Hi,

After a one year pause I dusted off my equipment. Installed stellarmate on my new Pi. Did my first session and wanted to take flats in my usual way through Ekos using the flats option and have Ekos calibrate to my desired ADU of 25000.

Tried this with my ASI1600MC and ASI294MC-Pro.

Ekos starts taking frames, then decides on the exposure time to fit my ADU setting, then the next image is taken with the calculated exposure time, then calculates the ADU and this is more than double the ADU you would expect so it discards the frame and starts calibrating again, It will do this indefinitely.

Here are some examples, same exposure time, m22-01-20T22:54:10 Download Time: 59.00 s, New Download Time Estimate: 36.83 s.
2022-01-20T22:54:08 Capturing 0,573-second  image...ore than double ADU:

2022-01-20T22:55:54 Current ADU is 51570 Next exposure is 1,008488 seconds.
2022-01-20T22:55:53 Capturing 0,599-second  image...
2022-01-20T22:55:53 Current ADU 24997 within target ADU tolerance range.
2022-01-20T22:55:53 Download Time: 99.52 s, New Download Time Estimate: 35.84 s.
2022-01-20T22:55:51 Capturing 0,599-second  image...

2022-01-20T22:54:13 Current ADU is 50573 Next exposure is 0,557522 seconds.
2022-01-20T22:54:12 Capturing 0,574-second  image...
2022-01-20T22:54:11 Current ADU 24004 within target ADU tolerance range.
2022-01-20T22:54:11 Download Time: 60.81 s, New Download Time Estimate: 37.02 s.
2022-01-20T22:54:10 Capturing 0,574-second  image...
2022-01-20T22:54:10 Current ADU is 23982 Next exposure is 0,573908 seconds.
2022-01-20T22:54:10 Download Time: 59.00 s, New Download Time Estimate: 36.83 s.
2022-01-20T22:54:08 Capturing 0,573-second  image...

Just to make sure it's not my stellarmate setup causing the issue, I installed Ekos in my Ubuntu desktop, latest stable version. Same issue.

Anyone familiar with this?

Appreciate your help.

Thanks,

Marco



 

Funny... I was just going to post this same problem. I've used the flat generation feature over the last year. Now, it simply doesn't work.

It starts off okay, but then creeps toward the right ADU and gets it right... then discards it and starts over... endlessly.

On mine, it seems like EKOS is not controlling the exposure time correctly. It will take several good looking frames, then suddenly the image is way too bright... even though it supposed to be the same exposure.

I gave up and just shot a specific exposure that looked good. Hopefully, someone on here can figure out what changed.

Ron

Hi Ron,

Yes that is exactly what's happening here.

Some good frames and then a very bright one in the preview and then Ekos starts over again with a lower exposure time to compensate the brightness.

I too "solved" it by just noting down the calculated exposure time and take flats manually.

Hope this info helps.

Marco

Can you please enable logging for Ekos Capture and post the logs? I just tried to replicate this issue here in the observatory but couldn't. I'm wondering if this is some locale-regression issue but it doesn't appear from log above, so more detailed logs are required.

Hi Jasem,

I gathered the logs.

I have 1 log for my stellarmate (which is on the 3.5.7 beta) and 1 log for kstars/ekos on my ubuntu laptop latest stable 3.5.7.

Behavior is the same. Just look in the logs for where it says ADU in acceptable tolerance and the next frame with same exposure time will get an unexpected high ADU, the preview also is visibly very bright.

EDIT: I have also tested with a differtent Camera ASI1600MC in stead of ASI294MC-PRO. Same behavior.

One thing that I also notice is that although the settings on both instances are the same, i haven't touched or changed the light source, the calculated exposure time is very different. almost double on my laptop. > I do notice that in my camera profile on the Stellarmate a gain of 120 was set. On my desktop it is 0. But that should not matter because I don't set a gain when taking the flats... Or am I mistaken here and will the flats be taken with the gain set on camera profile? > Ok I figured it out. If you do not set the gain and offset explicitly you and leave it on (--) ekos will use the gain set in the camera profile. Didn't know that!
This explains the different exposure times in the log files.

Hope this helps.

Please let me know if I can help you (help me) with more information or tests.

Thank you for the logs. I was finally able to reproduce the issue and fixed it. It should land in the nightlies later today.

Thanks Jasem, as always much impressed with the speed you show in fixing things.

Will check and report back with the results.

Also pushed to stable StellarMate.

Thanks!

Ron

Hi, same issue here with asi533.
Waiting for the fix then.
Thanks!

Just dowloaded the last update, problem solved. Thanks for fixing it!