Hi Ray,
Thanks for the reply. I appreciate you looking through the logs to try and track down what has happened.
I had a run last night and had another meridian flip failure, but this time it was a slew to a new object on the other side of the meridian, rather than to the same object. I was viewing the SGP screen during this time and noticed something peculiar that is shown in the logs and was noticed by you. The meridian flip slew is reported to have taken 4-5 seconds, but this is not possible since I'm slewing at 600x to keep the noise down. I looked at what SGP was doing and noticed that it was taking an image for plate solving while it was slewing. It seems somehow, there's a command of a completed slew being sent too early that may be a result of your findings. In the meantime, I suppose I could put in a settling time of 30 seconds or so as a quick fix. I'll try that next time I'm out.
I'm running on a Quantum Access PC stick and have it headless. I VNC into the PC to check its status sometimes. The problem doesn't matter if I have a VNC session active or not - I viewed it live last night and the other times just after the flip. I've been running it successfully for the past 9 months or so with SGP and with APCC since around June. I only have SGP, APCC and PHD2 running and no other background applications loaded. This PC stick is solely for astroimaging and like to keep it lightweight.
Here's the latest log. The trouble starts around 12:51:15.
sg_logfile_20160914161645.txt.zip (97.5 KB)
Here's a snippet:
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] DoEventGroupChange: Slewing to target
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Handling monitoring event (Good Night System, Status): (Sept2016-TMB130) Slewing to target "ngc7380"...
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] GNS: Sent status message to GNS ((Sept2016-TMB130) Slewing to target "ngc7380"...)...
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Telescope: Slewing to J2000 RA: 22.7830305555556 (22h46m58.91s) Dec: 58.0696861111111 (58°04'10.87")
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Telescope: Slew received J2000 coordinates, mount requires JNOW, converting...
[9/15/2016 12:51:15 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Telescope: Slewing to JNOW RA: 22.795000914191 Dec: 58.1602528824476
[9/15/2016 12:51:20 AM] [DEBUG] [CP Update Thread] ASCOM Telescope: Error in GetLst : Lost communications with mount. (System.Reflection.TargetInvocationException: Exception has been thrown by the target of an invocation. ---> System.Runtime.InteropServices.COMException: Lost communications with mount.
--- End of inner exception stack trace ---
at System.RuntimeType.InvokeDispMethod(String name, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Object target, Object[] args, Boolean[] byrefModifiers, Int32 culture, String[] namedParameters)
at System.RuntimeType.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags bindingFlags, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] providedArgs, ParameterModifier[] modifiers, CultureInfo culture, String[] namedParams)
at System.Type.InvokeMember(String name, BindingFlags invokeAttr, Binder binder, Object target, Object[] args, CultureInfo culture)
at ASCOM.DriverAccess.MemberFactory.CallMember(Int32 memberCode, String memberName, Type[] parameterTypes, Object[] parms) in c:\ASCOM Build\Export\ASCOM.DriverAccess\MemberFactory.cs:line 243)
at ASCOM.DriverAccess.MemberFactory.CallMember(Int32 memberCode, String memberName, Type[] parameterTypes, Object[] parms) in c:\ASCOM Build\Export\ASCOM.DriverAccess\MemberFactory.cs:line 284
at ASCOM.DriverAccess.Telescope.get_SiderealTime() in c:\ASCOM Build\Export\ASCOM.DriverAccess\Telescope.cs:line 910
at fp.f4()
[9/15/2016 12:51:20 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Scope reports it is done with synchronous slew, verifying...
[9/15/2016 12:51:20 AM] [DEBUG] [Sequence Thread] Telescope: Slewing has completed