Something strange happened last night when using the scheduler. I had three jobs on the list. First two went well. But from the third job, significantly less frames were taken than specified in the sequence-file. In the sequence file there was a series of 20/6/6/6/10 frames for various filters. However, the scheduler only took 10/3/3/3/10 frames. So most were halved, but not all. Looking at the time-stamps of the files, they were all taken in proper sequential order, no gaps, so I'm not missing files because they've been written wrongly. Seems like there is some logic/intelligence applied to the frame-reduction, but I can't see where or how and how to prevent this.
Usually when something goes wrong with the scheduler it's my own fault, having made a typo in the script or so, but I checked it hundred times, and the scripts all look fine. Any idea what could have gone wrong here and why th scheduler 'ate' some of my frames?
Using KStars 3.0.0 for Mac.
Thank you, Willem Jan.
Thank you Wolfgang, for looking into this. I have attached the three capture sequence files I used (had to change extension to *.txt, or it would not upload). I'm afraid I did not save the scheduler job as a file (should probably start doing that...).
The three sequence files were executed in order, with selecting target M63, M44 and M63 respectively. In order to make sure they stay in order I typically assign a priority like 1, 10 and 15 or so to them.
Other settings of the scheduler were:
Tracking on, no focus, align or guide ticked. All Job constraint options unchecked. Selected shutdown procedures: warm CCD, Cap and Park Mount.
I just looked at the option 'remember job progress' and indeed that was selected. Can't remember I turned that on, so perhaps this was a default setting?
I've got logging on by default, but that only specifies some startup routines. Nothing in there about the actual imaging processes.
Thank you Wolfgang.
However, I never use the 'repeat for x runs', I always have 'Sequence Completion' selected.
Should I deselect 'Remember Job Progress' in the Preferences?
Oops, then I think it's not the bug we are discussing. Have you checked wether the target directory of your third job already contained the targeted 6 frames? This is exactly where the option "Remember job progress" is for. If you have some frames from a previous session in the target directory, it takes them into account and stops as soon as enough frames are present.
In your example 3 (and I guess that's the one which "eats" frames), I would expect that the target directory now contains exactly 6 light frames - as specified in the capture sequence. If you use the option "Sequence Completion", the job terminates as soon as 6 light frames with the given prefix are present in the specified directory.
If you want to take 6 frames no matter how many frames have already been taken, please tick off "Remember job progress". In this case the scheduler ignores frames already taken in the past.
You are absolutely right! There are indeed exactly 6 frames in the directory specified (three from the first sequence and three from the second sequence). This makes all sense now.
Glad nothing is wrong with the software, and just due to user error. I will uncheck the Remember Job Progress option going forward.
Thanks very much for your help solving this.