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INDI Library v2.0.6 is Released (02 Feb 2024)

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Erratic behavior with Internal Guider

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Two things:

1) There is a 'Dark' button/checkbox in the guider interface.

Basically you would use stellarmate to build a dark library for your guide camera, just like in PHD2 and then if you check the 'Dark' checkbox, stellarmate will use the master darks to eliminate hot pixels from the image before submitting it to the guider.

2) There is a new feature called 'Dark Guiding' and it's basically meant to keep the guider doing work if the stars vanish for some reason (eg. cloud etc) for some period of time.
Last edit: 1 year 5 months ago by George L.
1 year 5 months ago #87257

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Yes, I do #1.

No, I do not do #2. Since EKOS had no trouble seeing the stars, I don't think that is the problem.

Thanks,

Ron
1 year 5 months ago #87258

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You're right, it's not the problem. I had experienced problems with dark guiding enabled so I just wanted to make sure it's got nothing to do with it in your case. If you don't use it, fine! One piece less that could cause trouble... BTW, I'm not 100% sure my problem is dark guiding related but I had sudden "freak aberrations" (like 70") while guiding. When I disabled dark guiding I didn't see any more freaks occur. But that doesn't mean dark guiding caused these freaks..
1 year 5 months ago #87259

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I guess this is a example of "freak aberrations" that happens sometimes..
1 year 5 months ago #87260
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Yes, pretty much like it!



I think we should report the issue separately as it's not necessarily related. But I have to do more testing before filing a bug report.

Ron, are you sure the aberrations really happened as opposed to just showed up in the graph but never existed in the real world? Did you see star trails in the corresponding pictures? I'm asking because in SOME cases I had the impression that what was shown in the graph didn't really exist as the lights that I got were perfectly OK with HFR=1.3.
1 year 5 months ago #87261
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Alfred,

I'm not sure... and I don't know if I could tell. Once the guiding goes crazy, the capturing aborts and won't start-up again.

Will the guide log tell us?

Ron
1 year 5 months ago #87262

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Ron, I'm not sure. I have seen a couple strange things happen with guiding recently. Things I have never seen before. Like this:


RMS and SNR going wild (while guiding is doing OK).

Or this:


RMS graph going nuts (and RA looks weird to me, too)

I'm unsure as to what really exists and what might be just a faulty graph. You're 100% correct, with the photographs being aborted there is no easy way to find out. I have to admit working through logfiles is not on my list of most favorite things to do. Nevertheless, you mentioned your guider was sending a 500ms pulse out of nowhere during one of your recent sessions. This surely should show up in the logfile. Do you still have that logfile?
1 year 5 months ago #87263
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Alfred,

I have the guide log from the prior night (attached). The wacky guiding began around 8:44.

Hopefully, someone can look at it and determine if the graph or the guiding.

Ron

Edit: looking at the file, the offending guide pulses start within the 20:26:08 string... not long after the first dithering. I see huge pulse... 500-700ms... being sent. So I would surmise the pulses are actually being sent.
Last edit: 1 year 5 months ago by Ron Clanton.
1 year 5 months ago #87264
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Seeing Alfred's guiding makes me wonder what the problem could be, I thought it was my mount but couldn't find anything wrong..
This is from another session..
1 year 5 months ago #87266
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Markku,

Yep... that looks pretty familiar. Looks like some kind of bug in computing of the pulse.

I'll continue to use PHD2 until fixed.

Thanks,

Ron
1 year 5 months ago #87268

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I can see where the huge guide pulses are sent. This is the guide log. Do you have the Ekos log, too?
1 year 5 months ago #87273

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No, I forgot to turn on log to file that night.

If it's helpful, I can grab the EKOS/INDI logs that match the original post guide log tomorrow.


Ron
1 year 5 months ago #87275

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