Pause PHD2 when FF AF?

[Rudi]

Is it possible to make AA8 tell PHD2 to pause AG while AA8 does a Full Frame Auto Focus, FF AF, in a sequence?

When using an OAG, PHD2 doesn’t like sudden the large FWHM changes on the guide stars, that occours when doping a FF AF.

[Iver]

Hi Rudi, you can convert your sequence to a script. Sequencer menu - create similar script and then add PHD.Pause PHD.Resume into the script.

[Rudi]

Thanks Iver. Don’t know why I didn’t think of that.
I’ll try it next time.
I was a bit busy last night, first night this season and with a new PC configured, so a lot of stuff to be setup and tested
It would be nice though, with a flag some where in AA Options, called “Pause PHD2 on AF”

[Iver]

Sounds like you get out about as often as I do! . I'm going to start building an observatory soon, hopefully I'll get more imaging done! BTW prior to AA8 I suggested to Fabio that it would be great if a script could be executed from the sequencer, that would solve your problem.

[Rudi]

Sounds like you get out about as often as I do! . I'm going to start building an observatory soon, hopefully I'll get more imaging done! BTW prior to AA8 I suggested to Fabio that it would be great if a script could be executed from the sequencer, that would solve your problem.

Well, at my latitude (55°N), true darkness just returned. During the summer, I have been busy relaxing (!!!) with my family and friends.
Yes - Iver, build an observatory. That is the best investment I have made for my hobby so far!!!

What a fantastic and flexible idea!!!
A script cell in each sequence row could open up for really a lot of flexibility.

[Iver]

55 north? Canadian ? Deutch?

[Rudi]

Danish

Germany doesn’t go above 55°N (well, a minute part of the island Sild does) and not much of Canada is above either

[Dunmunro]

Is it possible to make AA8 tell PHD2 to pause AG while AA8 does a Full Frame Auto Focus, FF AF, in a sequence?

When using an OAG, PHD2 doesn’t like sudden the large FWHM changes on the guide stars, that occours when doping a FF AF.

AA8's full frame, multistar AG is excellent and I find it better than PHD2, and of course, it's fully integrated into AA8.

[Iver]

I agree with what Duncan said. I used PHD for quite a few years, since the multi star guider was released I have been using it. The calibration also works much better then the previous versions.

[Rudi]

The scripting solution worked fine. I tested it last night.

@fabio: Is there a way to let PHD settle after resuming?
I had a look at APPSTATE, but there's no "setteling" state, there just: Guiding, Paused, Calibrating, Looping, Stopped, LostLock
I could pause for some seconds, but on my setup, PHD2 varies a lot in setteling time.

[Iver]

Hi Rudi, here are the parameters for PHD script functions in AA help file.

Start guiding. It's possible to specify the three parameters for settling (pixels, time, timeout) as described in the PHD EventMonitoring interface: https://github.com/OpenPHDGuiding/phd2/ ... Monitoring , for example: PHD.Guide(1.5, 8, 50).

You may want to do a loop so it will not wait forever to settle.

[Rudi]

Thank! Exactly what I was looking for.
I am making a script to create mosaics.
I will be needing to do some “centering” slew/platesolve. And I looked in the help, but didn’t find any script commands for this new feature. I guess I’ll have to make a script function for that then