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PHD2/Ekos issue in v3.3.4 -- PHD2 not aborting in meridian flip

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I believe this is a regression in v3.3.3 or v3.3.4.

Just switched to 3.3.4 from 3.3.2 and I first noticed that a capture tab job would continue after the guider failed.
Previously PHD2 failures (e.g. losing the guide star) would halt the capture job--which I believe is the correct behavior.

Last night, duing an automated meridian flip, PHD2 wasn't stopped by Ekos during the flip, and eventually failed because of the slewing etc.
Ekos should automatically stop PHD2's guiding during the flip, and restart it after.
Before my upgrade, this all worked well, but starting after my upgrade, the guider doesn't seem to be getting these "abort" messages, and the capture module doesn't seem to be noticing if PHD2 fails.

Attached is my log from last night. Notice that at around 2019-08-13T02:45 a meridian flip starts, but PHD2 goes on its merry way, eventually failing at 2019-08-13T02:47:21.812

I've also attached the PHD2 log

Hy
4 years 7 months ago #42021
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I see I was a bit wrong in my analysis of the what went wrong, though there's still an issue, I believe.

In last night's log (when I was just using capture tab, not the scheduler), in fact Ekos did ask for PHD2 to abort guiding in the meridian flip:
[2019-08-13T02:47:20.234 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - PHD2: request: "{\"id\":781,\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"method\":\"stop_capture\"}"
but never restarted it (there are no further PHD2: request lines in the log which ends at 9am.

In the previous night's log (when I was using the scheduler) Ekos both asked for PHD2 to stop during the meridian flip
[2019-08-12T02:47:20.513 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - PHD2: request: "{\"id\":1002,\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"method\":\"stop_capture\"}"
and restarted it after the flip
[2019-08-12T02:49:02.842 PDT DEBG ][ org.kde.kstars.ekos.guide] - PHD2: request: "{\"id\":1003,\"jsonrpc\":\"2.0\",\"method\":\"guide\",\"params\":[{\"pixels\":1,\"time\":3,\"timeout\":120},false]}"

For comparison, I attached the properly running log (using scheduler) from the previous night).
Hy
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4 years 7 months ago #42024
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Interesting, I had a slightly different problem using PHD2 last night. The meridian flip did occur, and guiding did resume within PHD2. However, I told the system to automatically park by 6:00 am, which it did. But it didn't abort captures, so it continued to keep capturing images in the parked state. Maybe it's a related issue with PHD2 not responding with the slew or something like that.

This issue did not occur for me when using the internal guiding software. Only when switching to PHD2 did things react differently.
4 years 7 months ago #42056

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I just checked the code and cannot explain the behavior currently. The mount module sends a status update to the guiding module reporting the slew. For such events, the guiding aborts if it is running. So either guiding wasn't running at that time or the event didn't make it to the guiding module. Strange...

Maybe one thing may help: in PHD2 you can set the option to abort guiding if the mount slews. Select this option, this might help. As far as I know this option needs PHD using pulse guiding or having the mount as AUX mount set.

HTH
Wolfgang
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4 years 7 months ago #42071

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Wolfgang,

Thanks so much for looking into it.

TL;DR I found a new issue and resolved it and the old problem magically went away. Details below.

Last night, things got even wackier than before. I could only guide for several minutes before Ekos and PHD2 got out of sync. PHD2 would be nicely guiding, and Ekos thought that it wasn't guiding. That is, Ekos would display the active Drift Graphics and bulls-eye, updating them every few seconds, but the (Start) Guide button was enabled and the "Stop" (guiding) button was disabled -- as if there was no guider. It seems Ekos thought that PHD2 had stopped, but PHD2 was merrily going along on its way. I looked through the logs and discovered that PHD2 had sent a message to Ekos that settling had failed. PHD2 didn't quit, but apparently Ekos thought it did and reported that guiding was aborted. I don't really understand the settling issue, but I changed the parameters to 10s settling time and 2 pixels tolerance, and now all is running smoothly. No issues at all (same target as last night). Running all night and perfectly done meridian flip with a pause in guiding and a restart of guiding after the flip. Sorry, not sure what the settling parameters were before the change--though my hunch is 3s and 0.0 pixels tolerance.

Perhaps there's an issue with Ekos not knowing when PHD2 shuts down, or if PHD2 is just reporting something it can recover from.

Also, BTW, I too had the "issue" where Capture continued to take pictures after the mount had auto-parked. Not a deal-breaker, just throw those shots away, but it's odd behavior. I think that perhaps the guider failing was what was stopping the Capture, and when the guider "went away" nothing stopped it until it got a focuser error when the light got too bright.

Anyway, sorry for the bother,
Hy
4 years 7 months ago #42073

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Hm, strange as well. Is it possible that PHD2 wasn't in guiding mode and recovered after the mount has parked? Do you have the logs of EKOS and PHD2 available?
4 years 7 months ago #42082

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I have the PHD2 log, but since I had a fresh install of EKOS, I had forgot to turn on EKOS logging. Here's the PHD2 log. Ignore the first few bits, I was trying to run guiding assistant.

The log appears to end right at 6:00 am. The time I had park scheduled. But without the EKOS log, I'm not sure we can see what happened with the image module that kept taking photos. It's not a big deal to delete the additional images, but you can get damage to the sensor for exposing in light for several minutes, so I wouldn't want that to happen.

File Attachment:

File Name: PHD2_Guide...5022.txt
File Size:999 KB
Last edit: 4 years 7 months ago by Andrew Burwell.
4 years 7 months ago #42088
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are you talking about the main CCD or the guiding camera continuing to capture?
4 years 7 months ago #42091

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4 years 7 months ago #42104

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Ok, that‘s not surprising from the code, there is no functionality in the capture module to interrupt while moving.
4 years 7 months ago #42107

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