SharpCap Forums

Hi,

I have a small mount and scope I use quite often unguided. Subs are 15-30 sec due to LP. I find plate-solve every few minutes works well to avoid excessive drift over the session. This is done through a sequence and works fine when capturing.

But since its also fun to live-stack, I thought I would modify the sequence to start live-stacking, then pause it every few minutes to do a plate-solve and sync (the raw frames are being saved for separate processing).

The sequence I am looking for is
1. Start live-stacking
2. After x minutes / frames pause live-stacking
3. Plate-solve and sync
4. Resume live-stacking

I am unable to find the right command for 2 - the :after x minutes / frames part.

Is that possible?

Thanks

Hi,

how about something like this :
cheers,

Robin

I did consider that, but wasn't sure how the dithering would work.

In capture, the dither waits very politely till the ongoing capture is over.

Also when its just livestacking.

So if I add dither to this, how will it work if there is a timer conflict? What would be the priority between capture, dither and platesolve in case of a timing conflict?

Hmm, a good question...

Unfortunately the dithering does not take any account of the paused status of the live stacking, so if the timings work out wrong the dither will happen in the middle of your recenter step.

If you mix in some Python scripting you can probably get what you want - you can turn auto dithering on/off
you can also check whether dithering is currently in progress by looking at
You could write some python to wait until the SettleStatus is 'Settled', then turn AutoDither off and call that before your Pause/Sync stages (there is a Run Python step in the sequencer). Then you can have another python script to turn AutoDither back on when you resume. I think that should work.

cheers,

Robin

I'll give it a shot - will need to pick up some python first

When you have the time and inclination, do see if you can add a pause after x frames (instead of sec) to the livestack sequencer command.

I suspect the reason it works well in capture (I use both dither and platesolve) is because of the limit being by frame and not time.

Thanks.

Or it might be more robust to just build in a priority for example
Complete Capture > Dither > Plate solve

Hi,

yes, the whole thing with dithering and resetting being in terms of time not frames was a mistake that I do want to change in future. That would also fix the dithering problem as if live stacking was set to dither after 10 frames then if you paused the frame count would not increase, so it would not dither...

cheers,

Robin

That will be great. Look forward to whenever it happens.

Meanwhile, I'm going to try nested loops.
Example 30 sec subs, dither every 120s (4 frames), platesolve every 360 sec (12 frames). Total integration 3600 sec.

Need to calculate the time to sync with desired frames, but that's trivial.

Loop 1 :Repeat 10 times

Loop 2: Repeat 3 times
Start live stack
Wait 120 sec
Pause live stack
Request single dither
Resume live stack
End loop 2

Platesolve and sync

End loop 1