Dither not starting on 2nd target

[Rab722]

I have started to dither on every 1 or 2 frames to take advantage of drizzle integration. It all works fine for the first target of the night and SharpCap and PHD2 work quite well together.

The issue happens when I go to the next target. The dither often doesn't start, and usually there is a status message that will not clear, saying "waiting to settle",even though PHD2 is guiding well. I have tried stopping and re-starting PHD2 and unchecking and re-checking the guiding options on SharpCap. Neither helps. The only solution is to shutdown the program and restart everything.

Can there please be a reset button added to the Sharpcap guiding tab to clear out all registers and communication between Sharpcap and PHD2.

I am using the latest version.

Rick

[admin]

Hi Rick,

thanks for the report – it sounds like there may be a logic error that stops the update from PHD2 that reports that the dinner step has completed from being interpreted correctly. Do you by any chance have the SharpCap logs for one or more of the sessions where you had the problem? They should be in the folder

Code: Select all

C:\Users\robin\AppData\Local\SharpCap\logs

(Substitute your windows user name for 'robin').

Cheers, Robin

[Rab722]

Ok,here are the logs. Hope you can see something. It uses about 10-15 minutes waiting to see if it will dither and then reseting everything to get going again.

Rick

Log_2020-10-13T20_30_33-10564.zip

(88.46 KiB) Downloaded 99 times

[goldtr8]

I get the same error and I have to restart SharpCap to reset the dither settling. I can not say that it happens after a slew to a different target or not. But I will pay attention to what I did preceding the next time I get it to happen.

I will save a log and upload it next time I am out and the error reproduces.

[goldtr8]

I was out Halloween night the 31st and moved to a lot of targets in SharpCap and had PHD2 guiding and there were no issues. I am running version 3.2.6442 Sharpcap and CPWI Beta pubic release and the most current version of PHD2.

Maybe something in 6442 has changed and the bug is fixed.

I will if it happens again post the logs of that night.

[admin]

Hi,

well I'm glad to hear it's working okay for at least one of you. I can see from the log though that SharpCap seems pretty convinced that PHD is dithering almost all the time. Unfortunately there's nothing in the log that records the messages received from PHD, so I haven't really got enough information to track down what is going on. I will have to add more logging so that that information is recorded in a future version.

Cheers, Robin

[Rab722]

Happened again last night on my second target. This time I recognized the message in the guiding status and just restarted the program. Until you figure out the issue, perhaps you can just use the live stack "clear" button to reset the guiding to the initial state similar to when the program starts.

Rick

[admin]

Hi Rick,

not a bad idea – is it possible that SharpCap tried to dither while you were slewing to the second target? I'm not sure quite how that would work out. May be PhD would ignore the dithering command completely and then SharpCap might be stuck waiting for a dither settled state to arrive.

Cheers, Robin

[goldtr8]

HI Robin,

That's an interesting thought that its waiting for a command that will never come. I have found that when it does hang up the only option is to completely shut down SharpCap and restart it. Shutting down PHD2 and restarting does not fix or reset the issue.

Stopping guiding and restarting also never could clear it out either.

I am uploading the new version with the enhanced logging and I plan on being out tonight as we are supposed to have clear sky in Michigan tonight.

[admin]

Hi,

as well as adding the extra logging, I also change the code so that disabling and then re-enabling the 'Monitor PHD2 Guiding' option should reset fully rather than only partially, which I think will allow you to cure the problem without shutting down.

I'd still be interested in seeing the log because until I know exactly what is going on I can't be sure of getting the right fix.

Cheers, Robin