Last night I connected all my equipment in the SGP sequencer, set up a couple of events for the first time ever, chose a target and completed my settings in “PHD2 Connection Settings”. Then I connected my guide camera and mount to PHD2 and attempted to run the event sequence. Upon doing so SGP reported “Resuming the autoguider: Autoguider failed to resume”. I was wondering why that happened and how to overcome this problem.
After experiencing this issue I noticed that there’s a new version of SGP (2.5.1.14) however I haven’t had a chance to load that version with my equipment connected so I don’t know if that will help to solve my problem.
Make sure you go to ‘Control Panel’, then the ‘Auto Guide’ tab, then click the ‘Settings’ button and pick the PHD2 profile that you are using in PHD2. That might be the problem if you have not done so.
one thing to do is to check the PhD logs to find out what went wrong at the time that SGP gave the command to resume guiding. you can find your PhD logs in (…<users\username>\My Documents\PHD2).
Now that I’ve read a tutorial called “SGP-The First Week” I realize that I didn’t follow the correct procedure. The tutorial says that the first thing I should have done is to manually slew to a bright star, open Frame and Focus, taken a single exposure, press Start in F&F, center the star in F&F, and do a manual approximate focus. At that point I should run SGP’s Autofocus. Only then should I have started PHD2 guiding, connected my mount and guide camera to PHD2, calibrated PHD2 and begun guiding. If I understand correctly all that has to be done before running a sequence in the Sequencer window. When I wrote my question to start this thread I hadn’t already calibrated PHD2. So when the weather clears up I’ll do the above procedures before I try to run a sequence and see if SGP reports any autoguider error messages.
This is not really true. The manual suggests you do this as general good practice. This makes sure your main camera is in good focus. While you have the bright star in the main camera field of view you should also make sure your guide camera has good focus. You can focus the main camera manually if you want. I expect your guide camera can only be focused manually.
None of this is doing any kind of calibration for SGP and is not a prerequisite for running a sequence, it is merely making sure your cameras have good focus. If your guide camera does not have good focus then PHD2 is likely not to be able to start guiding because it cannot locate a guide star.
I would suggest you make sure that PHD2 can successfully start and continue guiding totally independent of SGP. Just point your scope somewhere that is not North, connect in PHD2 to your guide camera and your mount, and start guiding. This will confirm that PHD2 and the relevant hardware (scope and guide camera) are working together. My guess is you might find this is where the problem is and has nothing to do with SGP. After getting PHD2 guiding successfully, then run your SGP sequence.
If you refer to both the SGP log and the PHD2 log they will give you a specific clue as to what the problem is.