sorry, another issue from me...

In December I made a bibliothek of darks for my guider. I just copied it to another Kstars PC (Mele 3Q, Kstars 3.6.3, INDI 2.0.0 from ppa).
I checked the "darks" button in the guiding tab, but "no suitable darks found"... Ok, so make a few new darks, dlete the old ones... Afterwards there are new files in the /.local/share/kstars/darks/ folder. BUT when I klick the "use darks" button agein: "No suitable darks found.... Same exposure time 3s and a gain which I used for making the darks.

Attached the log file...

P.S.: after that procedure I run the guiding for a while. Then I wanted to start my first exposure. Guiding Train was still choosen in the CCD tab. Ok, my fault. Changed to "primary". Took a picture. After exposure nothing happens.
Two things:
- FITS viewer was greyed out! I had to go to "settings" and click "use FITS viewer"...
- in the directory instead of my standard path someting with /tmp/... was set

Again only small things but a flawless working is sometimes not possible...

Just an observation from your log file. It appears to me the darks that you take are called "Dark_3_secs_...." but the guiding frame that you take is reported as being a 9s one:
[2023-03-01T19:08:53.452 CET INFO ][ org.kde.kstars.indi] - ZWO CCD ASI290MM Mini : "[INFO] Taking a 9 seconds frame... "

What's also confusing to me is the fact that your guiding frames have a size of 1068480 bytes whereas your dark frames have a size of 4248000 bytes. Did you use 2x2 bin mode when guiding but 1x1 in acquiring the dark frames?

Sorry if all this is BS.

Hi Alfred. Thanks for your reply. I used the dark assistand in the CCD tab for taking the darks. I took 1x1 and bin 2x2 pictures, as I use depending on focal length one or the other. After clicking all the data in the assistant there was a list of pictures in the queue list, and e.g. for 3s my ASI guiding cam took 3s exposure time, which I checked in the INDI tab of the camera. Also the "rest exposure time" in the CCD tab showed 3s and not 9s.

All in all what I can say is that the right camera was used (my ASI cam) and from what is displayed in the CCD tab / INDI tab also the right exposure time and gain was used. As I wrote I took in December dark frames with the same method BUT Kstars 3.6.2 (!) there it worked flawlessly (also with no side effects of having no fits viewer or changing the target folder of the pictures of the main cam to /tmp/...). What I'm wondering is that the old darks leed also to "no suitable darks found) despite the fact that only the Kstars Version has changed... Shouldnt these darks work for the identical (same) camera in the new version???

Did you set the temperature threshold to a suitable value like 5°C? Should this be set to 0.1°C it could explain the issue. I assume your darks are still valid, within the "dark validity" boundary.

I just tested the same thing, ran the wizard and created a number of darks and the outcome was interesting: I created master darks for 1s and 2s exposures, both 1x1 and 2x2bin, gain 200. I then set the temperature threshold to 20°C and took a preview at 1s, 1x1, gain200 and it did work correctly including dark frame. I then changed this to 1s, 2x2, gain200 and it did NOT work. Instead, Ekos reported "no suitable dark frames found"! I reverted back to 1x1bin and it worked.

No idea what it means.

Thank you for your investigations, Alfred My guiding cam is uncooled, so the temperature shouldnt matter, but I will have a closer look on it. At this time I guided with 2x2bin, didnt tryed 1x1. This I will test next time. But that shouldnt be.

For me the quintessence is that I will stay with 3.6.2 (which works beutiful) on my main gear and watch the following releases with my "balcony gear" were I can (at least more) easily fix it in front of the scope if necessary.

Perhaps one of the programmer guys can have a look on it, maybe I will start an issue on git

Juergen,

Regarding the guiding camera being uncooled, I had the same impression - that it shouldn't matter. What I've found is that EKOS records the temperature when you take your dark frames with your guide camera, even if it isn't cooled and, let's face it, almost all of them aren't. Since the temperature threshold setting default is .1 degree, the chances are the darks won't get used unless you set the threshold setting very high or you have a library taken over a range of temperatures.

Good luck!

Hi Fred,
thank you for the hint. I had to search for the temperature range, it's in "masters" tab I didnt thought about the temperature because it is greyed out in the "darks" tab. I will test it at my next session

CS

Juergen

Temperature only matters for cameras with cooler control, not for passive temperatures. For passive temperatures, the closest temperature is selected.

Hi Jasem - I'll see if I can reproduce the circumstance I ran into. I had tried using darks on my guide camera and EKOS wasn't using them. When I went into the darks library I saw temperature values and I first checked that I had the right image train. It was my guide camera. I expanded the tolerance and I was able to get dark calibrated guide frames. To be honest, I haven't used it in a while so let me check it again.

Sure, if there is a way to reproduce let me know.

I had the exact case scenario! My dark library had multiple bin, multiple exposures, just to be sure that I'll be covered. My solution was to set a huge temp range (30 C) and then worked like a charm. Never touched it again, but I would be more than happy to re-test it.