System Did Not Shut Down When Guide Star Was Lost

Sequence Generator
1

Hi Group,
My session started around 6:36 last night and completed its third sub at 7:22. I suspect clouds rolled in shortly thereafter since the PHD2 logviewer shows the beginning (but not completion) of a fourth sub.
I checked the OBS around 9:30 and found iOptron CEM120 had not “flipped” at the designated time (approx. 8:25pm) and the mount had continued tracking. It is set to stop tracking at 7 degrees past meridian (max limit is 14 degrees), but appears not to have. SGPro was set to pier flip at 5 minutes past meridian (approx. 1.25 degrees). When I shut the system down, the mount was up against a hard stop. Sending the unit back to its Zero position showed that Zero was off as well as the Park position.
However there was no problem re-establishing both correct positions.

My guess is that the clouds moved in and PHD2 lost its guide star, and SGPro did not shut the system down as a consequence. I could be wrong here because my log interpreting skills are woeful at best.

I would appreciate if you could look at the material in the DropBox attachment and give me your thoughts on what may have happened and if there is a continuing risk.

Thanks,
Mark

2

Thx for the info. I have found and corrected this issue… it seems that there was a chance that a failure to run an event might skip running end of sequence actions if the sequence has recovery turned off. Not that it matters for this specific issue, but just pointing it out in case you did not intend to turn sequence recovery off.

This will be fixed in 3.1.0.449

3

So I’m being clear, I do not use “recovery”.

  1. Did you then find that ver 3.1.0.447 (in my situation) would not abort the sequence upon a lost guide star?

  2. I’ve approached iOptron for some explanation on why the mount setting of “stop at 7 degrees past meridian” did or did not occur. They’ve gone back to their gurus for an answer. I’d appreciate any further thoughts you might have on this.

FWIW, iOptron described exactly what would happen if the mount tracked into a hard stop. According to them, and others I have read, the event is mostly benign. So that’s good.

Mark

4

The condition you found would actually abort the sequence, it would just skip all end of sequence actions in error.