SharpCap Forums

Dear Robin,

I encountered a problem with platesolving from a sequencer script:


As you can see the sequencer aborts with "Solve and sync procedure failed" even though the main Sharpcap window indicated a solution and that the mount was synced. Platesolving works fine from the mount control tab and when calling "Solve and sync" with a single "Test step" from the Sequencer editor. ASTAP or Astrotortilla makes no difference.
I used a ASI294MCC camera, a NEQ5 Synscan mount and GS Server 1.3.4 to connect to it. My OS is Windows 10 ProV21H1. The SC version was 4.0.8218 64 bit. A month ago I ran SC V4.0.8115 over several nights with the same Sequencer script and I had no problem.
Maybe you can check if there is a problem with the newer version. I will revert to V4.0.8115 and try again.

Best Regards

Heiko

Here an update after last night. I encountered no problems with sequencer platesolving with the previous V4.0.8115. So, it could be a problem with the latest SC version .
However, later in the night while livestacking the sequencer stopped out of the blue with something like an "object reference not set to an instance of an object"-error after it had performed flawlessly for a few hours - whatever this means. I only noticed this in the morning.

Regards

Heiko

Hi,

can you post the main SharpCap log for both problems if possible please? I suspect the first one was that the plate solve failed, but the log will show whether it was the too few stars or something else. The second one sounds like a bug - I should be able to fix it with the log.

cheers,

Robin

Hello,

can you access those dropbox files?:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/5kkkppyt8t41f ... 6.log?dl=0
https://www.dropbox.com/s/lyzsxalq6bfj9 ... 0.log?dl=0

For me they are very cryptic and I don´t know if information that can help is in there. They are to big to attach.
I honestly don´t think that the platesolve itsself failed. Because, as you see in the picture, the main window shows a solution and tells that the mount was synced. Still, the sequencer aborted. Outside of the sequencer also there was no problem platesolving with the settings in ASTAP as well as Astrotortilla. So I don´t think it was too few or too bad stars or something with the image.
Yesterday night again I had a perfect run with the older version V4.0.8115.

Regards

Heiko

By the way. After the "object reference"-bug Sharpcap continued stacking outside of the sequencer. When I checked in the morning it had produced a single 18368 second livestack of 1148 frames - over five hours. And it didn´t turn out to bad. I processed it with Pixinsight:



I don´t know if someone else has produced a similarly long livestack yet with Sharpcap

Hi,

thanks for the logs - I didn't see the 'Object reference not set to ...' error in either of them, but I can see why the plate solving is failing from the sequencer. Actually it succeeds in most of the cases in the logs, but the success information isn't getting back to the sequencer code.

I will put in a fix for next week, but for now I think there is a workaround by selecting 'Offset the mount position to center the target' in your plate solving settings. Note that from your log, it looks like you might have had 'Sync mount only' selected, which does not recenter the target.

I'm glad that the results turned out so well - that's a very impressive image, and I'm not aware of any live stack images longer than that - perhaps we should have a separate thread... 'show us your longest live stack image!'

cheers,

Robin

Thanks for the feedback Robin,

at the moment the older version V4.0.8115 works just fine for me. I can wait until the updates are out.
You are right. I only do a "sync only" after platesolving. That´s on purpose. The recentering including a dither offset is taken care of by a little Phyton script that I call up.
The livestacking algorithm of Sharpcap is really good. As I could find out even really very long stacks turn out well.
For applications like mine would it be possible to include an option in platesolving like: "on failure continue" and on "failure stop" in the sequencer?
Imagine that the platesolving fails due to a cloud moving through or something like that. If one wants to do an automated run through the night saving frequently livestacks then one can certainly do with a few missed platesolve and recentering steps. The next "platesolve and sync"-step that works would take care of that again. No need to abort the whole script.
What do you think?

Best Regards

Heiko

Hi Heiko,

I was half convinced that I had already written an ignore errors step (and a retry step for that matter), but maybe I only thought about writing them!

They should be relatively easy to implement, so I will do both when I get a chance.

cheers,

Robin

Hello,

just a feedback. With the latest version 4.0.8264 I had no platesolving errors. I also used "platesolve and sync" within the new "Ignore any errors when running these steps"-step. I assume this step can only work on recoverable errors and not on errors that crash or freeze SC completely (obviously).

Regards

Heiko

Hi Heiko,

glad you are seeing better results. You are right about the ignore errors - it will ignore anything that would have previously made the sequencer stop with an error in the sequencer log, but can't do anything about cases where SharpCap crashes elsewhere or freezes.

cheers,

Robin