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

Bi-monthly release with minor bug fixes and improvements

Desperately needed feature: better guide star loss recovery.

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I had a flawless run last night with one exception. Poor guide star loss recovery. After losing the guide star, to some stray cloud coverage for a few minutes, EKOS hunted around for a new guide star until the stars reappeared. The result was that at my 2000mm focal length the object was now in the upper right corner of the frame, and guiding resumed. 2/3 of an entire nights images were now off center.

My feature request is that guide star loss should trigger a slew/solve to the object, and once centered, guiding should resume, and then imaging should resume. If cloud coverage still exists, slew/solve will continue until it gets confirmation of a centered object.
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jasem Mutlaq, Alfred, Jose Corazon, alacant, Konstantin Baranov
3 years 7 months ago #58248

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I completely agree. Scheduler should realign on guiding failure. I don't this is actually very difficult to do, but let's see what Eric & Wolfgang has to say about this.
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3 years 7 months ago #58254

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I posted the same request last week. Please see:

indilib.org/forum/ekos/7498-guiding-resume-after-cloud.html

I thought no one was interested. Almost certainly my bad English, in the wrong bit of the forum.

So it's a big +1 from me. Someting like
Re-align if the guide star SNR drops below a given value for a given time. E.g. the end of the current frame being captured.

Cheers and clear skies,
Steve
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jose Corazon
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by alacant.
3 years 7 months ago #58259

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Oh good, Glad I'm not the only one. This has happened to me several times. There's supposed to be some light clouds come in tonight around 2am. Hope I can successfully get past them...If they're thin enough, I can guide through it. But if the guide star disappears, then I'll lose all the frames.
3 years 7 months ago #58264

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Not wanting to disappoint you Steve, it's probably not your English (Louisiana? ...:-)), but universally short attention span.
That request is actually being made every few months. I had done so as well some time last year, I think, and as I recall Eric did respond along the same lines as Jasem did: This is very hard to do the way the scheduler is currently structured.

But this would also be my number 1 request.

When I brought that up with Wolfgang a while back, he suggested programming repeated scheduler jobs with short image sequences for the same target. That way, realignment would happen multiple times during the night. Unfortunately, also when not required, which beats the purpose as well.

I guess the problem lies in realigning upon guide star loss and then NOT restarting, but resuming the interrupted image sequence.

Cheers,

Jo

PS: But what I am wondering whether that might be possible is to include an option that terminates the scheduler upon guide star loss, but then immediately restarts it. If in the scheduler the option 'Sequence completion' is checked, then the scheduler should just resume where it stopped previously. I mean, I can manually do the same thing, all I need to do is click the Stop button in the scheduler and then restart it. Can this option not be included in the code?
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by Jose Corazon.
3 years 7 months ago #58265

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That's an interesting option. Assuming you're only working on one target. Which I happen to be. So I might try it tonight. Still not ideal though.
3 years 7 months ago #58266

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Hi Jo, everyone.
No, Alicante, Spain, and yes, I'm glad that this is back live once again. Please accept my apologies for not finding your original post on the matter.
Cheers,
Steve
3 years 7 months ago #58277

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+1. Yes. Thanks for mentioning this. It's what i do too if see that the target has drifted.
Cheers,
Steve
3 years 7 months ago #58278

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Folks, what do you think, we already have an option on re-aligning when guiding calibration failed. Is it really necessary having one option for calibration failure and another for guiding failure?

Is there a use case where you have one of them set and the other one not?

And please be patient, it's already under development


Cheers
Wolfgang
3 years 7 months ago #58298
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Hi Wolfgang,

Is this a new feature you highlighted? I only see restart alignment on guiding calibration failure. When a guide star is lost does the system attempt to restart guiding calibration? Is that why the mounts moves the object off alignment? Maybe I just need to enable this existing feature?

Thanks for clarifying. I only assumed that upon guiding failure, calibration did not restart again, and that the system just aimlessly searched for a new star until it found a suitable one to resume guiding.
3 years 7 months ago #58300

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Hi Andrew,
please be patient, no, it's not available currently, but I'm working on it.

Currently there is only an option available to re-align when an error occurs during guiding calibration. I.e. if you select the option "Restart Alignment on Guiding Calibration Failure" and guiding calibration fails, it repeats the alignment before re-starting the guiding calibration.

What I am working on is a more general version. The intention is, if guiding aborts and the new option is selected, a re-alignment is issued before re-starting the guiding.

Stay tuned...
Wolfgang
The following user(s) said Thank You: Jose Corazon, Andrew Burwell, Sonny Cavazos
3 years 7 months ago #58301

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Hi Wolfgang and thanks for taking a look at this.

Yes, I think it is -even more- important to realign after guiding failure. If not, you can often find your image is displaced a hundred pixels or more as e.g. a cloud has passed and another guide star has been chosen with drift in between.

Please don't hesitate to throw anything this way should you need code testing in the field.
Cheers and clear skies,
Steve
Last edit: 3 years 7 months ago by alacant.
3 years 7 months ago #58317

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