Wanting to do some scripting for use in SGP

Might be a little off topic for this forum and I’m not sure if this is the best place to ask this question but I’m looking for help on how best to go about writing scripts for use in SGP. I’d like to be able to pause guiding, slew the mount to a know location take flats then slew to the next target. I’m not sure of the best scripting language to use. Also, where does one find the commands for SGP and the mount? I use Celestron mounts. I might be able to do this using events and simply creating a event to positions the mount at the proper location for the flats but I’m not sure if it is possible to temporarily disable tracking or guiding using events while taking flats.

Thanks,
Mark

We’re not really big fans of scripts so we don’t encourage them for 2 reasons:

  1. They make debugging difficult
  2. It means SGPro might have a failure in its interpretation of proper sequencing.

A script means that you want to perform some action that is not available to you via SGPro. While I’m not necessarily saying you shouldn’t write a script I would suggest you feature request whatever it is you are after. If we agree that you are after some pretty custom stuff then a script is the best way for you. If your suggestion exposes a gap for lots of folks, then it is probably a good candidate for a feature.

For sky flats? Or is this the location of a light panel? If so, you will likely need to turn tracking off too. Neither is supported in SGPro as part of the middle of a sequence (yet). Just not sure of your intent. Sounds like a light panel since your guider wouldn’t be running if you could still take sky flats. Right now, most people are taking flats at the start or end of a sequence (taking advantage of the park position to point at the EL panel).

If you need to write a script, I would personally make a C# executable file. Far more power… the development environment is quite nice and it’s free.

1 Like