Pause and resume guiding automatically

[mikenoname]

Robin,

I just got back in myself and can confirm Don's results that the pause guiding step you put in doesn't work. The 'Pause Guiding Temporarily' step just hour glasses and PHD just complains until you manually stop it (see pic).

Pause Guiding Error.jpg (170.96 KiB) Viewed 15113 times

Now, you mentioned that the GoTo is using the sequencer behind the scenes, so what sequencer command are you using to do this? Are you using 'Pause guiding if active and restart when this block finishes'? If so, that won't work because the original guide stars are gone after you have slewed to the new object.

What I have used for years in the sequencer to stop and start guiding (which works flawlessly) is these two commands to stop guiding:

Monitor Guiding Application
Stop Guiding

And these three in succession to restart it:

Monitor Guiding Application
Start guiding if necessary
Wait until guiding is active

If the GoTo can use these it should work well.

Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

thanks for the feedback. I'm concerned that there are two issues here though...

I can easily change the steps used to stop/restart guiding, but the fact that PHD2 is showing an hourglass (frozen) is worrying. That will be causing the movement status to become stuck at the point where it is about to try to restart the guiding. I'm concerned that changing the steps used to restart guiding may still encounter the PHD2 stuck situation.

cheers,

Robin

[mikenoname]

Robin,

I have a theory (wild guess?) as to why the pause command is getting stuck.

There is one additional piece of information that I didn't include in my above report that now, given your concerns, may be pertinent. The screenshot that I took above was before the entire GoTo script finished. Actually, when the script gets to the end, the Pause Guiding Temporarily step then goes to a green check and the sequence terminates normally.

I have never used the Pause command in any of my sequences, so I'm not sure how it works exactly, but I have a feeling it doesn't terminate until the pause is released (which would be happening at the end of the GoTo sequence). If that is the case, then that would explain the behavior we are seeing in the GoTo sequence currently. I would think (again a guess) that the Stop Guiding step would just execute and terminate.

Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

yes, I think that is part of it - the pause guiding step is a block, so it will stay in 'spinning, in progress' state while all the stuff inside it runs. That's fine, but something also seems to have been upsetting PHD to make that stick too.

I did some more digging and learned that the pause message I was sending to PHD didn't quite do what I thought - it pauses guide output pulses, but keeps tracking the star - really designed for use during focusing. I have now changed my code to use a full stop/start of guiding and that seems OK to me in some tests here.

cheers,

Robin

[mikenoname]

Robin,

I can't wait to give it a try.

Thanks for all your work on SC, and even more so, your responsiveness to your user base!

Mike

[mikenoname]

Robin,

Had a chance to try 11351 last night and the new stop and start of guiding works beautifully!

Thank you!

Mike

[admin]

Hi Mike,

excellent - thanks for the report

cheers,

Robin