G2-8300 arrived yesterday. More in hope than expectation, I ran a series of bias and dark frames with only a 2 second delay. It ran absolutely fine - 200 bias frames (0.1 sec exposure) and a variety of darks (75 dark frames in all).
One difference between the cameras is their cooling ability. The Moravaian says it can cool to 50 below ambient. The Atik claims 40, but in practice it seems only to get to around -37 to -38. I have been shooing the flats in June when the temperature inside the observatory is ~16-18 degrees. The Atik camera just about gets down to -20, but it will warm up somewhat once it gets into capturing and downloading frames. Could the issue be temperature related I wonder?
This just happened to me using Atik 383L+ and 2.5.14.
I am still having equipment issues and can’t image - so I set up a sequence to take a dark library with biases. This ran for over 12 hours taking alternately biases and darks. But toward the end it had taken all the darks but it had a long sequence of just biases to take, and with zero delay. Once it reached that point where it was just taking biases quickly, with no darks to slow things down, SGP crashed.
I will see how it goes with taking flats later, but I would much rather not have to insert a delay when I don’t need it. It sounds like it isn’t guaranteed to help, either.
Frank
Here is the end of the log:
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Event[1] frame count: 32/64…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Getting next event (1)…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Running capture event…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] ------------- Starting capture frame for event[1] -------------
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Sending commands…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] SetFlatBox: Frame Type is Bias
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event2: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event3: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event4: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event5: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Checking for auto manual focus (pre)…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event6: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Created base name for frame capture: Camera_m10c_Bin1Bias_0033
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Created directory for frame capture: D:\astro\imaging\Melbourne15\Darks20160615\Bias
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event1: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event7: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event8: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event9: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event10: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Finished sending frame capture. Entering wait mode…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event11: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event12: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Camera Thread] SGM_CAMERA_CAPTURE message received…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event13: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Camera Thread] SetAscomNormalSpeed…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Camera Thread] Readout speed set to NORMAL…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event15: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Waking from exposure time sleep period…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Checking to see if the CCD has a temp…
[6/16/2016 7:27:25 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Saving the CCD temp…
[6/16/2016 7:27:35 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Entering super dangerous loop to await image completion…
[6/16/2016 7:27:35 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event16: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Camera Thread] SGM_CAMERA_CAPTURE complete…
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] TEMP - Current Event17: 1
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Image reported as complete. Continuing…
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Collecting FITs headers…
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] DATE-LOC time provided by camera…
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Clearing timed monitoring events…
[6/16/2016 7:27:36 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Created full file name (file does not exist): D:\astro\imaging\Melbourne15\Darks20160615\Bias\Camera_m10c_Bin1Bias_0033.fit