CPWI crash/restart leaves SharpCap half working

[ChrisR Oz]

Hi Robin,

CPWI has a couple of bugs that can make it crash (e.g. if you "cancel" midway though a StarSense auto-alignment). Its affect on SharpCap is interesting. After re-establishing CPWI control and restored calibration, SC seems to be (re)connected to the mount again. I can use the Database Goto tool on SC 4.1 to move the mount to a new object. That works fine up to the plate-solve. However, the plate-solve will fail badly, because SC still has some old coordinates that it uses as the centre for the plate-solve. Now that I recognize the symptoms, I can disconnect and reconnect to the mount using the checkbox in SC on the mount controls. The correct coordinates then appear. Repeat the goto and all works fine.

Not sure how SC can be sending mount slew commands OK, but not having updated coordinates back from the mount. I've attached the logs for that night. One such failure is at about 19:29:44.

The combination of the native plate-solver and goto catalogue tool, which also adjusts gain and exposure to make plate-solving faster, works brilliantly, even at 1500 mm FL. It's a big part of my routine now. Thanks Robin.

Cheers, Chris.

[admin]

Hi Chris,

what is going on there is that SharpCap monitors the mount location in the background every second or so. When CPWI dies, that starts failing, and after 10 failures in a row, SharpCap gives up trying. Reconnecting the mount in SharpCap will get the monitoring running again, but otherwise it stays stopped, so you encounter the problems you are seeing.

I will have a little tinker with the code to try to find sensible ways to restart monitoring (for instance if a GOTO succeeds).

cheers,

Robin

[carlomuccini]

Hi
I use CPWI almost exclusively with SharpCap and a Celestron CGX-L mount and I have NEVER had problems or crashes
NEVER

Carlo

[ChrisR Oz]

Hi Carlo,

Do you use the StarSense autoalignment module? Cancelling an autoalignment will routinely cause CPWI to simply exit, in my experience.

Other than that, I find CPWI very reliable. I now simply avoid this situation.

However, it confuses SharpCap. Both the mount and focuser behave oddly. If they simply stopped functioning completely, that would alert me to try and reconnect. But the mount actually responds to a goto, but does not read-back correct coordinates. It's the half-way house that is misleading.

Cheers, Chris.

[ChrisR Oz]

Hi Robin,

After the background process gives up on the mount, if it then alerted the foreground GUI code to uncheck the mount "connected" checkbox, that would be much clearer, and of course not respond to a goto.

Cheers, Chris.

[admin]

Hi Chris,

yes, that would do the job - I'll look into it.

You mentioned above that the focuser also misbehaves after a CPWI reset - is it the same sort of problem that the position does not update?

cheers,

Robin

[carlomuccini]

Hi Chris

>>>Do you use the StarSense autoalignment module?
No I don't use Starsense because my mount is installed permanently, I connect CPWI Ascom, with SkymapPRO and SC togheter without problems

I use the the Celestron focuser for RASA directly on SC without error or disconnections

Carlo

[ChrisR Oz]

Hi Robin,

The Focuser is a little different. It still shows “Connected”, but when you click on a move button (e.g. negative 100) all the buttons become ghosted and nothing works.

I use the “CPWI Focuser”, so a failed mount could also set the Focuser “connected” false.

Cheers, Chris.

[admin]

Hi Chris,

interesting... If the 'Stop' button is disabled as well as all the other controls then it probably means that SharpCap has become stuck trying to send the movement command to the focuser - ie the code is stuck in the ASCOM driver. We could confirm that if you could try running with the logging option to log 'Focuser Hardware Communication' enabled while making the error happen.

I'm not sure quite what could be done about it if the log does confirm my suspicion though... It doesn't sound like it is related to SharpCap code this time, but I might be wrong.

cheers,

Robin