Automatically through the night

[admin]

Hi,

so I went to have a dig in the code to see what I could suggest, and I found that the code for the 'MOUNT SOLVEANDSYNC' step is already trying to override the default way that plate solving works when the live stacking is active to allow the correct position to be found, as does the MOUNT SOLVESYNCONLY step. The 'SAVE PLATE SOLVE COORDINATES' step doesn't do this.

Anyway, it rather deepens the mystery of why this is going wrong. It might be worth turning on the option to log additional info about plate solving in the logging settings, then trying it out. With the additional logging, SharpCap not only records details of every plate solving operation, it also keeps a copy of the image sent to the plate solver, which you can inspect to see if it is the stack image or a raw frame image.

After using the plate solve logging option, you will find a folder called 'PlateSolveImages' inside the default SharpCap capture folder, and in that you will find subfolders for each run of SharpCap, then each plate solve attempt.

cheres,

Robin

[StarFlea]

OK, I have collected the log data about the behavior. The saved / used plate solver images reveal exactly what is causing the problems: They are identical, even though they should be different after the meridian flip.

There are 4 images in total: The first before the flip (but already within the live stacking pause) to synchronize again, the other three after the flip to perform auto-recentering.

All files are attached as a ZIP file.

Note: I also tried "CAPTURE 1 LIVE FRAMES" before plate solving, but unfortunately that didn't help either...

[admin]

Hi,

thanks, I can see that all the frames are identical, and have an identical timestamp - it looks as though they are all coming from about the point where live stacking was paused to allow the flip.

I'm going to have to dig into exactly the data path for the image under those circumstances. I have a feeling that maybe it asks live stacking for the last raw frame from the camera, but that doesn't get updated during a live stack pause (doing that would break the 'unstack' feature).

I will check further tomorrow.

cheers,

Robin

[StarFlea]

Hello Robin,

I haven't had the chance to test it yet, but I have the following idea:

+ Run through the first stack series in Live Mode
+ Pause LiveStacking
+ Meridian Flip
+ Switch to Still Mode
+ Platesolving and Recentering with 3 purposive frames in Still Mode
+ Switch back to Live Mode
+ Continue LiveStacking

Would that be possible or could there be any side effects due to the mode change?

StarFlea

[admin]

Hi,

essentially I think that with the way the code works at the moment, the only solution would be to close live stacking completely - while live stacking is active at the moment, the code will always go through the buggy path when trying to fetch a frame to plate solve (regardless of live or still mode, pause or not).

Closing live stacking completely should bypass the issue, and there are steps that allow you to resume stacking without a reset from the sequencer.

* The 'Stop Live Stacking' step closes live stacking without causing a reset (although it will probably auto-save - worth doing at that point!)

* The 'Resume Live stacking'' step will re-activate live stacking and continue stacking without resetting

This does rely on the 'Start new stack when re-opening after being closed for 1 minute or more' option being turned off in the live stacking settings tab.

cheers,

Robin