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guider settle time; trying to understand

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Hi everyone
1. Using PHD2, when is the settle applied? Would it be useful to have a message to that effect e.g.
capturing dithering settling waiting... i
2. What are the units for settle (it specifies seconds but it seems much shorter)?
3.. What's the difference between this settle:

and this:

?
TIA for your patience
Clear skies,
Steve
The following user(s) said Thank You: Alfred, Jose Corazon
5 years 7 months ago #28086
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I had missed the Settle option under the Capture tab there. I also am not sure.
Thanks for raising this issue.
Jo
5 years 7 months ago #28102

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If I understand all discussion around the settle options correctly then the first settle means that capture will wait that amount of seconds after guiding resumes so guiding can settle after dithering, while the second one means that the dithering phase will continue that amount of seconds. The difference is that the first one allows guiding to become stable again after dithering which is what many people on this forum asked for so the guide star doesn’t swim around the fov and stars in the Light get sharper. In short, you want to set that first value and you may ignore the second value.

Anyone please correct me if I am wrong.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Stefan R.
Last edit: 5 years 7 months ago by Wouter van Reeven.
5 years 7 months ago #28104

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Ha, earlier today I wrote a message with exactly the same question but quit before I was finished since I had to leave for the rest of the day.

The settle time under guiding/options/guide was the first to be introduced. However, it failed to do what I think it was supposed to do, i.e. allow guiding to reach a stable state after dithering and before the next picture is taken. As it was the case back then (and I believe still is), however, the settle time was performed BEFORE dithering which rendered the whole thing useless, at least IMO.

When we discussed this in a rather lengthy thread Jasem added the second settle time available under Options/Ekos/Capture. This one actually does what I had hoped the former would do. All IMHO.
Last edit: 5 years 7 months ago by Alfred.
5 years 7 months ago #28112

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As Herrhausen stated.

I will add that there is a small translation error in that EKOS shifts the decimal point one place to the left when sending a status message. A settle of 3 seconds becomes 0.3 seconds in the TEXT, but in reality it actually does settle for three seconds.

Peter
The following user(s) said Thank You: Alfred
5 years 7 months ago #28116

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So, what IS this "other" tick box guiding/options/guide/settle actually doing?

Tonight I noticed kstars reports settle times of 0.3s regardless of what I set the settle time to.

I am of the opninion taking pictures is the core task that Ekos performs. Everything related to this core competency should run reliably and all bugs reported should be ironed out. Dithering is a standard procedure in astrophotography and I am surprised to see there are still many things that are in need of improvement in this regard.

One improvement could be: Drift graphics should also plot when the system is settling and when it is actually taking pictures. The guiding deviation that occurs during dither and settling are irrelevant for rms and should be disregarded.

I am willing to devote as much time to testing as needed. Unfortunately, the one thing that I can not do is make changes to the code on my own. I am currently working through learncpp.com in order to get at least SOME knowledge and become able to read and understand the code but it will take a long time before I know what I am doing so in the meantime testing is all I can offer.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq
Last edit: 5 years 7 months ago by Alfred.
5 years 7 months ago #28318

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The text message corrected. So the options are:

Dither Settle: Wait this many seconds after dithering before resuming the guiding process.
Guide Settle: Wait this many seconds after the guiding process successfully resumed before resuming capture process.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Alfred, Stefan R.
Last edit: 5 years 7 months ago by Jasem Mutlaq.
5 years 7 months ago #28357

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Thanks Jasem. One question, what is the purpose of the "Dither Settle". Would't you want to start guiding as soon as the dithering shift has taken place? I am not sure why I would want to delay this, as my only concern is image quality and the "Guide Settle" now takes care of that.

Peter
The following user(s) said Thank You: Alfred
5 years 7 months ago #28361

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Good question. Because sometimes dithering can be reported as "successful" but there are still some residual swings in motion. So if guiding were to start immediately, it might think the star is off its position and start making unnecessary guiding corrections. These cases are variable. In my observatory both Dither Settle and Guide Settle are actually set to zero. But for some combination of setups, it might be required so the options exist to cover such cases.
Last edit: 5 years 7 months ago by Jasem Mutlaq.
5 years 7 months ago #28362

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Ok, I agree with PK but having two options is not a bad thing either. In any case, shouldn't these two configuration boxes be placed close to each other?
Would it be time-consuming to plot the settling phase in the drift graphics (like it's done with dithering) so a user could clearly see whether a certain guiding aberration has an effect on a photo?
5 years 7 months ago #28370

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