SharpCap Forums

Last night I notice my focus getting soft, so I paused live stack and hit the x to close it. I refocused and then began live stacking again BUT the stack I had built to that point was reset. The bar said it had be reset after 60 seconds of being closed. I've never had that happen before. Did something change in the new version? Where is the place to turn this off.

Mike

Hi Mike,

yes, this is a new thing in 4.1 - I added it as there was considerable feedback that resuming the old stack was unexpected/confusing when re-opening, particularly if you had closed to change to another target. Unfortunately it seems like the change that makes things run more smoothly for some people isn't such a good thing for others.

I guess I could try to do something smart related to the mount co-ordinates when closing and re-opening, or maybe as you suggest an option is the best thing....

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,

Could you possibly check to see if the stack is paused when it is closed, and if so return to the paused state when re-opened? This is how I've done things in the past, pause the stack, switch away from live stacking, do my focus and re-center activities, then return to live stack and un-pause it. I've never exited to go to a new target without saving the current stack and then resetting it before exiting. But I switch away quite a bit while paused and then return to continue.

Or give a setting for how to act on exiting live stack. Either way would be nice, so we don't lose a stack unexpectedly.

Thanks for all your dedicated hard work. You rock.

Chuck

Hi Chuck,

thanks for the suggestion on pausing - that might work... There's a fine line to walk here between 'trying to do the right thing without needing to ask' and 'appearing to do random stuff because the rules are so complex that nobody quite understands them'.

cheers,

Robin

Hi a bit late to the party on this one, but when I am live stacking I watch the FWHM and my temperature to decide when to refocus. Once I reach a point that requires refocusing then I pause live stack and originally would open the the multi star FWHM tool without hitting the X to close the live stack as it just shows the FWHM focus chart on top and once focused I close the FWHM tool and live stack is visible again and then I just hit resume.

I know refocus from a sequence in the same way so pause live stack run sequence once it completes close the sequence and it goes back to the live stack display and I click resume and a way it goes again the plus with the sequence is it stores the camera settings then restores them after focusing so removes me from the equation as I sometimes forget things think its number of birthdays that do it .

SEQUENCE
PRESERVE CAMERA SETTINGS
SET GAIN TO 300
SET EXPOSURE TO 5
AUTOFOCUS OFFSET 10000 TO -15000 STEP COUNT 12 BACKLASH 0
END PRESERVE
END SEQUENCE

Or am I miss understanding something.

Cheers
Nick

Hi Nick,

opening the FWHM tool effectively closes the live stacking window, so that when you switch back to live stacking at the end of focus, it checks to see how long it has been closed for and may reset.

I added an option in the latest update to allow this behaviour to be disabled (right-hand most tab in live stack area along with a small number of other live stack options). The reset is also suppressed if the sequencer is running at the time that live stacking resumes, but with your sequence above that won't be the case (an extra step though would let the sequence resume live stacking and that would do the job too).

cheers,

Robin

Hi Robin,
Thanks for that will disable it although I imaged M78 the other night and the focus run takes over 60s as it takes 3 x 5s shots 12 times while focusing and I did not lose the stack that was already there I am running the x64 bit version that you released that contains the hires plate solve but have not updated since, but I will update SC and disable the feature anyway.

Cheers
Nick