Ignore Error and Retry Error in a Sequence

[savaresejim]

So far this is not working for me. I tried over the last two nights. Images come out OK but guiding control not working. Seems like there may need to be sequencer commands for looping, and acquire star, as sometimes PHD seems stuck in those states or the sequencer is not giving them enough time to complete. Also sometimes it is in the star lost state when the guiding start is issued, and it never gets out of this state.

Log_2023-05-11T19_11_22-3664.zip

The first night I tried
SEQUENCE
LOOP 1 TIMES
GUIDING CONNECT ABORT False
LOOP EACH RADEC IN "C:\Users\Jim Savarese\Documents\Software Bisque\TheSky Serious Astronomer Edition 64\Exported Data\sc may 11.txt"
RETRY ERRORS UP TO 2 TIMES
DELAY 5
MOUNT SOLVEANDSYNC
END RETRY ERRORS
IGNORE ERRORS FROM ONERROR RUN ""
GUIDING START
END IGNORE ERRORS
DELAY 5
LIVE STACKING RESET
LOOP 12 TIMES
LIVE STACK FOR 30 FRAMES SAVING AS FITSRawStack32Bit COUNTING Stacked FRAMES
END LOOP
END LOOP
END LOOP
END SEQUENCE

The second night I tried
SEQUENCE
LOOP 1 TIMES
GUIDING CONNECT ABORT False
LOOP EACH RADEC IN "C:\Users\Jim Savarese\Desktop\sc may 13 filter.txt"
RETRY ERRORS UP TO 2 TIMES
DELAY 5
MOUNT SOLVEANDSYNC
END RETRY ERRORS
DELAY 5
LIVE STACKING RESET
LOOP 12 TIMES
LIVE STACK FOR 30 FRAMES SAVING AS FITSRawStack32Bit COUNTING Stacked FRAMES
END LOOP
END LOOP
END LOOP
END SEQUENCE

[admin]

Hi,

looking through the logs, I am wondering if SharpCap is not allowing enough time for PHD to settle after requesting the guiding start, meaning that SharpCap gives up waiting and reports an error possibly only a few seconds before PHD would have finally settled and reported that guiding had begun.

I am going to try increasing the allowed time for settling from 15s to 30s for the next SharpCap 4.1 beta update to see if that helps.

As for the StarLost notifications - there are lots of these in the log. I presume that these are real StarLost events from PHD (for whatever reason). In some cases PHD seems to recover by itself, in other case it doesn't. SharpCap doesn't have any code to try to reconnect specifically on star lost events (but sequencer still captures will try to restart guiding if it is not running when starting the capture). The code for starting guiding that SharpCap uses only requests PHD to find a star and start guiding once, so if the lock is lost before the guiding actually starts then it does not retry - I can also try to fix that.

cheers,

Robin

[savaresejim]

I think during some of the lost locks while I was still awake and during testing, I manually went to PHD and stared looping, star selection, and guiding and the guiding was working again. Those were fairly clear nights and I think the lost locks were due to the mount guiding. I may try to stop guiding before slewing and plate solving and then try and start guiding again after. Maybe that might work since no locks will be lost. And you're right, it worked sometimes. Once I get some clear skies again I'm going to try doing some steps manually and see if I can't figure out a sequence that works. I'm also wondering if I can use simulators to work this out. The second night I had a light pollution filter and used a longer duration recommended by smart histogram.
Please note, on both nights, the images were stellar, the best my CPC 1100 has ever produced, even with no guiding. Thank you for Live Stacking. A few images attached. I'm learning Pixinsight and these are my best images to date. Thank you.

M51 crop.jpg

M13 crop.jpg

integration_ABE1 M101 stretch crop.jpg

[admin]

Hi,

well I'm really glad to see that you are getting some great images even with the odd glitch here and there! They really are very good - I know from experience that SCTs can be tricky to get the best out of

cheers,

Robin

[savaresejim]

So by stopping the guiding before the next slew allowed subsequent guiding to start up again perfectly. I also stopped the dithering from automatically happening during LIvestack. I had an issue where the sequence got hung up because the stacking kept skipping frames. I set livestack to save an image every 5 minutes, using 10 second exposures. I thought the problem was due to dithering happening during the 5 minute stacks. This only was an issue occassionally. So I set the sequence to do a single dither between 5 minute exposures. But this issue happened again. Not sure why.

I also discovered I had one object where guiding was poor. Next time around I'm going to try and establish a 5 arc minute polar alignment error and see if that keeps the declination axis from backlash.

I saw in the documentation where you can leave target names in the object file and the target name is automatically updated. This is fantastic. Also the ability to create custom names for the stacks was great. Each of my stacks though has it's own directory. I would prefer to have all the stacks for each object be in their own directory, but the 5 minute stacks for that object be uniquely named within that object directory. Possible? I think I may understand how but I'll have to try and remember to try that next time out. Thanks.

[admin]

Hi,

you can probably use the manual filename templates option to do what you are looking for with the saved file naming, but it will take a bit of trial and error I suspect. Put only the date and the object name into the directory part, which means you will need to be careful with the file naming to ensure that they do not over-write each other. Making sure you use the Time and/or FrameTime in the filename should help.

cheers,

Robin

[DrAstro]

Hi,

I think this is what you want

Code: Select all

    IGNORE ERRORS FROM
        RETRY ERRORS UP TO 1 TIMES
            MOUNT SOLVESYNCONLY
        END RETRY ERRORS
    END IGNORE ERRORS

That will do the solve/sync initially, try a second time if it fails and then move on regardless. Your initial version would not retry if the first attempt failed (because the first attempt was outside the retry block). Not only that, but it would actually have a second go if the first go succeeded

cheers,

Robin

I can't find a reference to "MOUNT SOLVESYNCONLY" in the user manual. I looked in v4.0 and in v4.1
Is it something new?
Where is it documented?

[admin]

Hi,

the user manual was written pretty soon after the first version of 4.1 was released, so is missing the bits and pieces that have been added since then. It's a bit of a task to update the user manual (several weeks work typically), so it tends to get put off, and then it's an even bigger task, but never mind.

As such, there's no formal documentation beyond what you might find here on the forum or by reading the 'friendly description' when those new blocks are loaded into the sequencer. In this case, the MOUNT SOLVESYNC only will plate solve a frame and sync the mount to the plate solve position, but doesn't do anything beyond that. In theory you can use it with an additional GOTO to center a target, or you could use it in some sort of automated script that helps build a pointing model.

cheers,

Robin