Folks, could you please do me the favour and test the behavior of the scheduler? My impression is that most of the behaviour you describe is already present in the Scheduler.

The only thing that you need to do is using the Scheduler for your nighttime capture session and define scheduler jobs that

1. has the weather job constraint selected
2. has a shutdown procedure defined with at least scope and dome parking selected

Testing this should be quite easy using simulators for scope, CCD, weather and dome. Start the schedule job and see what happens if you change the weather condition in the INDI tab for the weather such that it changes to ALERT state. As soon as this happens, the job should abort, the mount should get parked and finally the dome should get parked as well.

Wolfgang

I can test with my mount/scope and obsy side by side so no collision can occur but, unfortunately I have never used the scheduler (tried quickly without success 30 minutes ago) and must figure out how to use it. Furthermore, I won't be able to test for a few days. I would have loved to but I will be away from my setup.

This works, but for some setups, I'd like the roof/dome close ASAP and not wait for the telescope to park first. Every seconds matter. I have a rolloff roof and there is no collision issue, so on WEATHER_ALERT, I want both actions to take place at the same time.

Another related topic is that this needs to be done when the ALERT is confirmed. What if Wind goes over the max limit for a couple seconds before going down to normal? Should such ALERT cause a total observatory shutdown or there should be some threshold management. Right now, the INDI::Weather immediately sets the ALERT once a threshold is exceeded. So maybe this issue also needs to be considered.

Looking at the Telescope, Dome or RoR and Weather interface it seems pretty easy to get much of what you want. At present the dome snoops on the weather and the telescope snoops on the dome. The dome sees an alert and closes/parks. The telescope sees the dome parking and also parks.
I think this needs the dome policy in the telescope driver to be set to Both and the telescope polity in the dome driver to be set to ignore telescope.
Auto Park is enabled.
When the alert is seen the dome starts to close/park. The telescope sees this and parks. There's a race between the two.

What seems to be more difficult is to set things so that the telescope parks first, then the dome parks. You can set things - the dome policy I think - so the dome will not park with the scope unparked and the scope seems to see something and will park. But the dome/roof doesn't then see that the mount has parked and continue to park it may be nice to close the roof as soon and possible but not when doing so will crush the scope.

It looks as if setting the dome policy in the telescope driver to both will require that the telescope is parked before the dome/RoR closes and parks and also that the Dome/RoR is unparked and open before the telescope is unparked.
Then setting the telescope policy in the RoR driver to telescope locks will stop the RoR closing until the telescope is parked, but now the dome is waiting for the scope to park and because the dome isn't parking the telescope won't park. A deadlock.

It looks as if there isn't an option to park the telescope before parking or closing the dome, the best is to do both at the same time.

Managing the response time for an alert seems to belong with the weather driver, this is more likely to know what is reasonable for the different properties. They could each have their own.

If changes were to be made to the indi Dome code, having a third telescope option would be useful: ignore wait or block.
Park both dome and mount at the same time or wait on the telescope might depend on what is mounted. With a small refractor I have no collision issue, with an SCT it needs protecting.

Wolfgang,

I ran a 2 tests using the scheduler and simulators. Both test were run twice once with the Observatory set to park dome on alert and once with that unchecked. I did not see a difference whether or not the Observatory was involved.

Test 1 the telescope used the "Dome Parks" policy and the dome used the "Ignore Telescope" property. With this combination when the alert was triggered both telescope and roof parked together. So that was the same result as
when the scheduler was not involved.

Test 2 the dome was changed to telescope blocks. With this combination the when the scheduler sensed the alert the telescope started parking and the roof output a warning that it could not park. Same as the none scheduler case, but when the telescope had parked the roof driver output a message indicating a changed of telescope status had been sensed. I then proceeded to park the roof as hoped for.

So using the scheduler along with policy combination worked well to provide whichever behavior was wanted.
Not extensive testing but promising.

You appear to have said "I then proceeded to park the roof as hoped for.". Do you mean that you were watching things and that you clicked on the park dome button to park the dome? Or was there a tiny typo and you intended to say "It then..." meaning that the system parked the roof once the scope was parked with no intervention on your part?

I wouldn't normally nit pick about typos but in this case it could be significant.

Chris,

Sorry about that should read it before posting. Yes it parked the roof after the mount had been parked as part of handling the alert. I kind of expected the Observatory to interfere but it did not seem to make a difference. Only ran once through each combo but hopefully results can be consistenly reproduced.

Thanks.
I don't seem to see this behaviour.

Using telescope dome and weather simulators.
Telescope dome policy set to both.
Dome telescope policy set to telescope locks
Dome auto park set to Enable
Ekos Observatory Alert has Park Dome but not close shutter.

setting rain to 10 to trigger alert.
Dome sees this and would like to park but this is inhibited because the telescope is not parked.
Nothing else happens. The scope continues tracking, the dome remains open. The rain continues to pour down on it all.

If I set Close Shutter in the Ekos Observatory then the Observatory reports the alert and 5 seconds later (my delay parameter) the scope starts parking and the shutter starts to close at the same time. In the sim the shutter finishes moving before the scope has finished parking. This doesn't seem safe, while the scope and dome both end up parked the shutter could break the scope before it's finished parking.

I haven't found a way to cause the scope to park and the dome/ror not to move until the scope has completed parking.

Is there some setup that would do that? There are a lot of possibilities, I make it 64 different possible set ups.

To clarify, your description is what is seen if, telescope blocks dome is used, and just indi participating. The dome is blocked by the telescope. Wolfgang's request to do a test was to involve the client by using the scheduler's weather alert detection to initiate both telescope and roof parking. Your description did not mention the scheduler.

In my case it is a rolloff roof, so you have the additional complexity of the dome to deal with. Not clear about how the shutter relates to the roof open/close and the dome park/unpark.

Without Scheduler, almost certainly NO. Using the Scheduler, almost certainly YES. You need to check the weather constraint (see my posting above) and select a shutdown procedure with mount and dome checked.

Regarding the synchronization of shutter and dome movement, I would not rely on the Simulator. I'm quite sure that this is manufacturer dependent.

I also tried using the RoRSimulator. This doesn't have a shutter, just a roof park property. In that case it is the same as in the first case, with the shutter not set to close. In fact there is no close shutter option in the Ekos Observatory module. The dome/roof park function is inhibited by the telescope dome policy and so the roof can't park and because of this the telescope does not park so the roof can't.

That's how the simulator behaves. A real roof could be made to work by implementing it as a dome. The 'shutter' property would just simulate a shutter but not move anything but its 'movement' would trigger the telescope to park. And when the telescope was parked the dome would close the roof. This only seems to work with Ekos, the observatory seems to see the weather change and closes the shutter, this triggers the telescope park and that triggers the dome park.